reflections on the fourth trimester

Clara was born two days after I wrote my last post here—11 weeks ago today. We have one week left of what some people call the “fourth trimester,” when she is separate from my body and yet still constantly attached, when she isn’t getting everything she needs via 24/7 physical connection and yet still kind of is. I don’t expect a switch to flip at the end of the 12th week, but it’s still a little momentous to me that we’re nearly there.

I knew it would be hard. I didn’t know it would be impossible for as long as it was.

I didn’t know I’d spend the first week in a haze of euphoria mixed with pain, or that weeks two and three would feel like existing in a black cloud of despair. I didn’t know I could get so angry at someone so innocent or so worried about someone so small. While other new moms in my Facebook due date group talked about “love at first sight” and “hearts so full,” I felt empty and terrified, like a shell of myself trying to find my way through a labyrinth at midnight all alone, with a tiny dependent creature to keep alive at the same time. I remember thinking so many times, and still do some days, that all I wanted was to go to work—back to a familiar place, simple tasks, clear objectives, and a community of friends.

I know it’s all the rage these days to talk “authentically” about what things like motherhood are “really” like. But I find there’s a sheen of polish on most of those discussions, too, and I think that’s why—even though I was fully prepared for it to be tough and thankless to care for a newborn all day—I was not prepared to do six solid weeks of it with hardly a glimmer of joy. That’s the unpolished truth.

Then she smiled at me intentionally for the first time and what had been impossible finally became just hard. And I can do hard.

Maybe it’s different for the moms who are in love at first sight. Maybe their babies didn’t have an intolerance to dairy that caused them constant pain, or maybe their babies don’t have high palates, preventing them from feeding effectively. Maybe they didn’t go three weeks without sleeping two hours together (because you can only “sleep when the baby sleeps” if the baby actually sleeps). Or maybe they are simply healthier people, holier people, better at doing the impossible.

It’s deeply humbling to see this cavernous lack inside myself. First John 4:19 comes to mind: “We love because He first loved us.” He did the impossible. He sacrificed everything without a glimmer of joy in return, and He did it without succumbing to the exhaustion, the rage, the fear, the desperation. Even if I had never smiled back at Him, He’d have done it all the same.

I wish I had naturally been that mom. As much as I loved her, I wasn’t. As much as I love her today, I’m still not. But I hope I’m getting closer.