Postpartum: The Second Birth No One Told Me About

birth is just the beginning . . .

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I read obsessively about pregnancy, labor, and delivery. I read about cribs and car seats, strollers and swaddles. Thanks to some savvy friends, I even read some about breastfeeding, though I didn’t learn many basic facts about babies and their care until after our little girl had arrived and started making it very clear that we were not meeting all of her needs, at which time I read more.

What I never read anything about was what would happen to me after she was born. Not just physically—which offered plenty of its own surprises and challenges—but also mentally and emotionally. I was utterly blindsided by the complete upheaval of my sense of self, overwhelmed by the competing and sometimes contradictory emotions that crashed over me like tsunamis, bewildered by the new way my brain worked (and didn’t) as it attempted to make sense of the new world in which it found itself. No one told me that I wouldn’t recognize myself in the bathroom mirror some days nor in the pool of my mind’s eye. No one told me that every relationship, every thought, everything about who I was would be changed, would be changing—shifting and settling and shifting again with each breath.

No one told me that there would be two births—both painful, both messy, both miraculous. And no one told me that there would be a sense of loss, even if everyone was physically thriving.

That death and the subsequent gradual rebirth of my identity took me utterly by surprise. I had prepared as well as I could for the labor that would bring my child out into the light, but I had not prepared at all for the labor that would be required for me to put myself back together again, bruised and battered, scarred but stronger.

Now, I know that not everyone’s experience is like mine. Some women slide easily into the new shape called mother and may struggle with other aspects of their new lives. Others undergo devastating trauma that leaves little room for anything but survival.

What I know for sure is that no woman emerges from birth unchanged. And I know that the months following that experience are unlike any time in person’s life. Those months are raw. They are exhausting. They are exhilarating.

A part of yourself has been pushed, pulled, or cut from your body and now lies naked—fragile and exposed—in the wide, bright world. And yet the tie between you and your baby is not yet broken, not entirely. Your bodies are still intertwined even as the process of separation, one that will last the rest of your life, continues with each hour, each day.

I think it is this indescribable intimacy that marks the postpartum stage for me. There is something holy about it—a foretaste of union with God. To care for your infant is to glimpse the tenderness God feels for us and the perfect peace that awaits us when we are once again held in His arms.

But we are not God, and it is not easy.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to share more about my postpartum journeys as well as those of a few other brave women who have agreed to write guest posts. It is my hope that this series will be of value to others who have survived the birth of a child as well as those who have yet to do so.