The truth about becoming a mom

what we don't talk about during year one.

Today's essay reflects on the deeply challenging first year of motherhood as I happily honor my daughter’s first birthday.

Maybe you hope to be a mom someday. Maybe you’re trying now. Maybe you know it’s not for you. Maybe you want to be but can’t. Every maybe is valid. As motherhood becomes a political target yet again, there is nothing more important than sharing what it’s actually like, and what it’s like is different for every mom. Maybe that’s why when you become one you obsessively read about others’ experiences.

It is raw and real. And even if this feels distant from your own life, it is a woman’s story—and every one of those is worth telling.

What we could never expect

My daughter is now one year old, which I’ve been told means this version of who I am is, too.

It still feels a little unnatural to use the word “daughter,” like I’m role-playing as a mom. Even calling myself that, Mom, takes me outside of myself. Not like I haven’t earned the title, but everything about it still feels so new.

Thinking back on the whirlwind that is the first year of motherhood, time has truly never been so fluid. Those first few days and weeks after giving birth are relentless and excruciating. Some small circles whisper about how common the feeling of “What did I just do to my life?” is during that trial-by-fire period. I was somehow electrified with anxious energy while whole-bodily drained of every ounce of it beyond feed, sleep, worry, repeat.

Even though by all accounts I had a “smooth” labor at just 10 hours, my body still felt torn apart. The 30- to 60-minute increments of sleep I was allowed in the weeks following birth were interrupted by pelvic throbbing and inflammation in one breast that morphed into a second engorgement of its sister three weeks later when my doula and I finally gave up our efforts to encourage it to produce milk (a wasted effort, it turns out, because of a biopsy I had in my early 20s).

Everything hurt—my body, my mind—constantly.

I wept every night while eating dinner with my husband and mom, telling them, “I don’t know why I’m crying. Just let it happen.” Of course, it was the hormone drop, the same one that made sleeping on a towel a necessity while I shivered in cold sweat during middle-of-the-night feedings. But it was also something I wouldn’t have a name for until months later: the Sundown Scaries. That creeping fear of how the night would unfold. The crushing anxiety of whether my baby was safe with none of us watching.

Couple that term with the “Baby Blues,” and I can’t help but think these very real experiences have been diminished with silly terms to not scare people from choosing to experience them anyway.

That’s not even to speak of the isolation—the loneliness of breastfeeding in the middle of the night while my husband slept, or during the day, being the only one who could do it and feeling alone because of that.

Those weeks felt like an eternity of endurance. My baby felt like just something to care for—not yet a whole person. Neither was I anymore. Maybe together, we made one.

truth: for weeks after birth, my body felt empty without her kicking from the inside

As the weeks spanned into months, time fell into a more regular pattern. I was less consciously aware of the ways my life took on new reconfigurations, and more just going through each change as it came. Even though nothing about the changes felt simple.

The days truly are so achingly long. Then the smiles start. And the eye contact. The awareness of you and pleasure when they find you. The giggles, oh my gawd. This kind of love is enough to keep you moving forward, and it can make moments during those long days feel like some of the best you’ll ever have.

Motherhood is often described as an identity shift. But looking back on my transition, it feels more like a complete tear-down and rebuild of priorities.

I go to bed thinking about what I’ll feed my daughter the next day. If she wakes early from a nap, I anticipate her crankiness before she feels it. I spend hours researching the next developmental stage and searched for childcare with more intensity than I ever looked for a job. I sleep too hot so she doesn’t sleep too cold. I often hold off on adding spice to my food until I know she won’t want mine after finishing hers.

I downshifted my career because it no longer felt like my top priority, for the time being. It was a choice I had never considered during my “what if” days. And truthfully, it doesn’t feel good every day. Also truthfully, working sometimes feels a lot easier than taking care of a child.

The list is long, but none of the reprioritizations feel outrageous, though they often feel draining. Her needs should come before mine.

But that doesn’t make it easy to adjust to being second in your own life. It’s why moms feel exhausted and resentful, especially while watching their partners make space for their baby without dismantling and rebuilding their world entirely around them.

It’s not about being a martyr, though. It’s such a natural intuition that it doesn’t even feel like a choice, as frustrating as that often feels when trying to disconnect or take breaks or carve out time for me.

It’s maybe why so many moms want to—no, need to—reflect on the first year with themselves centered in the narrative. We have to come to terms with what we’ve just experienced because while those first few weeks feel unending, the months that follow blur into a montage of milestones and sleep regressions and (let’s be honest) monotony until BOOM. We’re spat out at the year mark, a little disoriented, a little disbelieving that so much time has passed. And really, a footnote to the story that is our incredible baby.

One who I am so wholeheartedly, all-consumingly, overwhelmingly in love with. She is me. I am her.

truth: kissing my baby’s feet is the most surprising, pure high that exists

Nothing can prepare you for the contradictions of mothering. It’s a verb, a noun, an adjective, shaping and shifting with every moment. I yearn for her bedtime, yet miss her when I go to sleep. I long for breaks, but feel most useful when I’m with her.

The volume of everything else in my life has been turned down. When she was born, it rewired my body and mind, ensuring I keep choosing motherhood, even as it takes so much from me as an individual. It’s the only way our species survives. Because what else feels this incredible while simultaneously pushing us to the edge?

So did becoming a mom change who I am?

I’m me, but more so. Motherhood has highlighted my worst while bringing out my best.

Sometimes, I feel weak under the weight of it all. Frustration rises when I’m trying to put her down for a nap, and she keeps herself awake. A fifth wake-up of the night during illness or teething makes me want to scream in surrender. Her tiny hands claw at my face, slap, pinch, and remind me that I am not made only of love, but of anger too. When it all brings me to tears, I slip into old thought patterns that everyone else is better at this than I am. I am too weak to mother.

But my capacity for love is endless. My ability to function on barely met basic needs is shocking. I once thought I was a brilliant planner, a skilled multitasker. Now, I am a master. I believed myself to be an empath, someone who could recognize and share in others’ emotions. Now, I am a conduit, a translator of feelings. I knew I was caring, now I am a Care Giver. Before I was trustworthy; now I am someone’s safe space. I used to feel like barely enough, and now I am someone’s everything. I am unbreakable because I am a mother.

truth: the pressure to feel happy and grateful during postpartum can feel suffocating

I can admit—I don’t want mother to be my identity. It is my role to my daughter, one I will always strive to excel at. I want her to know me, to trust me, to count on me like no one else. To never question, not for a second, that she is my priority, and I will always be there and show up for her.

But it is not all I want from (I hope this long) life. Motherhood is endlessly rewarding, boundlessly joyful, full of love and promise. I am resolute in my choice to pursue it, and grateful I could do so, especially on my terms and in my own time.

I hope my daughter one day knows how intentional I’ve been with centering her. That my love is on purpose. It’s full of purpose. And I am still me. I am someone who wants things for herself, to do things for herself, to be herself, and not only one part of herself. I hope I rediscover those other parts in the year ahead after a year of only being one.

I am my daughter’s mother, and I am me.