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Brianna (in a baby shower card, noted not to open until after!)
Motherhood is hard. Motherhood is the hardest thing you will ever have to do. Motherhood means sacrificing everything you ever wanted to do to make sure that your child grows up and becomes everything you want them to be.

There, there's the stern, this-isn't-an-easy-job bit.

Normally I'd say that I'm not really a good person to be taking advice from, because I never think I do anything right. Something I've discovered though, with being Claire and Seamus' mother, is that there really is no right or wrong way to do this. Be a mother, I mean. Of course there are the basics like, oh---loving your baby unconditionally and without any sort of doubt as to whether you'd lay out your life for them.

It sounds intense, but once Jack's here, you'll understand it immediately. It's true! During my entire pregnancy with Claire, she didn't feel like my daughter, just sort of this lump under my shirt that was making me sick. But when I got to hold her for the first time, when she looked at me and blinked, it felt like everything I'd ever done or had ever happened to me in my life had been building up to that moment. I was born to be her mother, and then Seamus', and you were born to be Jack's mother, and it's going to be amazing.

You and Zach are going to provide such a warm home for Jack, and yeah you're going to make mistakes, but it's all a learning process. No one is going to be able to tell you how to do things for every minute of the day, and while you're going to beg and plead that someone does, you're going to perfect your own baby raising ways and he's going to be brilliant in so many ways.

Just love him, love him with everything you have.

~Fiona