The Fourth Trimester: A Season of Becoming

I was unaware I would leave that hospital a different person.

Entering the hospital the night I gave birth went exactly how I imagined it to. I could hardly stand straight from the contractions and soon I was admitted to a room and in a gown. The room looked as most appear in films and echoing machines filled the room as I focused on my breaths. Before I knew it ( two hours later of pushing), I was holding my baby who was taking his first breaths. This whole scene I had planned for however, I wasn't expecting to also be taking my first breath, as a new version of myself too.

I remember I needed two nurses to help me to the bathroom because the epidural had made my legs feel like sand bags. Just like a baby, I needed help finding my feet too. One foot in front of the other as they held me under my armpit. I may have been just walking to the bathroom but, so much symbolism was unfolding in this moment. Relearning to walk into my new role and the Fourth Trimester. The Fourth Trimester is the following 12 weeks of postpartum where you're going through incredible hormonal shifts as well as healing your body ( both internally and externally). Having lack of sleep and fighting an identity crisis can also add to the emotional roller coaster of this time. I remember as I toggled with my new role, I kept telling myself "Okay, by six weeks I will start feeling like myself again". Six weeks came and I still was not feeling like myself so I told myself, "12 weeks must be it!"

Although to my surprise, I never did feel exactly like myself again but, that was the whole point. I was never going to be that same girl again. Birth and postpartum had broken me down mentally and physically but, I had a whole tiny being depending on me and I had to keep going. Meanwhile, you get one six week check up to make sure you are "physically" cleared and that is the last time you will be checked in on. Yes you're right, at the first pediatrician appointment and the six week check up you are given the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale questionnaire. Did you know this scale was created in 1987?! Jump scare! Society can sometimes make postpartum women feel forgotten.

The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale questionnaire is 10 questions... they think that is enough to gauge if you're suffering from depression. I remember one of the questions asking if you felt like you cried frequently...YES, of course I am crying! The baby is crying, he isn't sleeping, my boobs hurt, my stomach feels weak, and the brain fog is intense. Unless you seek professional mental health help on your own terms, society deems you "healthy" at your six week appointment! This is why so many women suffer in silence because we are just expected to handle everything, despite how we feel, because we are MOM.

While it can be discouraging that society looks over the Fourth Trimester, you can still find some beauty through the struggle which, is your own transition. . Your transition is something deeper than surface level. It is something quiet, an invisible shift that happens somewhere between the 2 a.m. feedings and sanitizing pump parts. Pieces of your old self start to fade and not in a tragic way, but in a soft dissolving, making room for something else. You will discover strength you didn’t know you had. You learn patience in places you never expected to find it. You start to see the world differently, through two tiny brown eyes that look just like yours. They remind you how beautiful the small things are. One day you will catch a glimpse of "her", the new you in the mirror. She looks tired, yes, but also grounded. It is in that moment you realize you weren’t just becoming a mom. You were becoming her.

When I think back to those early days, I used to see them as a blur. The sleepless nights, the crying (his and mine), the uncertainty that felt like it might swallow me whole. But now, I see them for what they were which was, the beginning of two lives. So if you’re in that season now, unsure and unsteady, just know that you’re not lost. You’re becoming.

Because motherhood isn’t the end of who you were it’s the beautiful rebirth of who you’re meant to be.