When Alice was born it felt sudden: you go to the hospital and boom, she’s here and you’re a mother.
It’s a quick transition but not a quiet one; there is a hard line between pregnancy and motherhood: labor. It's an experience one could write volumes on, but for now I'll just say that childbirth is described as one of the hardest things a person will ever do, and it is.
For me, it also meant overcoming a lifelong discomfort with (and avoidance of) medical procedures. It was a big adjustment to even get used to regular, invasive doctors appointments. I focused on getting through only the very next visit or test, and avoided thinking about labor up until the 30 week mark, at which point I promptly had a meltdown. It seemed impossible to imagine getting through something so terrifying. I cried inconsolably in fear for a week. I didn’t think I could do it.
But I did. It’s true what they say, you surprise yourself with your own strength. But the really strange part is that immediately following this physical and emotional endurance trial you are thrust right into caring for a brand new helpless baby. No break, no chance to think, no time for stitches to heal — you have a baby that is completely reliant on you. There’s euphoria and boundless joy but also the feeling that you are taking on a challenge of extreme importance at your absolute lowest point. It’s like waking up on the morning of the New York City marathon with food poisoning.
Babies are born before they’re fully developed (that’s why the newborn period is sometimes called the “fourth trimester”) so for the first month you’re dealing with the absolute basics of daily living for all of you. Hygiene. Eating. (Sometimes) sleeping. That’s it. Survival mode.
The first week after we came home was dizzying. We were both sleep deprived on the order of days, not hours, owing to my 26 hours of labor and the chaos of a short staffed, Covid-era hospital. I only remember moments here and there, it was truly a blur. I know we got through it, but that's it.
Things have settled down a lot since then. Our world is small — just us and the baby in this little cabin on the lake. We're cautious given covid's continued presence but I doubt things would be very different even in normal times — it makes sense to be a homebody when the baby needs to eat every couple of hours. Still, I feel a connection to others — my ancestors, my friends who have kids — through this experience. Like others before me have discovered, most things are different than you expect them to be. Prior to having a newborn, I was completely unaware of the intense effort required to breastfeed. It’s one of the many things that have to be figured out by you, or your baby, or both. There is no shortcut.
And so we spend much of our time figuring things out. Alice hated the changing table so I made a hanging star decoration out of cardboard and tinfoil to distract her. We rearranged the bedroom twice to get the right crib/bed/changing table arrangement in place. We narrowed her wardrobe down to the easiest clothes to change multiple times a day (zippers or snaps — no buttons, despite their cuteness). We’ve found every possible efficiency with getting laundry and dishes done.
This is the work of caring.
I’ve always appreciated that chores give you an opportunity to be alone with your thoughts. Lately, I find myself thinking about time — how deeply I feel the cliché it goes by so fast. Alice is already outgrowing her newborn onesies, the first clothing she ever wore. I packed them away this week and thought, "She'll never ever be so tiny again."
At my last appointment, my obstetrician asked me if we'd have any more children. What a question, I thought. I sputtered and said, "I don’t know, it might not be up to me, it might be up to the universe." And that's probably true — I’m nearly 40 and nothing about this came easy. I would say it felt like a miracle that we had even one baby, but that doesn’t seem like the right word. It was more like black magic: we read some spell books, we acquired a rare talisman, we put our souls on the line... it could’ve killed us, but instead it worked.
And yet I keep her tiny onesies, just in case.
A friend texted me last week. She is the kind of person who always knows the right thing to say. She wrote, ”I think of you guys every day because I know every day is a big deal.”
And it is.