Becoming a Mummy

Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of when I became a mother but nobody noticed other than me. It wasn't anybody's birthday yesterday. I wasn't remembering being in labour or bringing my baby home or wetting the baby's head with a glass of champagne. I remembered instead the day that I brought home my six year old stepson Ben to live with his Dad and me.

I was 22 and he was 6. We're now 33 and 17 and he hasn't lived with me for nearly two years. It doesn't matter; I still consider myself mother, or at least, one of his mothers.

I know in my heart I became a mother that day that my ex-husband and I brought my stepson home. I may not have given birth or breastfed and I may have even missed out on the first five years of this little boy's life, but from that day forward, other than the title, I was a mother. My life revolved around school runs, packed lunches, babysitters, homework, discipline, affection and putting the child of the house first, just as any other mother would do.

The lack of recognition is hard. People look at me with my six year old daughter and assume that she is the entirety of my maternal experience. They don't know that I've been through it all before. My pregnancy left me with stretch marks as proof of my experience, my marriage left me with the label 'divorced' and needing to overlook September 24th as normal day but not my anniversary. However my experience as a full-time stepmother leaves no reminders behind, other than the huge chunk of my heart that will always belong to a little boy who wasn't supposed to belong to me, but does.

My daughter Kiera's birthday is only two days later than that of her elder half-brother Ben so on my anniversary of becoming his mother she is, 11 years on, exactly the same age that he was when he moved in with me. The similarities between them are as noticeable to me as their differences; the contrast as striking as between my experience as a stepmother and as a biological mother.

In the end I had to mention it to someone and so I sent my almost-grown boy Ben a text to remind him of what day it was and to tell him I love him. He texted back that he loves me too and 'thanks for everything'. I cried; it was the recognition that I needed.