Letters to the Editor
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You are about to enter The Baby Vortex
And when you come out the other side, you will understand why women (or men who are at-home parents) will identify themselves with "I'm a mom" or "I'm a dad."
The Baby Vortex is what a friend of mine called it when your offspring is at his/her neediest... say... birth to about three (when you can send them off to preschool for a couple hours and they know how to use the toilet). Up until that point... well... every waking minute of your existence gets sucked into a vortex of needy little beings. They need everything... shoes tied, behinds wiped, fed, burped, rocked to sleep, and do it all again. And again. Add the variations of personality of two or more distinct children who always want something different than their brother or sister, and always at the same time. And do it again until you're so tired you can't see.
It is absolutely like nothing you've ever done in your life. Even if you have been around small kids, you don't know it til you've lived it, day in and day out, for several years. The one thing no book, article, or well-meaning know-it-all like me can ever prepare you for is the utter relentlessness of it. It just never lets up.
I'm not saying you can't be a person during this time. But it takes a lot of work sometimes even to get to the bathroom on your own, let alone to an environment where you can finish your sentences or speak in words of more than two syllables. Yes, you can go to bookstores, you can garden, you can go to the opera. But unless you have a nanny or a staff, you have to be extremely selective about what you do, plan ahead, and be prepared to drop it all at a moment's notice when the kid spikes a fever.
Kids are irrational, adorable, irritating, wonderful, annoying, and so dang cute. You will forever have your heart walking around on fat little legs outside your body.
It does take over your life.
Now that mine are in elementary school, I get slivers of my life back. But I've been through the Baby Vortex, and yes, I still identify myself as a mom.