I reached out for help from my mom friends in the crisis moments, begging them to tell me that what I was experiencing was normal.
I let other people hold my baby while I showered, ate, and took care of my hurting body.
I told myself that whatever hard thing was happening would be over in a few days.
I reminded myself that these newborn days would be over in a blink, and I’d want them back.
I let my baby be a baby, I let myself be a mess, and I gave us both grace as we learned how to become mother and daughter.
Recognizing that the transition from womb to world was probably more traumatic for Selah than it was for me allowed me to treat us both with the gentleness we so desperately needed in our first weeks together. I held her as often as I could, cradling her tiny body close to my skin. I wept with her when I needed to and allowed her to comfort herself with my body as often as she needed it.
And here I am ten weeks later, slowly becoming myself again. For almost a year, my daughter and I have been one person, sharing one body during pregnancy and even now as I breastfeed. It’s equal parts freeing and heartbreaking to watch her as she becomes independent and to feel myself craving some independence too.
But those newborn days will live in my memory as some of the sweetest, hardest, most emotional days of my life, and I will always think of them as the days when I became more fully myself by giving myself completely to another person.
The deepest relationships in life, our strongest bonds, are formed when we give ourselves completely away.
This doesn’t mean I’m not still myself. I need to explore my own desires, be my own person, and not lose myself in motherhood.
It simply means that I’m learning to love this new version of myself, one that comes with fewer expectations, less guilt, more joy, and more forgiveness. A new version of myself whose sharp edges and need for control are softening, whose stretch marks are slowly fading, whose heart is stretching and tearing and deepening its capacity for love.
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This article originally appeared at BrittanyLBergman.com.
