Why I love being a mum: part 1

Nothing can really prepare you for how you’ll feel when you become a parent for the first time… or any time I would imagine. When I found out I was pregnant I felt instant love for my unborn Erin. I couldn’t imagine loving anything as much as I loved her even though she was a long way off being born. At this point I thought I loved Erin as much as I ever would. God, how wrong I was! There are also so many things that I would have never even thought about before Erin arrived so I thought I’d put together a little list of things I love about being a mum:

• Holding hands – Well, I guess it’s more like Erin holds a finger. Never would I have ever thought that holding Erin’s hand would calm her down so much. If she cries in the middle of the night I reach over, hold her hand and she goes back to sleep instantly. Just the other day she was having a massive melt down because she was hungry and her bottle wasn’t ready. I held both her hands and said her name a few times and she calmed down! I couldn’t believe it.

• Morning smiles – Don’t get me wrong, I love when Erin smiles no matter what time of day it is. However, when I wake up in the morning and look over to Erin’s moses basket and see her smiling up at me because she’s happy to be awake and to see me just melts my heart. There has been so many mornings that I have seen that smile and wanted to cry a little bit because she makes me so happy.

• Doing something new – At nearly 5 months old Erin is doing new things all of the time. I absolutely love seeing her face when she finally does something she’s been trying to do and realises. That is just priceless! Something she’s been trying to master recently is sticking her tongue out. She saw me do it and I could see her trying to figure out how to copy. It took her a few days but she can do it most of the time now. She’s also holding things a lot more now and has recently figured out how to hold things in both hands at the same time!

• Reassurance – I certainly wasn’t expecting for Erin to look to me for reassurance in such a way at this age. Just the other day she tried a tiny bit of a Rusk for the first time. Up until that she’d only had purées but when she had the Rusk in her mouth she immediately turned and looked up at me to see what she should do. I told her it was okay, made some happy munching faces and off she went with no gagging at all!

There are obviously so many more things I love about being a mum but I think I’ll save some for another post!

What do you love about being a parent?!