The Short and the Sweet of It: Mama Alexa

Hi everyone, it's Alexa from The Short and the Sweet of It and I am so excited for Natasha to start this incredible journey of parenthood! Today I'm sharing some of my thoughts on my own experiences and emotions as a mom and how much I have changed and evolved since the day Mila was born.

After 17 and a half hours of labor, at 1:30pm on February 15, 2011, Mila Alice Evans came into the world with an opinion that needed to be heard. I would venture to say that at this point, almost a year and half later, Mila is still offering her "thoughts" and "advice" in strong and often loud tones of either joy or discontent. Two days after Mila made her grand entrance, the pediatricians in the hospital proclaimed that she was feisty. I wondered aloud what that meant for me. One of the doctors looked me in the eye and smiled. "It's going to be an adventure for you. But the good thing is: you will never have to worry about Mila going off into the world. She'll be alright."

In the month following her birth I thought I might go insane. Would my daughter ever sleep on her own? Would I have to hold her in my arms for the rest of my life? Would she ever stop crying? Would I ever stop crying? I remember one morning venturing out on my own to a coffee shop where grown up humans were conversing in normal tones, walking by the themselves, ordering coffee, and the idea of Mila ever getting to this point seemed like such a foreign concept, you may as well have told me that aliens had just landed on Earth.

Then something crazy happened. She started sleeping on her own. In her crib. All night. She sat up. She started saying Dada. She pointed. She smiled. She laughed. She stopped nursing. She crawled. She started saying doggie and light and baba. She grew crazy, unruly curls on her head that she started twirling with her finger. She started walking. And understanding. And giving kisses.

Being a parent is certainly no cakewalk and in between all of the major and minor miracles, there are major and minor challenges. But what I have learned is that I can do it. We can do it. And though I may not always be right...in the end it will always turn out alright.