It’s been a minute. I wrote this post a couple months ago and as autumn kicked off I found myself trying to be deeply present and honestly felt deeply overwhelmed as I left summer behind and was entering into the last 3 months of the year. I had this insane nostalgia for the time before L was born, during my 3rd trimester and my emotions were turned up as I thought about her leaving her “baby” era behind. So here’s a little piece from the archives and I look forward to getting back to sharing.
My baby has now been outside of me longer than she was inside of me. I feel like the first 9 months of growing the baby are quickly erased after you give birth, not by the mother, trust me they remember, but by society in general. When someone asks me how old L is I want to say 10 months, but we’ve been growing together for 19, my body has not been just mine for 19, and I have been trying to navigate this chapter, for 19 months, not 10.
Pregnancy was counting weeks and months, 1 week to 12 weeks, then summarizing in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, trimester, then countdown to days until the baby comes, with the week 40 lingering over you in both an exciting and daunting way while people throw around the terms like, will you be early or late when referring to when you will give birth. People constantly asking “how far along” you are you, like they just whipped it out of their toolbelt of things you say to pregnant people, along with how are you feeling?, did you find out the gender?, how long are you going to take off work? The answers always rolling of the tip of my tongue because it felt like I was on repeat.
I never felt irritated by these questions, but more aware that they were often stemmed from my personal appearance. I also feel like there is so much depth to birth, pregnancy and motherhood and if you know me personally you know I am not a small talk kind of girl. I am more of a let’s get deep into our life stories and stop talking about the weather kind of girl, therefore the same conversation over and over again did eventually take a toll.
Once the baby arrives your still counting…the counting switches to weeks, months and years as they grow. I have never paid so much attention to days, weeks and months. While I started off counting days and weeks as celebrations of us learning as parents, evolving, finding our rhythm and let’s be honest, survival. Then there’s the dreaded counting of hours of sleep, ounces of milk, naps in the day and minutes on the breast, continuously comparing myself and experience to a google search. After multiple breakdowns telling my husband I wasn’t doing good enough, tears dripping on my baby as I feed her, having a breakdown in the car or a good old bath cry, I eventually released all what felt out of my control and gave up the tracking. This brought me back an immense amount of sanity.
Age however is an inevitable one, and a after the 6 month mark hit, things started to feel a different kind of heavy, not to mention the co-existing internal chemical crash that happens to a women’s hormones around 6 months was in full effect. I had survived what felt like the most difficult time so far, because it’s all I knew. However now you’re introducing new layers, looking at milestones your baby should be hitting and realizing that each day past 6 months they are closer to 1 year and that made all the feelings very profound again. The reality is they are growing, we eventually need to leave our bubble and resume life as normal functioning humans in society (apparently), yet how can I when I am so full of emotion, still very much in the post-partum haze, don’t want to leave my baby but also am craving a new sense of normality where I exist in a world outside of just us again?
I don’t know the perfect amount of months you should be off work, or perfect amount of time you should take before you “resume life as normal” or feel like a whole version of yourself again. What I do know is I am not physically and mentally where I had envisioned being when this journey started and I am constantly in awe of mother’s in the wild, doing it all. I know I am learning to trust I am where I am meant to be, and I do think is it’s time to put the training wheels on for this new ride into the rest of my life as a mother, focusing on less counting and comparing and more just being.
This was so relatable. That first postpartum year felt so tender and encapsulated for me. It took so long to integrate, and I really don't think that integration fully happened until after year 1 (we're at 18 months now). Each phase is so sweet and then there is the looking backward and almost preemptive reminiscing that happens. And the baby math! The all-consuming needing to know time and quantities and length and weight and stats. Thanks for sharing.
Love this thank you 🙏🏾 so well described this bubble and haze, wanting to stay in it yet wanting more and then wondering how it can even happen