On October 20, 2009, I became a mother.

Since it’s all far too big to digest, I’m starting with a small bite first: the hospital, where mothers are made, not born.

I’d always thought I’d cry in the delivery room or, as happened to be in my case, the OR. The way I pictured it, I’d hear the wail of a healthy baby (in my case, two) and I’d be so overcome with relief and beauty and gratitude, moved by the sheer spectacle of it all, the tears would flow and flow and flow. Because that’s what mothers, and fathers of course, do. But to our surprise, neither Marco nor I cried. Surprising, since both of us consider ourselves gushers.

Instead, it was more a feeling of frozen awe.

When Anya and Teo were pulled from my open belly 14 days ago and I first heard their newborn gasps for air, in stereo, I felt numb. Literally, figuratively, emotionally. Eventually I cried, when we brought them home and laid them on our bed and together with my parents sang a Shehechiyanu, the blessing of gratitude for having reached this season. But I shed not a tear in the hospital. Don’t get me wrong. I felt relief and beauty and gratitude. But I mostly felt surreal.

Me? A mother? Of two? In all honesty, it still hasn’t sunk in. And I’m thinking maybe that’s ok. When I spoke to a dear friend, a mother of two, about this feeling of disconnect between the love I feel for these two new beings and the sense of myself as someone’s “mother,” she told me she still felt that way–and her oldest is now four.

I get that mothers are of woman born, but do all women immediately, naturally think of themselves as mothers at the moment of that becoming? I’d love to hear your experiences, your thoughts.