Am I a woman? Yes. Do I have emotions? Guilty as charged. But I’ve never thought of myself as an overly emotional person.
Maybe that’s why I felt so out of place in my own body the first week at home with our new baby.
Literally everything made me cry...
Seeing my husband care for our daughter. Tears.
Thinking about the nurses that helped us in those first few hours. Tears.
Trying to decide what I wanted to eat. Tears.
Reminiscing about being pregnant. Tears.
Seeing my deflated belly in the mirror for the first time. Tears.
Trying to take a shower. Tears.
Maternity or non-maternity clothes to wear? Tears.
Reading texts from loving friends. Tears.
Buckets and buckets of tears. All. The. Time.
They told me my hormones would take time to level back out. So maybe I could understand some of where all that craziness was coming from. I mean my body had just grown a whole human and then pushed it out to survive on its own.
But the thing that really caught me off guard was this weird, twisted, delusional feeling that I missed being pregnant.
Missed being pregnant? Um what? Wasn’t reaching the due-date finish line the exact thing I had been so anxious over? Didn’t my warped mind remember how uncomfortable it was? How unproductive and unpredictable? How painfully unbearable every inch of my body felt?
Was being pregnant the most uncomfortable experience of my life? Undeniably yes. But was it also the most miraculous? Yes. Yes. Yes. And there was this strange part of me that grieved the end of that season.
For any other mamas out there who cried the first time you went anywhere if the last time you had been there you were pregnant. I get you. And to Cynthia at the return counter in Target- I’m so sorry for making that moment way more awkward than it needed to be.
Webster told me that the Waltz is, “a dance in triple time performed by a couple who as a pair turn rhythmically around and around as they progress around the dance floor.” And that’s just what mommyhood feels like these days. Floating around in love with this beloved daughter. All the while turning around and around in a sea of endless tears.
Deep breath in. Someday soon these emotions will level back out. Fingers crossed.
Yours truly,
Stork Mama
