The mom moment- the raw beauty, the tears, the realization you have this new title more important than any one you’ve held before. I’ve seen it commercials, reality TV, regular TV and actual reality.

I had mom guilt over the mom moment. I’m a crier. I’ve cried at graduations, Facebook videos, a dog memorial page of a stranger that I accidentally stumbled across, Christmas lights that reminded me of Christmas Eve as a child, Toy Story 3, The Biggest Loser and more. I didn’t have the mom cry moment that anyone who remotely knows me would expect of me and that I expected for myself.

The mom moment for adoption isn’t clearly defined. It’s not with the first cry, or when the baby is handed to you. For the first few days of Maeve’s life, I tried to find the magical balance of loving her the just right amount. There was a four day waiting period in which her birth parents could change their mind clouding the air. I wanted her to feel immensely loved and cared about as soon as she entered the world. I also wanted to protect myself just enough, but not so much that I took anything away from her. I don’t know if such a balance exists, but I walked the line as best I could, leaning more to the side of pure love.

The effects of this still linger in the back of my mind. An undercurrent of guilt mixed with jealousy runs whenever I see the “first moment” photos. I took lots of pictures to document her first moments, with a fear that they could become a painful memory I’d work hard to forget. For four days, I had to keep reminding myself, she’s not yours, she’s not yours-yet. I had picked a closet in the house where I was staying that I’d hide in if anyone came for her. I had a social worker also vocalizing this, undoubtedly to prepare me for a loss she’d witnessed over and over. People who loved me expressed their own anxiety in different ways and at different volumes. My head was a remix of my own doubt and selfassuring phrases, with a chorus of of reassurance and fear from those in my life.

Leaving the Chick Fil-A after the papers were signed, I was able to change the internal monologue to “this is your baby.” I made us “Facebook Official”. In the following ten months, I was identified through paperwork as her foster mother, and Maeve still had her birth father’s last name. She always felt like my baby, but the words mother and daughter felt strange to me, like I hadn’t earned the right to use them. I worked them into conversation more, trying them on and with them not quite fitting.

I had hoped that finalization would make it feel more final, more real, more official. After an hour wait, a judge signed a form and said congratulations. With the grim location of family court as a background, it wasn’t a beautiful moment. It didn’t carry the weight that I imagine the “I now pronounce you man and wife” moment has-a clear, legal definition decreed.

I still don’t know what being a mom feels like. Maybe I’m not defining it correctly, or expecting something black and white when I’ve lived in grey this past year. Maybe I genuinely am not “like a regular mom.”

A kid conducting a survey for her math class asked me how many children I have. I said one, surprising myself that it was true. I couldn’t believe that she took it at face value and went on her way.

Walking out of the court room into a room full of people awaiting less happy hearings, I heard a woman confidently state, “there’s the mother,” as others oohed and awed over Maeve.

I have mentally recorded her voice and will have it playing on repeat, manufacturing the soundtrack for my journey to feeling “real”.