#102924: The paradox is the condition

Diary entries from the early days of second-time new motherhood

October 22, 2024 There is a familiarity about the postpartum phase that feels like it comes wrapped in frantic energy. I think it has to do with this regaining access to former parts of myself: a faster pace, a higher tolerance threshold, being able to wear my old clothes again.

I would get so frustrated that I couldn’t move as quickly as I was used to, as my mind wanted me to when I was still carrying Joelle, and now it’s like I long for that slowdown. Long for the slowdown but am also impressed by the pace I can make myself go.

On one hand, this return is comforting in the way all familiar things are, but on the flip side, there is this trapping that is easy to miss if you’re not paying attention because it brings up an inclination to go backwards. To keep your head down and try to return to how it was instead of looking up to see that life is a spiral so it rotates for sure but you can never actually be back where you were once before and there is very big freedom in that. To look up into the expanse and ask: will I, in this new spiral, do something different?

Like go slower, for example.

October 25, 2024 There is a relief about becoming a second-time mom, or maybe it’s simply about getting older and starting to accrue more experience.

Just the other day, my husband was talking about how much ground he finds in heuristics and you know what? That’s exactly what you get from doing something life-changing more than once: best practices, learnings or the framework of a tested map to use when you need it. But listen when I call it a framework because that is really all it is.

At best, the heuristics give you confidence to keep taking risks and pursuing growth; the framework is a reminder that you swung nose first into the cleavage of whatever your crippling unknown was, and when you were there, you managed a way to find footing and yourself.

But the way that you found that was from inside the risk, when you grazed up against the narrowest corners and walked yourself through those quiet, trick doors where the unflinching truth was waiting to tell you that no matter how much you think you can prepare, life is not a test, there’s no answer key.

You have to do it to figure it out.

The next right move is dynamic — and can only be found in real time.

October 26, 2024 There’s a longing about this phase too. And its temperament is very poetic.

I always used to say I love being pregnant, that I miss it when it’s over. It’s still true but I think I understand more coherently now what it is that I miss when I miss: the ease of the closeness I feel to myself.

Pregnancy has a way of shooting you into your body because it is such a vulnerable experience. You lose control of yourself in the ways you have known, how your body responds becomes unpredictable.

Then in time, you witness this massive expansion take place both on you and in you. And once you feel like you’re finding ground again, a new shift knocks you off your skis. There is never a moment to hit cruise control.

What I’m realizing now is that there is in fact as intense a vulnerability, a need to say close, well into the postpartum phase. You feel like yourself and you move like yourself but you are still an open wound —

The emotional fluctuations are real: the intense jubilation, the existential dread. The feeling that you’re overflowing with glee then the emptiness of what’s it all for as you move from holding your baby, to turning around to leave the room where she sleeps.

It is its own slope on the vista of feminine contraction but it is also much more insidious because it conflicts with the recovery of the former self-elements that make you think you’ve returned to baseline. In fact that line is gone now and as a note from me to me: should not be pursued any further.

Or maybe it doesn’t have to be gone but it creates this tension I’m still trying to reconcile because what am I feeling right now?

I’ve been going too fast.

I put off sitting down to breathe,

put off breathing so I can feel what is here

and put off feeling so I can write

because it’s sadness that lingers.

That’s what overcomes me when I slow down.

October 28, 2024 But from this vantage, I feel more convicted that the most consistent condition of motherhood is the ongoing paradox of it all. You’re you again but you’re not you again. You want to go fast but need to go slow. You start to slow down but feel far away. You try to get close and finally can and when you’re there, the dancing desires flare up.

I want to be home but I want to go out, stay close, I need some space. I need to be busy! My mind is cluttered. When will I use my brain again?

You’re all I care to think about.

This cycle starts earlier, as a wrestling match, you vs. you, as you hurl over toilet, freckle of new life in the womb.

Did I really want this?

I’d rather die than not have it.

Stay in me, get out, this is the best, it’s the worst, I can’t take it, I need you: the paradox continues as the fetus becomes a baby, achieving complete gestation within you.

So it comes time for the main event and it’s hard to say bye but so thrilling too: no longer one, we split.

And with this divide, I’m back! You’re here! Baby and mother together anew. But in those earliest days it’s hard to tell who’s who.

Just this morning, we lay in bed together: her eyes open, mine flickering closed and her dad kneeled down to kiss us both. I didn’t know if I was baby or mom, if we were even two different things.

But I know from experience that in time, we will be distinct pounds of flesh, separate from each other but bound by the paradox that keeps us together like holdings of a rubberband. She’ll grow up and her eyes will get wider as we separate further within the band and she’ll go to school and make friends, meet new life encounters as her worldview takes influence from things and people outside of our band.

And this just keeps happening as life goes on and we get further from these early days and I know it because I see it, I’ve lived it, because I am it, was on her side once too.

It will be gorgeous to watch and heartbreaking to see and as we lay head to head together right now on this soft familiar surface that has at least a decade of years left on it between us, I realize that this sensation is it — exactly what I’ve been running from.

What the twinge of sadness has been trying to say is that the paradox of motherhood is the condition. It’s everything at the same time.