By Peyton Garland 
I’m only 14 months into being a boy mama, but if you looked at my body, you’d think I’d spent the last 14 years with Tom Hanks on the set of Castaway.
I can’t keep my son’s little toddler fingernails trimmed faster than his tiger talons can claw at my clavicle. I can’t jerk away in time before he chomps down on my kneecap—the perfect teether as far as he’s concerned. I can’t find the right claw clip, hair tie, or messy bun to keep his fists from finding and pulling chunks of hair straight from my scalp.
And this weekend, I couldn’t move my head in time for him to ram his little skull into mine. Let’s just say one of us has a confirmed concussion (dizziness, throwing up, and all) while one of us is carrying on in bliss.
Yep, I’m the one with a mild concussion, the one who feels as though she’s fending for her life every second of any normal day, brain injury or not. I’m the one who’s convinced that somehow the father of her child isn’t Hubby but a bobcat.
Before I go any further, this doesn’t mean girl mamas don’t have it rough. My mom friends have their own wild stories about raising little estrogen-riddled, drama-queen ladies, but I think there’s something a smidge different, uniquely resilient, about us women raising those creatures whose DNA comes with an X and a Y.
We’re constantly finding new bruises, cuts, and scrapes on their bodies. It seems every day at bath time, I’m whispering, “Where did that bump come from?” Yet, I believe there’s a reason we find these baby battle wounds on us too.
I think God is teaching our boy mama hearts to heal on the fly because He knows that one day our little tikes will become teenage guys who no longer run to mommy when things hurt but find comfort in long truck rides or fishing rods.
Perhaps God is preparing our boy mama hearts not to be calloused towards but aware of the day another woman becomes our son’s leading lady, a girl who will tie a tighter set of strings around his grown-man heart and lead him away from our home so the two of them can create their own.
It’s no secret that men don’t call Mom every day. It’s no secret that guys don’t want to spend a day window shopping and getting a manicure with Mama. They won’t call just to gossip about that third cousin, twice removed or to let you know the local coffee shop has a new lavender tea. It won’t occur to them to send photos of their little one’s new outfit you bought them for Christmas.
They won’t love you any less, but your heart will still wrestle with the notion. Your mind will drift to the days when diapers were horrid but their night-time snuggles were worth it all. The days when nursing was a full-time job but being their greatest source of comfort was your greatest source of worth.
I won’t lie to you and say that I’m not already trying to emotionally prepare myself for the day my boy pulls me to the dance floor for our mother-of-the-groom dance. It’ll be just me and him for a brief minute until I’m twirling a sparkler and watching him escort his new bride into his next life season, a season I won’t be nearly as present in.
My time with him will fit in between the priorities he has as a husband, father, employee, coach, friend, etc. My love for him—that deep, raw, relentless, mama-bear love—won’t ever fully be grasped by him. Sure, a father’s love is real, but I believe a mother’s love is unmatched because, try as he might, my boy will never know what it’s like to carry, birth, nurse, and mother his baby.
And somehow, someway, I have to be okay with knowing that my fierce love for him isn’t dulled or undervalued simply because he won’t fully feel its wonderful weight. And somehow, someway, I’ll accept that it’s okay to not be okay with that, at least for now.
So to the boy mamas, whether rookies or vets, this one’s for you—these few unfiltered thoughts from my heart to yours so you know you aren’t alone in your emotional ups and downs, your huffs and puffs as you bandage another stubbed toe, your desperate need to be seen and understood by a testosterone-driven Tasmanian devil, and your insanely beautiful love for that little tornado of a boy.
by Jessica Johnston 
by Sara Frank 
by Krista Ward 
