I think the biggest surprise of becoming a mother was discovering just how much time my son and I spend blowing raspberries at each other.

I got a lot of advice and information before having my baby from all sorts of other mothers. Not one person mentioned the raspberries.

Other than the raspberries, the thing that surprised me the most when my son was born was how unchanged I felt. Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely a bunch of permanent physical changes (alas) but — well, based on what I’d heard and read about from other moms, I thought giving birth would be suddenly and utterly transformative.

I thought I would suddenly feel like a mother; like lightning struck me from the sky; like I would immediately look at my baby and feel overwhelming amazing beautiful emotions the likes of which I had never felt before. I even thought I might lose my identity in motherhood, which many women have spoken up about.

Instead, I felt like … regular Victoria, same as I always have, just with a baby to take care of. Motherhood didn’t come naturally to me. Turns out parenting is a skill, and skills require practice.

Kudos to moms who instinctively knew what their crying baby needed because I had no idea and had to figure it out through the process of elimination pretty much every time. Trial and error, error and trial. I’ve gotten better at it over the past seven months but sometimes I still guess wrong.

Just last night, Sonny was fussy and my wife said, could he be hungry? And I thought no, that can’t be it, he just ate two hours ago. Long story short, he was indeed hungry. As soon as you think you’ve got a fix on your kid, they change it up.

I also didn’t feel much of a bond with Sonny at first. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely felt things; mostly this overwhelming, animalistic drive to protect him and support his head and neck. (That was my one innate maternal instinct: support the head and neck.) And I knew in my head that I loved him. But I didn’t feel it in my body and bones the way you do when you’re in love, you know? And that’s a hard thing to admit.

It goes against the general story of motherhood we get told, about the “instant magic bond as soon as you make eye contact with your newborn.” If you’re a mom who had that experience, let me just say good for you, that’s awesome for you both.

Also, the bar for being considered a bad mother these days is on the ground, and while I know I’m not a bad mother (my wife tells me constantly) I don’t need to give anyone ammo against me.

Most importantly, and why I think moms don’t tell these parts of their stories, is that someday my son is going to be old enough to read and I don’t ever, ever want him to doubt my love for him. I suspect he’ll have to learn a little earlier than other children what postpartum depression is, because Mommy definitely had it (which is a whole other column altogether).

I knew being a mom would be hard.

That’s what all parents tell you, right? That it’s hard but worth it. I just couldn’t figure out what the “it” was, the magical “it” that would make the sleep deprivation and the bodily fluids and the constant busyness and the scars all worth it. I guess I was waiting for a glowing maternal warm fuzzy feeling to wrap around me while I was changing diapers at 2am.

Eventually I realized there was no magical “it.” But there was my son.

My son is worth it, all the work, all the hardship, all the suffering. And fortunately for us both, there’s a lot less suffering these days. The bond I worried so much about? It came. Now I look at Sonny and I do feel those bone-deep warm fuzzy feelings. I mean, maybe not so much during the 2 a.m. diaper changes, but the important thing is I’m up and I’m doing the work.

I may not “feel like” a mother, whatever that means, but I am a mother. I do the work of mothering all day and usually a couple times at night, too.

It is magical, this business of being a mother. Not in the dramatic way I was hoping, but in a quiet everyday miracle sort of way. It’s a great honor to watch a human go from being a potato with a mouth to an actual tiny human being who can use all of his limbs (not very well yet, but it’s only been seven months.)

So, happy Mother’s Day, to all mothers and — especially — to the moms who struggled, who were confused, who thought they weren’t feeling the right things or loving their kid the right way; happy Mother’s Day to moms who googled “do babies know when you’re crying” and “sick baby nursing constantly” at ungodly hours of the night.

May your naps be long and your teething short.