Postpartum: Mom’s Club

We celebrated our third anniversary a few weeks ago. I posted on social media about the fact that on our last anniversary we found out that we were expecting and that this year was our first anniversary as parents, and included a family portrait. Throughout the day, I found myself looking at the picture of us on my phone again and again. I’m slightly leaning into my husband and have the baby on my lap. Is this me? Later on that day, a friend messages me about the picture, suggesting that I’m now who I always wanted to be.  After a bit of back and forth, I had to admit that overall, he was right; although being a wife and mother is not all I want to be, nor do they completely define me, they are major things that I’d longed for.

One of my best friends sent me a Mother’s Day card this year. We’ve been friends for a long time, but this year is the first year that we’ve both been mothers together. I had a sense of being able to understand my friend in a way that maybe I hadn’t been able to for a while and of her maybe being able to relate to me in a way she hadn’t before. Now, we’re in the same club.

It’s strange. This knowledge that now, whether you want to be or not, you’re in a club.

I participated in a pedagogy workshop a little over a week ago and saw lots of my colleagues that I hadn’t seen since having the baby. Of course, I was ready with pictures on my phone and regaled them with tales of my little one’s latest—he can roll over from his stomach to his back, he sleeps in his crib now, he’s slept through the night. To people without kids, this bit of developmental minutiae is kind of boring. But for people with kids, there’s an immediate understanding of how big a deal these things are. There’s an instant recognition, a bond, even, that I now have with colleagues who are parents that I didn’t have before. People that I sort of knew of but never really talked to before were now talking to me at length about their children and their parenting experiences. It comes with being in the club.

Just as I’m now a part of the mom club, I’m also no longer a part of the no-kid club. Before, my colleague next door to me and I were both in the no-kid club. But when I go back to work, will we not be as close as we were before? Will things be weird /different between us because I’m a mom now?

I still find it hard to grasp the fact that I have a son. I’m a mom. A baby literally came out of my body and made me a mom. Sometimes it’s almost as if I’m watching myself go through the motions of caring for my child. I see myself holding him, nursing him, changing him, cuddling him, bathing him, rocking him to sleep. Is that me? Is he mine?

I’m the same person. No matter what, I’m the same person. Becoming a mom hasn’t transformed me into someone somehow more confident, more secure, more grown-up. Yes, I have more responsibilities now, and yes, my priorities have shifted even more than they did when I got married. But no matter what club I find myself in, I will never not be the me I’ve always been.