When you're pregnant, you can ...

When you\'re pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That\'s the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don\'t even realize how much you were missing one.
When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.

Quotes from the same author

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.
The best place to cry is on a mother's arms.
I think this is every mother's worst nightmare - something dreadful happening to her child.
That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one
Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was... ...Parents aren't the people you come from. They're the people you want to be, when you grow up. I sat between my mother and my father, watching strangers on TV carry in Shaker rockers and dusty paintings and ancient beer tankards and cranberry glass dishes; people and their hidden treasures, who had to be told by experts that they'd taken something incredibly precious for granted.