It’s Intensity. It’s Heartbreaking and Heartwarming All At Once. It's Motherly Love.

Art Direction and Photograph by: Catie Menke. Model: Jackie Parks.

Copy by: Samantha Stinocher
Model: Jackie Parks
Creative Direction by: Catie Menke

It’s intensity. It’s heartbreaking and heartwarming all at once. It’s fierce. Motherhood is just a world all on its own. If I said I felt it – that motherly love – instantly when my twins were born, I would be lying. I felt it as they grew inside of me. But see, when they were born, I was very sick and kind of not my whole self. Their birth was traumatizing in some ways and while I did get to hold them for a second after they arrived, I only felt panic and then they were taken away from me to the NICU. People kept visiting us that evening and the next morning telling me they’d seen the boys and that they were perfect and wonderful, and I did a great job. And I felt nothing. I was jealous that they’d all seemed to have spent more time with them than I had up to that point, but I wasn’t a mother beaming with pride. I felt no connection to those children now that they had exited my body.

That I’d overly romanticized motherhood. But then, about 24 hours after they’d been delivered, I got permission from the doctor to leave my room to go visit them. I was more nervous than excited. My husband seemed infatuated with them like I’d expected to be, and I was afraid I didn’t have that motherly instinct after all, and I wouldn’t care for them. Like those wild animals you hear about sometimes who abandon their young. But the second they were both in my arms I felt it.

This rush. My heart beat differently, and in that second, I was a whole new person. It’s not a type of love you can describe, and I’m not even sure that ‘love’ is the right word for this emotion. I love my husband. This is something different. It cannot be undone.

I felt it for kids I’ve nannied and for my pseudo daughter my friend shared with me when we were going through infertility for five grueling years. It’s a feeling that can absolutely be felt outside of the bonds of parenthood, but once I became a mother, and that feeling was truly mine and those people relied on me…. It intensified beyond compare.

After my twins were born, I was diagnosed with Postpartum Cardiomyopathy – pregnancy induced heart failure. Because of my diagnosis, I had a lot of help from friends and family and many nights of the week my in-laws would spend half the night at our house to help with the boys so I could get a full night’s rest. But there were two or three nights a week that it was just my husband and me. And I treasured those nights. I wanted to feel it all. I wanted the opportunity to earn those memories and that badge of sleepy motherhood.

He was more colicky than the other in his infancy and he was up quite a bit. As long as he was being held, he wouldn’t cry. And he frustrated me. Because I was tired. But I remember holding him and feeling our hearts synchronize and, in that moment, I knew that we were meant to walk this world together.

Now they’re 5. There aren’t as many opportunities to sooth them or even to help them, as there were when they were smaller. And those opportunities will dimmish even more as they continue to grow. But my heart will always beat differently for my children.