Reflections on my first year of motherhood
What I gained and what I left behind
There was once a time when it was a goal of mine to run the UTMB - the world championship of trail running. Earlier this year I accidentally found myself in Chamonix, France at the same time the race was taking place. We were on a family vacation to the Alps and traveling with our 9 month old to Europe which in itself was a huge accomplishment for our little family.
But the race was so far off my radar I forgot we were going to be there the last week in August - exactly when it was taking place. There I was at breakfast eating croissants and drinking a cappuccino planning our 3 mile hike to a waterfall with runners all around us, lacing up and going on shake out runs. I could envision myself there at some different stop on the time warp continuum as one of them running that race, but I knew I probably never would. Instead I smiled at them, put my daughter in the backpack and we went out for our hike.
According to scientific research, a woman’s brain literally rewires during pregnancy. It's something called synaptic pruning where you cut off function to certain parts of your brain and put more cells in other areas that evolution has deemed more important.1
Maybe that explains some of the changes I’ve seen in myself when I look back at this first year of motherhood. Most of the time it has felt natural. But sometimes I miss that old me.
Shift 1: It's not just about me anymore
In the past I didn’t think much about other people’s needs. I had my priorities and did what I wanted based on those priorities. My career always came first. So much so that I did things like send myself to the ER from stress-induced cyst ruptures and miss my grandma’s funeral because it was the day the startup I worked at launched out of stealth.2 After that, it was still all about me. Hard day? Go to yoga. No food? Popcorn for dinner. Snowed 3 feet? Powder day!
Now I am responsible for my family – the whole unit. I am a part of my family but only one part of it. What I want at any moment isn’t always prioritized. I guess it's obvious - when you become a parent you take on responsibility for other people. I was worried this would make me resentful. I heard so many stories of other mothers who lost themselves in that postpartum phase, but that hasn’t been my experience.
For me it feels really natural to assume this responsibility. In the past no one would use words like nurturing or patient to describe me. But those qualities emerged. It's like my baby is a part of me, and the concept of “me” has grown bigger than it was previously. Somehow I expanded.
Shift 2: I can’t do it all
This shift has been harder to accept. I’m an ambitious person. I like to improve, grow, and accomplish things. Even if I don’t want to admit it, I still care about external validation. But with this expanded responsibility I am over capacity. I cannot meet everyone’s needs when including my own. I don’t have a solution for this, but some things have helped.
One has been asking for help. For example, I can prioritize some of my needs if my partner doesn’t prioritize some of his needs. If I want to go to yoga after work, he cannot go to climbing gym. I used to be more of a martyr… “no, no - you go climbing! I’m good!” But I’m learning that if I don’t tell him explicitly what I need, my needs will not get met. Before I’d try to do it all myself. Now I see our family as a system and we have to work together for the system to function.
But there’s still not enough capacity. I try to use the lens of my family’s overall happiness to force prioritization. Then decisions like - should I travel to this work offsite (that I can also attend remotely) become easier to make. But those decisions come with a cost somewhere else. It is always a tradeoff. Accepting those tradeoffs is something I continue to work on.
Shift 3: This is what I’ve been waiting for
When my daughter turned three months old and started outgrowing all of her newborn and 0-3 month onesies it hit me - once a phase is over, it is over. Previously things hadn’t really changed much for me the prior few years. But with this baby, time takes on a new meaning.
I used to always look to the next thing. If I can just get through this hard period of work… if I can just get promoted one more time... if I can just make it through this remodel… But since my daughter’s been born, all I want is for time to slow down. I want to be here. Now.
I hear some people talk about the “glory days” of high school or college - a clear peak they will always remember and want to go back to. You couldn’t pay me to go back to high school or college but now - this time as a mother with a young kid - this is the time I know in old age I will look back at most fondly. I will wish for just one more day of her giggles, her cuddles. This is my peak and I know it is fleeting. It makes me want to be so, so present.
Maiden to mother
As I wrote this post, some reading I did a few years ago came back to me. I don’t remember where I learned it but the concept that there are three archetypal phases of a woman’s life - maiden, mother, and crone. While different cultures describe them differently – Persephone, Demeter, Hecate in Greek mythology or the three faced Morrigan in Celtic folklore, it even shows up in Jungian psychology— the concept is pretty universal. We start off as a bright eyed maiden, looking to leave home and conquer the world. Then we shift into the mother - creating, birthing, and enabling others. And then we become the crone, the wise woman sharing our knowledge with the world.3
It strikes me that all of these shifts have been me making that transition from the archetypal maiden to mother.
Sometimes I do miss my old self. I worry I am accruing some kind of debt that will eventually catch up to me, not prioritizing myself like I used to. And other times I just get tired, trying to meet everyone’s needs then not finding time for my own. Will that resentment eventually come?
But then things happen like the other night. My baby was nestled on my chest as I was putting her to sleep and she whispered “mama” for the first time. The joy I felt was incomparable to any of my old accomplishments. And I know that overall I am the happiest I’ve ever been. I have no doubts that this is what I want and will not look back and regret my choices. There has never before been a time in my life when I could say that.
Thank you to
and for feedback on this post and The Essay Club for the push to publish.This is on me not my employer, I didn’t even tell my boss about either incident at the time.
"This is my peak and I know it is fleeting." wow
This is so good Claire! Thank you so much for sharing this with us. I relate to so much of this.