If you were to ask, most women could tell you the exact moment in which they became mothers. Some could tell you the color of the bed sheets, some could tell you about the gear shift crammed into their back, but most can pin point the exact moment that their life was irrevocably changed.

Throughout a woman's gestational period, she watches her body grow, and bulge, and swell, and stretch. We watch the life lines of our baby grow across the palm of our belly, and we pray that the baby inside is growing properly. We just hope for a healthy birth, because we think that we will be able to relax when we see that our baby has grown its parts in the proper places, and that our tiny child is breathing, and moving and growing.

But it doesn't work that way, because after we watch our bodies expel a tinybeing that looks like an uncooked chicken, we become obsessed with their tiniest movements, the rise and fall of their breathing chests, their suckling noises. New mother's do some gross things, like save fingernail clippings, and hair trimming, and circumcision skin. We press the fallen navel cord into albums between flowered pages, and we make sure that some one else witnesses the triumph of a babies first black bowel movements.

From the first moment that the eggs and sperm meet, a woman is expecting a miracle. We expect the miracle of the first breath, and the joy in knowing that our bodies did have the master manual that it needed to create another human being. We expect a miracle when we walk the floor with a feverish infant, we pray for the miracle of patience while we are going through teething. We are all John Lennon's Lady Madonna: none of us know how we are making ends meet, and yet all of us are managing to be the best mother that our child ever had.

You should expect a miracle everyday, because every day of motherhood is a miracle.

By:  Deborah Chessey (a.k.a. outtabodymommy)