One Month Postpartum: Cry When the Baby Cries
Transitions are rarely, if ever, easy. Our brains get used to things and it takes time to rewire them, even if we transition into something we desperately want.
Bean is one month old today. The sentence feels surreal to write. Has it really (only/already) been a month? Some days feel endless—blurred into a loop of feeding, burping, changing, rocking. Yet, I can’t believe a whole month has already passed. Time has always been strange, but now especially: slow and fast all at once.
July 23
July 27
The first couple of days are fuelled by pure adrenaline and love. I am high on my baby. Even though I don’t enjoy our hospital stay—my husband cant’t be with us overnight—I don’t care much. I have her. That is enough. She is tiny. She is cute. She smells like heaven. She is still all wrinkly and swollen (no wonder, who wouldn’t be after getting out of the world’s smallest pussy) and looks, frankly, funny, and I can’t stop looking at her. Fredrik says, she looks like she just came from the boxing match. True. She also looks like an angry old man. We agree that she is the most beautiful thing in the entire world.
“I love you,” Fredrik says to Bean. “I already feel you melting away my testosterone.” (Did you know men's testosterone levels decrease after having a child? I didn’t.)
On the third day, they let us go home. Bean screams bloody murder when we taker her out. She is bright red, and Fredrik is concerned. I ask paediatrician if she is okay. “She is okay,” she says. We struggle with the car seat for good ten minutes, but luckily by that time Bean is asleep and doesn’t care.
We bring her home and don’t quite know what to do with her. I show her her room. She is utterly uninterested. I take a shower. I feed her, I am not sure my milk is in yet.
We spend a lot of time changing diapers (Bean poops like it’s an Olympic sport) and staring at her (she looks more and more like a baby and not an old man, even thought I firmly believe all newborn look like old men). I personally am glued to the chair: she wants to eat all day every day. No one could have prepared me for it. My butt is getting flatter by the minute. My nipples are killing me.
But everything is wonderful. I am happy.
July 28
I didn’t expect how physical it all would be. My body is recovering, sure, but it’s also working constantly—feeding, carrying, rocking, swaying. I feel like a body in motion, never still, even when I sit down.
When the baby blues hit, I am shocked. I don’t quite recognize myself. The shift is sudden and sharp. One day I am euphoric, cradling this miraculous little human I had grown. The next, I cry like there is no tomorrow.
I feel disoriented, like if a rug has been pulled from underneath me. I am aware it’s hormones, but somehow being aware doesn’t make it any easier.
I cry and I cry and I cry.
I had expected many things. What I didn’t expect was the way my mind and heart would be pulled apart and stitched back together. I entered motherhood through a smooth pregnancy—I had none of the expected hormonal ups and downs. I wasn’t weepy, I wasn’t irritable. I felt grounded, steady, myself. I read the books, I took the classes, I bought all the baby gear. I was around babies before. I knew exactly what to expect.
Spoiler: I did not, in fact, know what to expect.
The thing is, transitions are rarely, if ever, easy. Our brains get used to things and it takes time to rewire them, even if we transition into something we desperately want.