Spoiler Alert: I didn’t always dream of being a mother.

It’s true. I didn’t spend my childhood dreaming of having babies, nurturing baby dolls or playing house. No. I opted for a My Buddy, playing basketball with the boys at recess, writing in journals and dreaming of a life in New York City living in a studio apartment working as a journalist and sipping martinis with my girlfriends (channel Carrie Bradshaw before I knew who she was).

Settle down KarenSharonBrenda. My kids are my whole world and are the best things to ever happen to me. I cannot imagine my life without them. But if you would have asked me as a little girl, as a teenager, I would have told you I didn’t see myself as a mom. Truly, I didn’t.

Sometimes I think back and wonder why I never had the dream most little girls have. I don’t consider myself to be selfish. I am a self proclaimed workaholic, career driven and pride myself on leadership and self growth. But so are a million other moms in the world.

I joke that I was missing the maternal gene. That I didn’t have it until it came simultaneously with the birth of each of my children. I’m not an overly emotional person. I rarely cry. I don’t process emotions like most people do. I’m strange that way. It’s easier for me to shut down and focus on something else. Or write. So kids... why would I want to subject kids to that? I would make a terrible mother. I whole heartedly believed that.

But then I met my husband. I was 18 years old. College sweethearts. We met, fell in love and got married 4 years later right after I graduated. He was a father long before we had children. He was made to be a dad. Sort of how most women are made to be moms.

Shortly after we got married, we found out unexpectedly during a freak routine appointment that fertility treatments would be the only way we could have children. Thus began our infertility journey. For anyone who has experienced infertility, imagine going through the gut wrenching emotional, hormonal and physical turmoil of that and still not knowing if you were meant to be a mother.

4 years later, a year long battle with the C word, (Clomid, get your minds out of the gutter people. Though the name is fitting) 6 unsuccessful IUIs, 2 surgeries, 1 IVF, 1 miscarriage, 1 FET, 2 beautiful twins and a surprise miracle baby 4 years later... here we are. 3 boys 8 and under and my life calling to be their mom.

But it still amazes me that something I never knew I wanted became the only thing in the world I desperately needed.

Somewhere along the line, something changed. The gene I thought I was missing presented itself so eloquently in the forefront of my life.

Those little boys complete me. And everything I thought I would have no idea how to do has come so naturally. Being given 2 babies at once the first time around... God has a sense of humor.

I will always be a working mother. I will always balance both. But my children, my babies, will always come first. Because whether or not I thought I was meant to be a mother... God made me to be these boys’ mom. This was my purpose in life. I just never knew it.

So maybe I played with my My Buddy instead of baby dolls and never carried around the dream of raising babies as a child. Maybe I don’t cry as much as most women or get as emotional.

But now... now I can say thank you to my 3 beautiful children. My 3 amazing sons. Thank you for teaching me how to love in a way I never knew I could. Thank you for showing me that even though I didn’t know you were meant to be a part of my future, you were in fact my entire future. Thank you for being the missing pieces to my life I never knew I needed.

To the women who never dreamt about being mothers as kids, that doesn’t make you less as mothers now. It’s ok to be honest. Because in the end we all have our own story. And that’s entirely ok.

Motherhood isn’t one size fits all. It is, however, one size fits whatever your child needs. And that size is you.