About a month ago while visiting home, I had a conversation with my mom that had never come up in the past. She was telling me about complications she had while pregnant with me. Ever since we had that talk, I have been wanting to write an article. Not about the complications. Not about pregnancy in general, but about her strength.

My mom was young when she got pregnant. She was about to raise a child of her own when she wasn't even "grown up" yet. When I asked how she reacted after she found out, she simply told me, "I wasn't sure how I was going to do it, but I knew that you were going to become my life, and I was going to love you." As we talked more, she started telling me about how she went in to labor three months early, and was almost life-flighted to UC Davis to deliver me. If I was delivered prematurely that day, I probably wouldn't be writing this article right now. Luckily, they found a medication that helped cease her labor, but in order to carry her pregnancy to term, she would have to be bed ridden for the last three months. At that point she had a choice, and her and my dad decided they were going to do everything they could to have a healthy baby. Every time she stood she would go into labor, so she was designated one hour a day for showering. She said most of the time she would shower every other day because she didn't want to risk losing me. The medication that she had to take would increase her heart rate rapidly. She would start sweating, and shaking, and all she could do was lie in bed.

As she is telling me this, all I can think is, "you are amazing." My mom completely sacrificed her body for me. She put me, a fetus that she hadn't named yet, above everything else in her life. She couldn't work, she could barely walk. And she was a kid. She chose me knowing she would never have a normal young adult life again, and when the day finally came, she pushed through hours of labor, weak and scared, and delivered a healthy baby girl. If that isn't unconditional love, then I don't know what is.

My mom has always been a fighter. There are countless memories I have besides this that prove her strength, but listening to her tell me about such an exhausting and stressful time, with grace and composure, gave me an entirely new outlook. I always new she had a choice with me, but I never knew the struggle she endured to bring me into this world. She has always been my role model, and now, she is my hero. Thank you mom, for choosing me.