I was so ready to have a baby. My body was crying out to be pregnant, my arms were aching to hold my very own baby. I had a restlessness, a dissatisfaction with things. I had felt that way before, but usually because I wanted to change something in my life. I didn't want to change anything so much as I wanted to add something - someone, actually. I was so ready to have a baby.

I had my cat Pebbles, of course, who I babied. The summer when she was a kitten, I forfeited joining an after-work volleyball league because Pebbles "needed" me to come home and play with her. I spent hours stimulating her growing kitten brain. I made all the requisite vet appointments. If we were snuggling together, I put her comfort before my own, even if it resulted in a neck crick for me. It has been said that I raised her well. She is a good cat, a strong cat. It was also said that she was my "pseudo-baby." She satisfied my nurture cravings for a little while, but by last spring, I was so ready for a real baby.

My partner, Ashley, wasn't quite so ready. He was sure that he wanted a family, but he wasn't sure that he was prepared yet to make the accompanying sacrifices, and he certainly didn't want to gyp anybody. He told me later (when I was jubilantly pregnant) that what had tipped the scales in the baby favor for him, was seeing me so utterly primed for motherhood and knowing that, as my partner, the power to grant my oh-so-earnest wish rested squarely on his shoulders. In the end, what made Ashley ready to have a baby was loving me.

Now he adores being Eoin's father, but he was still incredulous when, after about a month and a half in, I started talking about Baby #2. I don't blame him. I was sleep-deprived, exhausted by my struggle to breastfeed, and so racked by anxiety that I was still, after six weeks, recording Eoin's diaper output with a scientist's precision: 2:20 am - sm. poo, slightly green. 3:45 am - pee + poo. 5:50 am - giant poo. Etc, etc.

"You would do this again?" he asked, mouth agape.

Of course! Yes, being a mom is the hardest thing I have ever faced, but I don't resent it for a second. Nothing in my life has ever felt so worthwhile. It was an affirmation that I was so ready to have baby.

Eoin is almost six months old now. Yesterday was a rough day. I had a read somewhere that, periodically, baby toys should be washed in one part bleach, fifteen parts water. So I did it. I didn't foresee that most of the toys would fill up on the inside with the cleaning solution and, after several rinses, continue to leak the bleach back out. What had I been thinking? I don't have an un-"natural" cleaning agent in the house, yet I Javexed the baby toys?

That was the first thing that happened. At lunch, I was trying to feed Eoin egg yolk. I (thought I) had done my research and learned that, while the whites are allergenic and shouldn't be introduced until after the first year, the yolks are okay (once the baby is eight months old, I later googled). Anyway, Eoin gagged violently and threw up an entire bottle of milk all over himself, me, the highchair, and the floor. I had to strip us both off there in the vomit-flooded kitchen and go straight to the shower.

The third blooper happened when we were Skyping with Eoin's Nana. Ashley and I were chitchatting when little Eoin, who had been proudly displaying his new trick of sitting up unsupported, got tired and face-planted onto the hard edge of the computer. I hadn't been watching him! What was wrong with me?!

My ineptitude as a mother seemed to beat down on me like a garish spotlight. I was cowering in the glare when my baby delivered the final blow to my confidence. I had taken away the tube of nipple cream that he was enthusiastically chewing because I thought the sharp corners might hurt him, and...he cried! Out of nowhere, after months of docilely acquiescing to my will, my sweet little baby was protesting!

Before me flashed battle scene after battle scene: bathtimes, bedtimes, mealtimes; long-distance car rides, can-we-get-a-puppy campaigns, sleepovers at suspect houses; boy-girl parties, homework, borrowing the car. How will I handle it all? I had been doubting my judgment all day, and now I was glimpsing that the challenge will not be simply to do the "right" thing as a mother, but to do it even when Eoin has a radically different, and vehemently expressed, opinion on what that is.

I was frozen by the thought - and it chills me even now - what if I'm not ready for this?