On the transition to motherhood so far...

Embracing the small stuff to to make sense of the big stuff

I sat down to write a short life update, but this came out instead. It’s a bit out of the usual, but I hope it resonates with someone! -Alisha

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I took my first hours-long outing away from the baby this weekend to see The Eras Tour movie with some friends. I got dressed up, wore makeup, felt like a real person, and was ready—desperate— for a good hang.

At the theater, we saw gaggles of young girls dressed in sparkles and dancing gleefully to kid-favorite songs like Shake It Off. The scene felt distant for a second; I gave the moms in the front a smile and was quietly glad I wasn’t in their place, playing chaperone and toting glittery cowboy hats and fake microphones for their daughters. But then I thought of my daughter and how one day she’ll be this age, and the scene suddenly felt closer to home.

After the initial shock of this realization, I felt a deep ache and a sudden desire to get back to her as quickly as possible. I excused myself to go to the bathroom. In the stall, I pulled up a photo of the baby on my phone. To my surprise, I felt tears beginning to well.

***

I’ve found that becoming a mother so far has been a series of small shocks to the system. I continue to have moments like the above in which I forget for a second. It’s neither a negative nor positive feeling but more of a readjustment in how I understand myself.

There’s a term I heard for the first time recently that describes the transition of becoming a mother: matrescence. It was first coined by medical anthropologist Dana Raphael in the seventies. A mother is born when a baby is born, as they say. But things are not as simple as being “before baby” or “after baby.” To give becoming a mother the same linguistic heft as adolescence feels right. Matrescence is a significant emotional, social, hormonal, and physical transition, not a sudden flip of the switch.

There’s a lot of talk about feeling nostalgic for one’s pre-baby life when becoming a parent. It’s not necessarily regret but nostalgia about the things you once had the freedom to do, the person you once were. But I’m not quite sure nostalgia captures what I feel these days. The nostalgia hasn’t settled in yet because the past is so close. Matrescence allows for an ambivalence, this in-between state. No one is quite prepared to become a mother in an instant.

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What I actually sat down to write is a piece on how I’ve been coping with this big transition, this matrescence: through embracing and noting the little things to feel good and anchored.

It’s the little tasks, little victories, and little milestones (that only I likely care about - a new diaper size! a first half-smile! the first time she kicked herself into a vertical position in the crib!) that I make sure to note down these days. I assure myself that the sum of all these will make sense one day when I’m at some “end point” of matrescence. Deep in motherhood, I guess?

Here are a few little victories I wrote down yesterday in my Notes app: