It’s such a blur of activity, those first few days and weeks at home. Everything has changed. You likely came home with your baby to that same place you used to call home. But all that baby gear is no longer folded neatly in place. Nope, it’s scattered about or waiting in a heap to be run through the washing machine. Beds are likely rumpled and scarcely made these days, since you are likely hopping in and out of the sheets at all hours of the day and night. Bottles and the remains of half-eaten snacks and meals may litter the kitchen. And, in the midst of the chaos, you may barely have a moment to consider yourself as a person at any great length. Getting the occasional shower and attending to your post-recovery needs is about the limit of what you can do.
But then it starts to settle down. You start to have a few minutes here and there to assess where you are and where you’ve been. You may start to get dressed somedays, go out in the world some days. At some point there is reckoning with the mirror. You see yourself reflected there and it’s hard not to wonder who this person staring back at you even IS. What happened to the old you? Do you even know the new you? Of course you’re the same person. And at the same time, you know you’re not. Because it’s nearly impossible to go through the experience of birth and mothering and not be changed. Sometimes these changes were somewhat anticipated. Certainly you had anticipated that all that baby gear would be put to good use. Certainly you had expected some level of household disorder. And certainly you had expected some sleep disruption. But many of the intangible things that happen with the transition to motherhood were quite possibly not anticipated. They are difficult to explain or understand without experiencing them. You have to live it to know it.
You may be feeling tremendous pride that you have entered the community of mothers. Possibly this was something you have dreamt of since you were young or worked hard to achieve through infertility treatments. You are here. YOU are a mother. Yes, you. Even with the “evidence” of a baby staring back at you, and after the months of waiting during pregnancy when you knew this was going to be true, it can still be hard to really take in. You may not be able to fully absorb at times that other people are actually talking about YOU when you hear someone talking about “mom.” Just the import of it all, the weight of this label – Mom. It’s a mind warp. That’s your mom, right? Oh wait, no, it’s you too!
It’s a lot to integrate, putting this new label together with others you may have had before: daughter, sister, niece, granddaughter – ok, you’ve probably had these labels for a while. You may be pretty sure about where you stand there. But putting “mom” together with these comfortable roles – that may feel big. Wife, best friend, neighbor – here’s a few more where “mom” has a different feeling.
Then what about your professional title: manager, consultant, engineer, doctor…Putting “mom” with these feels incongruous. How do those things even go together? How does anyone even make this work? And it is a lot. But trust and believe that you will get there. Following a step by step plan and ticking each item off your list will help you prepare for the moment when you integrate all the pieces of your identity into one confident and successful image in the mirror: working mom. You’ve got this. Believe it, mom.
Learn more here about therapy for moms.