Baby Shower

I love baby showers. And my dear friend T really should do baby showers as a side business. She just pours love and adoration over the mama to be, tiaras, coordinating tableware, really wonderful handmade favors (we all made S a plate for the baby) and all. I went to another baby shower today for a friend from college. She’s gorgeous and glowing and just looks so thoroughly happy it just makes me smile to be around her. She knows they are having a girl and they have a lovely name picked out with a super sweet story behind it.

It’s so much fun to watch the anticipation build over the months and really start peaking around the baby shower. Mamas to be start absorbing every single piece of baby advice they can get their heads around. They start asking questions and leaning in to listen to answers they never would have dreamed of waiting to hear. They cry all the time and coo over things they never would have given a second glance before. It’s so sweet and beautiful to watch these amazing friends of mine go from strong, independent women to strong, independent expecting mothers.

And I just find myself so grateful to go on even a piece of this journey with them. Motherhood so completely, irrevocably changed who I am as a person that it’s hard for me to remember life before motherhood. To have the chance to watch these ladies embrace this other part of themselves takes me back to the beginning of my own adventure.

When I so desperately wanted to know everything and didn’t. When I couldn’t wait for that moment when I got to meet my first born, but simultaneously terrified to be the adult in the phrase “use only with adult supervision.” The planning and researching and learning. How everything I was positive that I knew changed immediately upon The Boy’s arrival. And how lovely that surprise was in the end, even if it did send me reeling.

I love being a mother. And it’s such a gift to be able to share that love with these women with whom I’ve shared so much of my life.