Meredith Hagner

Meredith Hagner Instagram – (I wrote this to a friend who was nervous about motherhood and I thought I’d share it here because why not) I wanted to share my experience of the transition to the “other side”with you.everyone’s is singular, no ones is the same but man do I wish I heard more than one dimensional platitudes about the transition to becoming “mom”. I don’t think I ever did, and if I did I didn’t properly hear it. So I’ll write something so will either serve you or not. If it doesn’t, throw it away. If it does serve you, pass the honesty along in your own words and your own experience when you are watching your 2 year old sleep, on the other side, to another future mom. We need more radical honesty in motherhood. Here we go.
When your baby born, you are reborn. This time as a mother. The essence of who you are, all the magic that makes you so singularly YOU is there but she might be a stranger to you for a little while. There’s a new stranger attached to you both physically and energetically, and the you that has been 36 years in the making will exist in a different energy entirely. She exists in The surreal portal of the universe that is: newborn. In the late nights, and the cracked nipples, and the flabby stomach. The baby screaming bloody murder and you can’t figure out why. Of course it’s full of blissful moments but we don’t need to talk about that here because society gives us that narrative. Isn’t it bliss” “arent you obsessed” “arent you in love” people would say, and I would look back with a dumb blank face feeling like I was a horrible mother for not feeling that instantaneously. And yet, now that my son is 2 I have romanticized those early days so much that I find myself saying the same saccharine oversimplifications which in no way connect to the authentic experience of a wildly nuanced and complex time. I felt so lonely and tired in those early days. And I wish someone had told me how normal that is, and how it’s no way indicative of the mother I would be. (Continued in comments) | Posted on 30/Nov/2023 01:44:40