I want to tell you the heartfelt story of a day when I thought, “I am a mom!” But…this is not quite that. This is definitely not a tale that feel-good movies are written about. You don’t want to read this one while you’re eating lunch. What I’m saying is, this tale involves throw up. In public. Every mom’s nightmare. It’s a story about a lightbulb moment, where I thought, “Oh! I am the mom!” 
That isn’t to say I never once had that thought before this fateful day. I thought about how this must be motherhood the first time my little one sighed contentedly in my arms after nursing himself to sleep a few days after he was born. I felt it in my bones during his first high-fevered illness, just weeks before we were to move cross-country to Texas.
However, the first time I ever thought clearly that this must be motherhood came just two days after Thanksgiving in 2017. An otherwise normal day, except I decided to take my son to the mall. I had a new phone coming for Christmas and wanted to look at cases for it, buy some bath and body products, and let my son play to his heart’s content at the play area.
Since we were doing some Christmas shopping, I left my husband home for this adventure. I thought I’d get a nap out of the toddler either going to the mall or coming home, and off we went. At the mall, I strapped my son into our soft-structured carrier, choosing to forego the stroller. Instead of starting in the play area, I decided to shop. I went to the skincare store first, picking out fun bubble bath, lotion, and shampoo. Then we went to the electronic store that shall remain unnamed. You know, the one with all the very modern-looking devices? There I browsed the phones, looked at tablets, and tried to figure out which phone case I liked best.
Browsing done, I thought we could get a drink and snack before heading to the play area to round out our trip. I paused outside the store to ask my son if he wanted a cookie, cake pop, or something else, It was then, as he said the word, “cookie” that he coughed and threw up, down my shirt, into my shoes, and all over the two of us and the carrier he sat in.
He burst into tears as I stood, motionless, trying to decide what to do. “Where is my mom?!” was my first thought, followed immediately by, “I AM the mom!”
I went into action, flagging someone down to let them know he had thrown up, and then bolted to the nearest family bathroom. I comforted my son as I changed his clothes and bagged them up in the only plastic bag I had with me. I dug through the diaper bag in hopes that I still kept a shirt there (thankfully, I did), and cleaned us both up with paper towels. My carrier, being stretchy mesh, was a mess, and I had no bag large enough to hold it. Paper towels took care of some of it, but it needed to be washed. I didn’t know if it was a stomach bug or food poisoning, but I knew I had to get home. Fast.
Baby on one hip, carrier in the other hand, we bolted through the mall and out the doors, loading the trunk with the carrier and soiled clothes, while I prayed there would be no more vomit until we got home. Thankfully that was the only time my son would throw up that day. And he did get that much-needed nap as we drove from the mall carefully home.
And that, reader, is how I came to think, “Wow, I am the mom,” while Covered. In. Vomit.
