The Untold Birth Experience of a Mother Story

More Than Just A Birth Story

When a child is born, a mother is born also.

It sounds poetic, like it should feel instantaneous. But no one tells you about postpartum emotions and how disorienting that truth can be — how you will never be the same human again after your first birth experience. From body, to hormones, to brain, to soul: you are remade.

I didn’t know that then.

8 months pregnant and excited to be a Mama

At 38 weeks, I jumped off a rock wall and hours later, my water broke. Contractions came like hurricanes, tearing through me faster than I could catch my breath. I had prepared with ice baths, doula meetings, candles, oils, playlists; and because of this, I told myself I was ready. Everything was going to go to plan...

Hahaha! (They say make a plan and God laughs...) Well, God laughed. Nothing went to plan.

"My body roared without me – and yet, there was grace."

My doula fell ill and had to send in a stranger substitute doula. My husband was unprepared and scrambling. The car ride to the hospital stretched on forever. By the time we arrived, I was crying out in sounds I didn’t recognize, stripped of control, reduced to survival. My body roared without me.

And yet, there was grace. The substitute doula arrived shortly after we did — Marilyn. Though I didn’t know her, she was the angel who steadied me during my birth experience. She cupped my face, breathed low “ooooo” sounds, pulled me back into my body. She helped me find control again.

Three hours of purple pushing, with barely 30 seconds of rest between surges, I was finally crowning. I don’t know how I made it through over 12 hours of labor like that. And when my baby finally arrived, there was deafening silence - she didn’t cry. She needed oxygen. So they took her away and placed tubes and wires where I thought I’d have skin and closeness. And that’s when the disorienting emotions after giving birth set in.

My daughter's first impression of this world

They say when a child is born, a mother is born also.

But I didn’t feel like a mother on that day. The day of my birth experience.

I loved her. I marveled at her. But the overwhelming tidal wave of motherhood I’d been promised? It wasn’t there within the overwhelm of my postpartum emotions. I did all the things — fed her, kissed every finger and toe, memorized every detail of her face — but it felt like duty, not yet identity in the midst of my postpartum blues.

This wasn't the motherhood I'd imagined. And I wasn't sure who I was anymore.

When we came home, reality pulled me under like a riptide, with no hope of surfacing any time soon. My daughter didn’t smile until she was four months old, and even though I couldn't say it out loud, the after birth emotions I was dealing with made motherhood hurt up until that moment. She resisted holding, struggled to latch, wailed if I wasn’t near. I had no peace unless she slept. I resented my husband’s freedom to work, to feel purposeful, while I was stuck at home, disoriented, exhausted, dealing with my postpartum emotions, and becoming more bitter by the day.

My birth of a mother story

This wasn’t the motherhood I’d imagined. And after my birth experience, I wasn’t sure who I was anymore.

They say when a child is born, a mother is born also.

But the truth is, her birth is just beginning. And like all births, it comes with a lot of new postpartum emotions: pain, transformation, and the pruning away of what was — to make space for what will be.

Thank you for reading my birth of a mother story. ✨

Next in the series → Synaptic Pruning: Why Motherhood Changes You Forever