A few hours postpartum, still lost in a kind of fog after a birth that left me full of questions.
– Congratulations! What’s it like to be a mom?
I remember reading this sentence on my phone and not really understanding what I was being asked. Am I a mom? Well yes, I guess it was the next logical step after the last 10 months.
I was ready for it. I studied, had stable job, the house, the dog, the marriage… and the kids, right? That was the next step.
I looked at my brand-new baby in the hospital and remember all too well the feeling of watching someone else’s life. I oscillate between this love and fascination for this little being and total incomprehension of what I’ve just experienced. I don’t know this postpartum body, I don’t know this mother.
I’ve lost all my bearings. Everything has to be relearned. They didn’t tell us that in prenatal classes.
What’s it like to be a mom?
For now, I’m finding it difficult, I’m aching all over and part of me is thinking: what have we done? It’s all too big. I feel dizzy.
I felt like I’d come out of the fog several months later, but one question persisted.
Who am I now? I’m a mom.
But is the person I was before still there? I’m inhabited by the impression that she no longer exists.
And so began a long quest, a search for identity that was accentuated by the return to work. This impression of walking through someone else’s life.
One day, I came across the podcast, La matrescence, and I finally understood what I’d been going through for months.
Matrescence – noun
Physical and psychological transformation experienced by a woman during her transition to motherhood.
Physical and psychological transformation experienced by an individual during the transition to parenthood. Because, yes, fathers experience this transition too!
The concept was first studied by anthropologist Dana Raphaël. She describes matrescence as a rite of passage.
Changes occur in a woman’s physical state, in her status within the group, in her emotional life, in her daily activity, in her own identity and in her relationships with all those around her through new motherhood.
I was prepared for everything but that.
What’s it like to be a mom?
My answer has evolved so much over the last few years. After 5 years, I’ve found my bearings. I found an inner strength I didn’t know I had, and an unshakeable desire to walk alongside new parents in this transcendent experience.
A community, a network to lean on, makes all the difference.
It takes a village, but where are we going to find it in 2024?
We’re building it.
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