Before I got pregnant, before I became a mom, I remember hearing people say they could pick their baby’s cry out of a crowd of crying babies.  At the time, since I didn’t have any children I just could not fathom how that was possible.  I mean, to my virgin ears, all babies crying sounded the same.  How was it possible for a mom to decipher the cry of her child from the cry of another child.  I just didn’t get it.

Then I had a baby, I became a mom, and I instantly got it.  A mom can tell her child’s cry apart from all other cries because she hears it with more than just her ears, she hears it with her heart.

I remember the first night home from the hospital after Maya was born and worrying that I wouldn’t wake up to her cries in the middle of the night.  I went to sleep very nervous about it only to be woken not by the actual sound of her cries but by my heart racing.  It was like my heart heard her cries and woke me up in that split second before my ears registered the sound.  I felt more like a real mom in that instant than I had before.  My body, my heart, was wired to hear my child’s cries.  I was now equipped with the power to decipher my child’s cry from any other child’s cry, that is magical.

I can remember late nights in the early months when Maya was still waking in the night to eat waking to my racing heart but not yet registering the actual sound of the cry and hoping that my heart was playing tricks on me and she was not awake and ready to eat yet, that I could get just a few more minutes sleep first.  Always, every single time, my racing heart was right and I’d hear her cries coming over the monitor loud and clear.

There have been days when I’m sitting on the couch and my heart will jump at the faintest of sounds and I know it is Maya.  I don’t question my heart anymore.  If my heart jumps or races I know without a doubt that the faintest sound I hear is Maya and I go to her.  I know it is her because I hear it with my heart.