What comes to mind when you think of the postpartum period?  I think of roughly the first month to three months after the baby is born.  I think about my body healing and my baby adjusting to life outside the womb. When I think about adjusting to motherhood though, the timeline is much longer. I remember thinking every month of the first year that things would get easier when I hit another monthly marker.  In some respects they did, but in other ways they either changed or remained challenging. Each stage of development brought a new area of uncertainty.  With every week passing I had another expectation about what the baby should be doing and how I should be feeling.  Often neither of us met these expectations.  So, even if the postpartum period is technically a relatively short time, the adjustment period to motherhood can be quite prolonged.

So, how long does it take to adjust to motherhood? First I need to figure out what being adjusted to motherhood looks like.  One sign I was looking for was contentment with my new life.  When my daughter was first born I felt intense uncertainty and yes, even regret about having had a baby.  It just wasn’t at all what I anticipated.  It was much more demanding and much less emotionally fulfilling.  In some ways it seems like I had this outlook for most of the first year, and maybe I did…who can actually remember any details from that first year.  My daughter is almost three now, and though I do feel that parenting continues to be one of the most demanding roles I’ve had in my life; I also feel like it is much more fulfilling these days.  At some point I think I gradually melted into motherhood and began to let go of my longing for my pre-baby life.

Perhaps becoming a mother is similar to grieving. In each situation there is a loss and it’s hard to imagine what (or who) was lost not being at the forefront of your mind.  But you put one foot in front of the other, day after day, and eventually the loss moves to the back of your mind. Similarly to the grieving process, the transition to motherhood looks and feels different for everyone.  The timeline is not fixed, nor is it linear.  Your expression of grief or adjustment may be different from mine.  For some this transition may be relatively quick and without complications, but for others it is prolonged and deeply painful. It may seem morbid to compare something as joyful as birth to something as painful as death, but isn’t there joy and sorrow in both experiences?  Can’t death be beautiful and becoming a mother be painful?

Becoming a mother for me continues to be a confusing journey.  I am almost three years into this role/job/identity and it does feel like a core piece of who I am.  But I also feel so new and uncertain. Self-doubt seems to come easily these days. There is always a voice reminding me how I am not doing a good enough job.  There’s a nagging sense that I should be enjoying this more.  The words are not coming to me to adequately describe the confusion of thoughts and feelings I have about motherhood. Love, humility, sadness, exhaustion, joy, frustration – they don’t seem to really share with you what I think and feel every day.  There is a churning and uneasiness about motherhood that is not easy to abate.
These days I feel like I am sailing in choppy waters. Marveling at the little human my partner and I have created, and wondering how life will look as I prepare, yet again, to be reborn as a mother.  I am awaiting my second baby. I am excited and fearful. I have created a web of expectations in my brain and I’m trying not to wrap myself too tightly in it’s sticky thread. I know it will not be as I expect. I know it will be harder than I can imagine. I know it will be joyful.  I know I will become a mother again and I will adjust. I know I won’t be perfect or perfectly happy.