"How's never being alone?" Asking for a friend...

A friend recently asked me this question.

Those of us on the other side of having a kid need little urging to bestow our hard earned lessons and advice upon those contemplating the jump — at least that's what I'm realizing for myself. But pregnancy and parenthood offer such unique experiences, with distinctive insights, so here is simply some of what I would write to myself, before I became pregnant, from 7+ months into motherhood.

Bottom line up front: It is hard, in hard-to-capture ways. But it just keeps getting better.

Life will change. Immediately, utterly. You will change, more slowly, by necessity. You will notice. But then you'll... forget. ish. Life will not always be more fun. It will hold more meaning. You will be offered perhaps the single best opportunity for growth, reflection, and deepening appreciation of your days and all the days you have remaining. Overall, you will love who you are becoming. You will feel stronger and more clarity than ever... even with the brain fog. You will endure passing peaks of worry and anxiety. Google will become your midnight secret keeper. Even still, you will feel surprisingly calm — competent, even. Instinct will be subtle, yet ever apparent.

I look back now and see a series of initiations. Each phase prepares you for the next.

1. Pregnancy is l o n g and can hold so many things: questions, daydreams, excitements, fear, grief (frankly, all in one day). I do believe one should carve out space to grieve, right along any other emotion. I reserved therapy for processing every drop I could, and found mainly joy at the bottom of each session. For me, it took time to fully grasp that I was growing a human. I likened it to a switchboard where, every once in awhile, another set of lights would flip on: the first ultrasound, the first hints of movement, the anatomy scan, the big kicks, hiccups...
   
   At some point, it hit me that I wouldn't be alone for a long, long time... or ever again in the same way. Though I found this to be something I thought more about during pregnancy than I ever think about now. Like the rest of life, some of the things you'll process — the fear and anticipatory grief — won't come to fruition like you think they will. It doesn't mean they're not worth attending to or that they're not important.
2. All of a sudden, after a million years, you find yourself in labor. Then baby is here. (I don't mean to 'yada yada yada' what was, for me, a Thursday-Saturday event at the hospital... labor is itself The Big Bang as far as rites of passage go.) You meet the most precious being you can imagine being charged with caring for. Everything pauses. Relief floods your body. The room goes quiet. Literally nothing else matters, except that face, that wail of arrival.
   
   There's a gentle buzz around the first days with your newborn. Baby will exit the womb and then your home itself becomes the family's womb. The rush of the those initial weeks and months wash over you like a river — relentlessly — softening you in the best and most brutal of ways, leaving little that isn't essential. Life will be laser focused, somehow fully present in the daze, orbiting around this central character. Your own body, your own sleep, your own time, will be left ashore — not gone forever, but speaking in the present tense: Ruined. Annihilated. You won't think of it much and there's not much you can do about it anyway. You will still enjoy some of your time, you will still laugh, you will locate the drive to get out and walk and do things that help move the stagnant, waterlogged energy. Some days will feel endless. You'll get too familiar with the nursing chair, and the hunched position that feeds your baby. Some nights you'll watch movies, eat your comfort foods, talk through things you didn't have space or patience to discuss during the day. Are you calm, or just fatigued? Productive, or completely useless in most ways? Who cares. Your baby is growing... and so are you, quietly, underground.
   
   It's really not all as bad as it sounds. Then again, I've been initiated (shiny new river rock, here). Write, record, continue to process when and however you can. You'll look back and find these early days have slipped through your fingers and you very truly will forget this particular rollercoaster of emotions and the details (even desire) of life before baby. You'll even think fondly of that damn nursing chair, though you may not miss the milk stains that permeate so many surfaces. So, while everything will feel harder for awhile, do the things anyway; it's all part of your induction to parenthood.
3. By a few months in, you'll have some things down. So will baby. You'll have had months of learning from each other, bonding, admiring their acclimation to this world, empathizing with their cries, witnessing their witnessing, seeing yourself and your partner in their face, beginning to identify as Mom, and appreciating the time you have to yourself as never before. Like eating a peach after a sugar fast, you will savor each trip to the gym or the grocery store. You'll have proudly invented the most efficient order of operations for the most mundane of household tasks, and feel it should be applicable to your resumé (it should be). Some things will get easier, others more difficult (see: 4th month sleep regression). You'll grow in your attachment to this child and your role as parent just as you're recognizing, more and more, your ultimate task is to Let Go. Like lightning, you will be struck by these little heartaches of great injustice, folding newborn clothes that fit just yesterday. When asked, you will still describe parenthood as "the best of times and the worst of times," only half joking.
4. By 6 or 7 months in, you will look at this child's face and see that they are their own person. Developing their own desire with the growing ability to express it. Practicing their confident curiosity in the world. The miracle of their life will continue to astound you. Raising them will feel less like something you've been charged with and become something you enjoy for its own satisfaction. You'll want to include them. You'll love witnessing them interact with their environment. You'll notice the overnight changes. You'll be stripped away from them, along with your parental leave, and savor the time you have together in a renewed way (like that peach). You'll feel the tension of missing them as you enjoy adult company and conversation. You'll feel much more like yourself again, both a more disheveled and a more polished version, that smooth river rock surviving the current. You'll discover excitement for things to come, not knowing what they'll be or who else you will become. Life will no longer feel like the ruins it once did. All the pieces that matter will remain, still rearranging but finding their place. You will find more room, and strangely more freedom – in yourself, in your home, in your life – than you thought possible. New pieces will give the whole thing a glow.
5. We shall see.