Day 8: I can't get no satisfaction

Discuss a moment you felt the most satisfied with your life.

Oh geez.  This is a tough one.  Seriously, the wording is really tripping me up.  "Satisfied" feels so generic, and for the most part, I'm "satisfied" with my whole life.  Let's see...some synonyms of satisfied are:  content, fulfilled, happy, pleased, pacified.  Hmmm...not really making it any easier.

Okay.  I'm gonna go total Momzilla here.  There are three moments that come to mind immediately when I think of times I felt "satisfied", and they are when my children were born.  I take no small amount of pleasure from the fact that for 9+ months, I nurtured and supported an entirely new life inside my own body.  With Jake and Sam, I labored for hours and hours.  I was in labor with Jake for 44.5 hours and pushed for nearly 3 hours.  The fact that he FINALLY came out and lived, despite the complications he had (my mother still talks about his pointed head and black eyes and strong resemblance to an alien at birth), was no small miracle to me.  10 hours of labor with Sam, only to need an emergency c-section, was disappointing.  But that disappointment gave way to satisfaction the moment I laid eyes on my beautiful son.  You know...the one I made.  With Norah, I decided to forego the danger of another labor and, though it made me feel like a bit of a failure, I had a scheduled c-section.  Which was horrible.  From the fact that I believe I was over-medicated, to the nausea that caused me to vomit the entire time, to the massive panic attack I had mid-delivery, to the failure of my uterus to clamp down post-surgery--it was all a nightmare.  But again, one look at that perfect little face (and that beautifully round head, ha ha) and the feeling of satisfaction I had far outweighed the horror of my surgery.  I made a PERSON.  Inside of me.  And after 3 devastating miscarriages, the victory of finally giving birth was utterly and completely satisfying.

There have been plenty of other times I've felt satisfied, but nothing has, or ever will, match the satisfaction I felt after each of my children were born.  Nothing at all.  Though winning the Power Ball lottery would certainly come in at a verrrrrrry close second.  ;)