Back in the early days with a newborn Hayley (which seems like an eternity ago and just yesterday all at the same time), I thought I had mapped out what made me a mother.

I breastfed her and intended to for quite some time (and in fact, I did so until she was 2.5 years old). I let her co-sleep because it was the only way I could get her to sleep. I didn’t let her cry it out because I just couldn’t do it. I used a sling a lot. I was a stay at home mom instead of putting her in daycare. I tended to her more than I tended to myself, figuring that the more I gave to her instead of myself, the better I was at being a mom.

It wasn’t that I thought people were terrible mothers if they chose different paths. Those were just the things I felt *I* had to do in order to make *myself* the best mother I could be for her.

Along came Breanna. I still chose to breastfeed her, and we’re still going strong although if she woke up tomorrow and said, “no thanks Mom, pass me a cup of milk please” I would be SO OKAY with that because dude, almost five years total of breastfeeding with only a five-month break because I was pregnant? Man, that’s a long time and I would really be content to go back to having boobs instead of milk cartons. Breanna part-time co-sleeps but she starts all her nights off and also naps in her crib and is perfectly happy there. In general I don’t let her cry it out and still nurse her down, but in moments of frustration I have put her shrieking self in the crib and walked away until she fell asleep (usually five minutes later). I did use a variety of carriers with her – a sling, a Baby Bjorn, and a Mei Tai wrap carrier – but not as often because she started walking at 9 months old so really, she wasn’t that interested in being contained when she could be traipsing around instead. I still stay home but I work from home now too so I’m in a constant battle with trying to be there for her and Hayley while still getting all my stuff done in a timely manner. And while I still care about doing things for my kids, the old adage of “if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” has come to be true and so I do make more of an effort now to do things for me more often than I used to so that I don’t go completely batshit crazy.

So apparently none of those things were necessarily what made me a mother. They were things I did BECAUSE I was a mother and they were choices I had made. So what does make me a mother?

Unconditional love. Laughter in the middle of an otherwise crappy day. Silly moments like finding Hayley sitting in the bathroom sink because she wanted a bath in there like a baby. Proud moments like seeing Breanna climb up the ladder on the slide at the park and seeing Hayley walking down the stairs at the elementary school with her Kindergarten teacher. Did I mention the unconditional love? Vowing every night to be a better mother tomorrow. Trying to be better. Sometimes yelling more than I laughed some days. Sometimes laughing more than I yelled. Holding a crying child on my knee. Wanting to kick someone for being mean to one of them. Intervening in eight thousand arguments and fights over My Little Ponies and plastic tools. Saying “for the LAST TIME, stop throwing the goddamn ball in the living room!” at least twice a day.

Picking myself up at the end of a day and knowing that even if it wasn’t perfect and I wasn’t as great as I wanted to be, I was still fundamentally a good mother who loves her kids more than life itself, even on the days when I’m not sure I’ve liked them very much. That’s the unconditional love part again.

Those are the things that make me a mother.

And also melting over pictures like this.

(The Parent Bloggers Network is having a BlogBlast with the topic being “What makes you a mother?” in honor of Mother’s Day this coming Sunday. There’s even a prize being offered courtesy of Light Iris where someone can win a spa gift certificate. And that makes me a mom too because god knows I could use a spa treatment. Alone. All alone.)