You’re “in it.” Oh boy, are you in it. We all know that no one “gets” motherhood until you’re living and breathing it. Try explaining to a non-parent why you examine the various colors of your kid’s poop or the fascination of watching your child sleep and you’ll be met with blank stares or perhaps sympathetic murmurs that you should really get more sleep.

But you know that there are rites of passage that every mom goes through. To celebrate these, I’m starting a short series of blog posts that highlight those “mom moments.” Call it a bucket list, mommy milestones or simply, “motherhood”, here are 15 memorable moments that will transpire for many mothers during their newborn’s first year of life:

1) Inhale your baby’s hair. Ah…the pure smell of “baby.”

2) Witness your baby’s first gummy, toothless smile. Melt.

3) See your child’s first tooth pop (seemingly overnight or when you were looking the other way). Be sad that you’ll never see that gummy smile again.

4) Watch your child roll from left to right. Then right to left. Be convinced your child is a genius. (“I know he’s just 2 months old, but I can already tell he’s extremely intelligent. Did you see how he rolled?!”)

5) Get puked on. Wipe it off. Get puked on again. Repeat.

6) Retrieve food/milk/dust/unidentified substances from the crevasses of his neck rolls and arms shaped like link-sausages.

7) Overcome the shock of realizing where the various parts of a breast pump go.

8 ) Tackle a diaper blow-out the size of Texas. In public. And you just ran out of wipes

9) Get your first night of sleep. Sleep now re-defined as you “lying on any horizontal surface for longer than 3 hours.”

10) Lament the rapid passing of time each time you see she has outgrown her little onesies. Have a mild panic attack as you start envisioning the teenage years.

11) Get dressed up for your first date night. Go out. Back by 9pm. Asleep by 9:01pm.

12) Take a gajillion photos of her sleeping, sitting, looking left, looking right etc. Have endless debates about which is the “best” photo of her sleeping.

13) Disinfect everything . And don’t let any strangers touch your baby.

14) Be so proud of yourself the first time you manage to get you and baby out of the house by yourself. And it only took you 45 minutes!

15) Carry a massive diaper bag everywhere like you’re about to embark on some trans-Atlantic flight. Only use 10% of its contents.

Any of these sound familiar? What Mom Moments did you experience when your baby was newborn­- 1 year?