Mom-life and inner change

I had a baby a month ago, and in a lot of ways I don’t feel that different. This surprised me at first. I had heard that as soon as I gazed upon my newborn, something would irrevocably alter in the architecture of my heart. I would hear trumpets, or maybe harps, and after the colored smoke swirled away I would know True Love as a mother. But no, I’m pretty much the same person, just with a lot of new things on my to do list. To be frank, that’s a relief. I like who I am. I spent years growing into that person and to hear that it could change all at once because a baby showed up made my nose crinkle.

It’s supposed to be like this, right?

Reporting from the front lines, changes in these early days are no less profound but seem to begin from the external. The way a new parent organizes their time is very different by necessity. I left for the hospital with a life that revolved around the twin poles of a job I love and a web of  important relationships. I came back and work is set on pause, and my energy is focused on one very singular relationship with a sometimes-sleepy sometimes-screaming little creature who requires a unidirectional flow of care and constant attention.

A big portion of my days is spent doing the simple and repetitive tasks of feeding, holding, and soothing the baby. This is a disorienting and humbling mode shift for those of us used to spending our days in knowledge-based work. Instead of using all the parts of my brain involved in problem-solving and communication, I am fumbling through the neonatal decision tree of “is his diaper full? Is he hungry? Or perhaps lonely?” All with a human siren wailing in my ear, letting me know just how often I am getting it wrong.

You too can be an aggregate rainbow of layered experiences!

Stratified Soil by Angeles Pomato.

Maybe this is how a shift in identity will happen, by building something new from the ground of who I am rather than happening all at once. Some part of my brain sees me feeding him again and knows, I wouldn’t be doing this all damn day (and night) if it didn’t matter. The bedrock of myself is the same, but the hours I spend each day attending to my son’s needs are working in my brain to create this new facet of me called “parent.” 

So maybe how we spend our time begets identity, and percolating upward, the identities we construct then change and rearrange our values. Or to put it in another way, the way I spend my time creates my idea of who I am, which inspires commitment to what’s important to me. My husband’s cousin told him, “When you become a dad, you become a dad to the world”, reflecting the tendency many new parents note of becoming more aware of the needs of others, even beyond their own child. The clear fact that we are part of the succession of life (and in particular this new life, right in front of us) is one way that new parents feel this tilting towards new values that expand us.

Like most life transitions, new parenthood sometimes sucks. But my experience has been, and many of my clients echo, that our selves in ten years’ time are usually grateful to our selves in the present who are willing to take a leap. The frustration, repetition, and exhaustion might even be the active ingredients to the changes in self that I’m describing and observing from the inside out.