Not long before he died, Steve Jobs went out to eat sushi with his friend Dean Omish. According to Omish, “I asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, 'It's 10,000 times better than anything I've ever done'."

<em>Ten thousand times better than anything I’ve ever done.</em> What a great description of being a parent!

For our book, Mother in the Middle, Charmaine Yoest and I interviewed dozens of mothers, discussing the value of motherhood.  From Madison Avenue Executives to small-town factory workers, from successful entrepreneurs to Kmart clerks. The mothers who were the happiest were women who had a vision for the significance of their roles in the lives of their children. They considered their work as mothers to be "my greatest work" and "the most important thing I will ever do."

That book begins my personal story of motherhood:

Deborah: I always knew that I wanted to have children. . . .When I fell in love with my husband Gregg, I always told him I wanted twenty-five children. I was only half joking.

Four and a half years after we married, we decided it was time to try to get pregnant. After a year, we saw the first in a long series of doctors. We became familiar with a wide variety of medical tests that intruded into our intimate lives.

And every month I wasn’t pregnant I grieved.

My longing for a baby was like an intense personal hunger than nothing else could fill. On more than one occasion, I left doctors’ offices and wept with an intensity I had never known before.

Two different fertility specialists informed us that we would probably never have children.

My emotional frame of mind made it very difficult to continue to work in day care. At my center, I saw children coming and going each day who were hungry for their mothers’ time and attention, in somewhat the same way I was hungry for a baby. I resigned to start graduate work in early childhood education.

In December that same year, I learned I was pregnant. Our doctor called it a “miracle.” We considered it a gift from God.

Nothing, not even the emotional turmoil of our infertility experience, prepared me for the intensity of childbirth. Holding our son, Andrew, looking into his eyes, was exhilarating, earth shattering, life changing, empowering. The way in which I viewed life was forever changed.

Eighteen months later we had a second miracle: Matthew. To my astonishment, his birth was just as exhilarating, life changing, incredible.

And our lives filled up with miracles: two and a half years later Lisette joined our lives. Nineteen months after that, Benjamin surprised us by coming nine days early. Jonathan came along three years after Benjamin. And with each child came joy, tears, laughter, incredible strength and a life of rich texture and variety.

No two of them are alike. Each brings individual style and personality into our family mix. Each has enriched my life beyond measure. I cannot imagine my life without any one of them.

They are, to quote Steve Jobs, 10,000 times better than anything else I’ve ever done.