The Mother Journey

At two in the morning, I’m awakened from a dream. In it, I am sitting at a table outside of some bougie European café. I have no agenda. The sun is on my face, my hair is done, and my clothes are free from baby puke. I’m even wearing jeans. I’m deciding what to do next with my very open schedule, but my son starts crying in real life and jolts me from the fantasy and out of bed. 

I walk across the hallway to his nursery in a daze, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I’m wearing a breastfeeding tank top that barely holds in my engorged boobs and saggy sweatpants. My hair is a mess on top of my head. I’m not sure the last time I brushed it. There’s not really a point anymore anyway, because it’s falling out in clumps. My eyes are swollen and heavy, and I think I’m still wearing mascara from two days ago. I’m in dire need of a shower. I look like I crawled out of the feral swamp by our house.

I peek over his crib, and the wide eyes staring back up at me tell me that I must also look like some sort of swamp woman to him. But then he sees my boob hanging out of my shirt and starts kicking his tiny baby legs and squealing as if he’s saying, “Oh, good, it’s not a monster. It’s the milk lady!” 

I pick him up over my shoulder, and we march back across the hallway to our feeding post: a breastfeeding chair set up in the corner of the bedroom by the window.

He grunts in anticipation as I lay him across my chest. He knows the routine. We were already here an hour ago, doing the same change, feed, burp, and rock-to-sleep schedule. We’ll be up at least three more times doing it all again. 

I unclasp my shirt, he latches on, and I open my phone. For the next twenty minutes while he eats, I’ll get lost in a black hole of Google searches. Some of the most notable lately are:

• Can my baby choke and die from inhaling his boogers?

• Why does baby poop smell like McDonald’s?

• How do you function on four hours of sleep?

• Can I really not get Botox while breastfeeding?

• But seriously, how bad is getting Botox if you’re breastfeeding?

• What is the best meatball recipe? 

• What is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe?

• How much are flights to Europe?

• When will I feel like myself again after having a baby?

Google determines that, no, your baby can’t die from choking on his boogers. 

Beauty is expensive, and the best and most time-efficient routine is to just slap a ton of concealer on your face and embrace the fact that you’re going to look like shit for the next few years. 

No, you really shouldn’t get Botox while breastfeeding. 

The best meatball and chocolate chip cookie recipes require too much work for this hour (breastfeeding cravings are intense).

Italy or France are wonderful, but, realistically, you’re not going there anytime soon- just in your dreams.

The last question is the one I desperately need an answer for the most, and yet there isn’t any wisdom that resonates across the mommy blogs that Google selects for me. I comb through a dozen, reading about moms who have magically become morning people and are part of stroller gangs. Who have become domestic goddesses, enjoy grocery shopping, and have somehow mastered making casseroles and dinner somewhere between nap time and managing to keep their sanity. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m truly happy for these women, but their joy and optimism make me want to tear out my balding hair and adversely crawl into a guilt-shame hole because, truthfully, I’m finding it hard to muster the same energy. 

Instead, I find myself searching for remnants of pre-baby me. The me that could walk out the door on a whim. The me who could drink three Aperol Spritz’ without having to worry about working around a feeding schedule or pumping her boobs. The me did her makeup and hair in the morning and looked nice occasionally. The me who could go on dates with her husband that stretched into the evening, where conversations were centered around our fun and spontaneous baby free life and what cocktail bar we’d wind up at later – not how many poop blowouts there were that day—while power eating every course at once because we needed to rush home for bedtime. 

I grasp at these things because they gave me some semblance of an identity. Since having a baby, I feel foreign as my new mom self, in my new mom body, in my new mom life, and doing new mom things. I find myself stopping daily to think, ‘Who am I?’ 

I feel like I signed an invisible deed with the stork to give myself away forever in exchange for a hungry, irritable poop machine. I’m not fully convinced I made the best deal. What’s the return on this investment, and how long until I see it?

The other night I went out for dinner with a friend who has a one-year-old, hoping she would give me some solace. 

I tell her how we’re in the middle of a sleep regression, so I can only stay for an hour. I have to rush home to swap off with my husband and do the night shift. I’ll be up every hour from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.

“Does it end?” I ask, rubbing my racoon eyes.

She tells me about what else is in store for us over the next few months. Growth spurts and teething, the fear of getting your nipples gnawed off, puréed food, and jarring changes to bowel movements, crawling and walking, and baby proofing your house. A never-ending list of firsts and more responsibilities. 

We talk about how now that her daughter is older and has gone through these stages, she’s finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Do you finally feel like yourself again?” I ask her. 

“Honestly, no,” she says.

My heart drops.

“I don’t think you can ever fully be who you were.”

“You’re a different person when you become a mother.”

The changes in yourself and your entire world are inevitable when you become a mother and parent. 

When my son was placed on my chest after birth, I remember the overwhelming feeling that he and I were intrinsically connected forever. He was part of my DNA and my entire heart. 

I knew that everything from that moment forward would be for him. Nothing in my life would ever be the same. I would never be the same. 

It scared the shit out of me. 

This is another reason why I’ve been trying to grasp pieces of the old me. They’re familiar, predictable, and safe. 

“You’re in the thick of it right now,” my friend tells me.

“Everything is new. Everything is hard. But it’s a moment in time, and it will pass.”

“You will feel connected to yourself again. It’ll just be different.”

I realized I was so focused on connecting with my pre-baby self that I missed all the ways I’d transformed in the last five months postpartum. 

I have never felt more at peace with my body. I used to care so deeply about my physical appearance. I was so hard on myself. I didn’t love myself or my body. Now, I’m so proud. My body grew, stretched, and labored to miraculously bring life into the world. I am more confident in my saggy skin than I ever was before. 

I have never trusted my intuition more than I do now. My gut is my guide. A mom’s intuition is a legit thing. 

I’m more calm. Somehow I’ve built a reserve tank of patience, put to the test on the days I weather through hour-long scream-cry tirades and failed nap attempts. I now sit in rush-hour traffic without even breaking a sweat. It feels super Zen in comparison. 

I’m more grateful. For the home and environment my husband and I are creating for our son, For our health. 

The most obvious transformation is that I’m, literally, a mom now. I’m not a domestic goddess or mastering any casseroles, but I’m still a mom regardless.

I have a baby. Some days I forget for a split second, until he screeches at me or covers me in puke, and I remember that I’m responsible for keeping a tiny human alive. 

Everything I do is centered around him, from the moment he wakes up until he goes to bed. He is teaching me a level of selflessness that I never knew was possible. 

I can remember life before him, but I can’t imagine life without him. 

I don’t necessarily love feeling like a swamp woman right now, but I know it’s temporary, and eventually I’ll miss these moments. Soon, these will be the pieces of myself I wish I could go back to.

One day I’ll miss making the journey from my bed to my son’s nursery multiple times a night, where, no matter how tired I am, I can’t wait for the moment I look over the crib and see his face.