The Unexpected Life

The algorithm knows me well and frequently feeds me parenting/mothering specific content. There’s a lot of it. Something I’ve been seeing more lately is posts with the general idea that it takes mothers some extended amount of time to “return to normal” after giving birth. I’ve seen it in a few iterations, taking about “getting your pink back” (a reference to flamingoes) or how long it takes hormones to get back to baseline. The overall point of these messages is, I think, to encourage new moms that they won’t always feel so overwhelmed with the life-changing experience of having a baby.

When I see posts like that though, they often ring untrue to me. Not because I know anything scientific about hormones or brain chemistry (because I don’t). I guess all I really know is my own experience. Five years into being a mother and I haven’t returned to what used to be normal. I don’t even think that’s possible.

I was irrevocably changed the moment I held my first baby in my arms. Actually, I was changed the moment that pregnancy test came back positive and I started altering my behaviour to take care of this little life growing inside of me. I will never be the same as I was before I became a mother. I have never loved someone the way I love my children. The sacrifice and the joy of parenting are unmatched –I have never given so much of myself physically, emotionally and mentally for anyone or anything, and yet nothing has provided as much joy as seeing these tiny humans grow and thrive. That experience changes a person. How could anyone expect to go back to “normal” from that?

I understand the underlying message of posts like the ones I referenced earlier. Really, what they are trying to do is remind new parents that it won’t always be this all-consuming. And somehow, we’ve turned that into some false hope that we’ll be able to go back to who we used to be.

It’s weird though, because becoming a parent is not the only time we lose a version of ourselves to replace it with something new. The version of me that loved to play with Barbies and play dress up is gone. She was replaced by a version of me that skated competitively and read Harry Potter over and over (and over and over). When I stopped being a student and started working full time, a new version of me was born. When I went from being single to married, when I went from being just an employee to having to train people, when I decided to start working out, when I decided to write a book and tell people about it…all of these were new versions of myself and there was no going back afterwards.

Like a tree growing a new ring, time marches on and life is experienced, and suddenly there is a new layer of me for the world to see. All of those previous versions are still part of me, for better or for worse. I can’t go back to being a care-free kid dancing around in a princess dress or read Harry Potter for the first time again. But I also can’t go back to being an insecure teenager, or an adult living in so much fear of never having another baby. Those experiences shaped me, and are a part of me still. But they aren’t the “normal” me anymore.

With each new version I see new facets of who God created me to be. In parenting I have seen that I am capable of more patience and sacrifice than I ever thought possible, and also that I am capable of experiencing more joy from an ordinary life than I would have dreamed. In infertility, I saw weak spots in my faith and realized I can be braver than I knew.

If there is one constant in life, it’s that everything will change eventually. Nothing lasts forever. I hate change. My (super healthy and mature) natural tendency is to pretend change isn’t happening until it actually happens and then just act like this is how life has always been. But the more I think about it, the less I want to live my life looking back longingly at some version of myself I could never be again.

What I wish I could tell pre-kids Elizabeth, what I would tell you if you were facing some major life shift, is that it’s all going to change. It’s okay to feel scared, to grieve the life you had before, the person you used to be. But don’t waste your time wishing for that person back. Sooner than you think is possible, you’ll begin to see the beauty in this new version of yourself. You’ll see the ways you are wiser, stronger, kinder. It just keeps getting better. You’ll see.