Mom Years

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

I am a young Mom; I’m seven months old. I have seven months experience in mothering. Seven months of seeing this world through my daughter’s unencumbered eyes. I’m at the very start of a long mothering journey, with much to learn. And yet, it already feels like a great accomplishment to simply feel that I am a mother.

Before motherhood, it’s so hard to imagine what it would be like for your very particular self to become a mother. At least it was for me. In the weeks leading up to giving birth I felt like I was standing at the foot of an insurmountable mountain and motherhood was on the other side. I had no idea what it would look or feel like over there. I wondered if I’d be a completely different person; something that I both feared and desired. I wondered if the change would happen all at once, a magical bursting forth from the cocoon of individuality to the butterflied wonder of motherhood.

When I was pregnant my husband would refer to me as a Mom and it would irk me… I was pregnant so lots of things irked me. I was certainly on my motherhood journey, but I didn’t yet know myself as a mother, so I couldn’t yet hang the name on. It didn’t feel right.

A few months before giving birth, I emailed my mom and mother-in-law and asked them to tell me their birth stories, to tell me the moment that they felt they became a mom. What they wrote back to me was so beautiful! Interestingly, they both mentioned calling one of their parents and telling them that they’d had their baby, and in this moment feeling for the first time like a Mother. I so looked forward to that moment.

I was fortunate and brave enough to have a natural birth on a hazy Thursday in September. I pushed my baby out in under fifteen minutes. I was so present and alert in that enchanted moment when my baby Skywalker was handed to me. She knew right away that I was hers, that was for sure. She looked up at me, wiggled to my breast and latched on. But I was less sure…

She didn’t look how I expected, so slimy, her hair thick and dark, nose flat and eyes little crevices peeking out at the world. When I looked at her, I didn’t pour tears or feel my heart grow three sizes as I’d expected to. What I did experience was a total awe at this completely formed person that had so suddenly popped into existence, so distinctly herself. I couldn’t believe that she was mine, which in a way felt the opposite of being a “mother.” When I Facetimed my family that afternoon and showed them their beautiful grandchild, I waited for my motherhood metamorphosis. But I hung up feeling the same as I had before the call.

In those first few hours, days, weeks, I felt like I had this vulnerable appendage that I was tasked with keeping safe, or else we’d both be destroyed. The connection between my baby and myself felt molecular and very intense. Still, I was waiting for some burst of motherly-ness, waiting for the butterfly-in-stomach feeling of falling in love. I was waiting to see the world in a totally new way, like after your first drug trip. And while birth was like an intense drug trip and waking up the next day certainly had that hangover feeling, motherhood didn’t seem to hold the quick transformative power that I’d been expecting. I had woken up on the other side of the mountain, but I still couldn’t see the terrain very clearly. I guess, in retrospect, this makes sense.

In the seven months that have followed, I have found motherhood to be a slow step-by-step becoming. I don’t feel like a completely different person than I was before. I don’t feel like I’ve sprouted wings, per say. But I do feel things within myself shifting, re-sizing and reordering, every day. I can see already that Mom years, like dog years, move rapidly. So much is changing. So much is brilliant and new for both Sky and I. Each week feels monumental in a way that life didn’t used to. I want it all to slow down and at the same time I wake each day with a child-like excitement that rushes things on.

I truly do see this world with seven-month eyes, the eyes of a new mother as well as those of a child. Sky has this wide-eyed and curios face, and OMG, I could stare at that expression all day. There’s nothing like it. I watch her watch. A car passing by, a sprinkler spouting water, and when I see it like she sees it, everything is full of wonder. She has creative ways of learning: to stick everything in her mouth, to bang it. To lick the world, to scratch it with her tiny fingernails and hear the sound it makes. Her every exploration is inspiring and makes me proud. Her brain doubles, synapses fire. Each day she gains understanding, grows, forms, becomes more fully the human being that she is. And I too, discover, see, gain, grow, form and become more the mother that I am.

I look anew at my own mother, who is my age in Mom Years. She has seen phases of motherhood that I can’t even imagine. As she travels here to meet her grandchild for the first time (delayed by Covid) she will assuredly enter a whole new phase of seeing and knowing: grand motherhood.

I try to think of what I would tell my pre-mother self…

Don’t be scared or expectant.

Just be curious.

It will all play out as it must.

You will still be you. But you’ll be something else too.

You’ll be the child inside of you that once saw the world anew. That one you thought you’d forgotten.

You’ll be eternally bound to another in an inexplicable way.

You’ll be more a mother each day.

I believe that it is a gift of motherhood that you never stop learning, each day is infused with this purpose. I believe that you never stop becoming a Mom.