Motherhood Musings: The Fourth Trimester by Jess Urlichs

From the moment I saw you everything made sense and nothing did. I had no idea how terrifying love could be.

How could I never imagine life before someone I just met?

But still the tears would come, I was told to be grateful a lot, as if I wasn’t. I was told to enjoy every minute and that they would be over before I knew it.

I felt guilty for not enjoying every moment. I waited for the weeks to swallow the days and the months to swallow the weeks until they were a pit in my stomach.

The days were still achingly beautiful though, just not all of them and that’s OK because I loved you all day long, even when blue there was still beautiful you.

I worried a lot, In fact, I didn’t even really like other people holding you, you felt safest in my arms. Yet when you woke my heart would do quick summersaults.

I didn’t have enough ointments to help, hot face cloths, cold gel pads, I wanted to feed you so badly, to look down and smile at you rather than straight ahead, rigid.

I started to accept the days of having nowhere to be, they stopped feeling like cancelled plans and I began to rest into it knowing in my heart that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. But I was still in disbelief that I was a mother now, infatuated with you but still a little dazed. I wondered when things would feel a bit more natural for me.

I would watch other mothers with their babies, I wondered if I would take you in my arms, predicting your movements like they did, opening myself up in the exact shape of your fall. I didn’t know that this was us already, that some things aren’t learnt, some just are.

“I’m fine”, I would say, always speaking for my future self.  

I’d beat the sun every morning, as it would stretch it’s arms I’d be imagining the moon. But I couldn’t fall asleep anymore, I sort of lay there with closed eyes in anticipation. Sleep trying to pull me down and my thoughts of you keeping me up.

Being a mother as well as a wife wasn’t as easy as I thought, why did the two feel so separate like my skin could only belong to one?

Comments felt more like prods, “how is he sleeping”, “how is the feeding”, “ohhh you’re on formula I see”, “You really should be doing this”. I wanted to unhook the words from under my ribs.

I felt everything so much more, maybe you do when you’re shedding the girl of yesterday, maybe you’re meant to. Not just the parts in the shade, but the amazing moments too, I felt them all. You can’t numb one thing if you want to feel the best of everything.

I was packing up and labelling boxes of myself and unpacking others, I was busy inside, changing and rearranging.

I felt like I had no right, because everything was so wonderful, how dare it rain inside when the sun is shining?

I wondered why people put frills around the fabric of early motherhood, yes, you were the best thing that ever happened to me, but the fourth trimester was hard. I know it was hard for you too.

There’s no way to describe it really.

But the irony is, neither of us could have gotten through it without each other.

Words by Jess Urlichs for DockATot

Follow Jess on Instagram - @jessurlichs_writer

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