This week Penny and I had our six-week postpartum visit, marking the end of midwifery care for her and I. It was a true goodbye of sorts as I suspect this is our last baby. My drive felt laced with just the right amount of nostalgia and bittersweetness that only late August in Minnesota lends itself to. I drove through Uptown and noticed the usual yet still striking canopy of trees, rows of cars parked parallel alongside stucco duplexes and brick apartment buildings, including one that used to be home. It feels like yesterday and another life all at once, close enough to remember well and far away as a hundred years. Was it even real? Was I ever not a mother? But I can still recall other drives, under the same summer trees, a decade earlier and racked with anxiety that I’d never become a mother, my life’s calling. This day, returning, with my fourth baby, anxiety is replaced with something else: joy and immense gratitude. Life has carried me so far to get to this moment. A space can hold both beauty and pain, and old streets too can feel redeemed.
I pulled up to Roots, parking just out of eyeshot from the off-white fence I remember gripping during a contraction with Priscilla. Weren’t we just here having our first baby? And yes, in many ways we were, because it was only five years ago, but I’ve crossed oceans of experiences and lessons since then. A daughter first, then our wedding, a pandemic, an uprising, our first son, then surprise a second son one year later, lost friends and new ones, a new church community, another baby. Each of these years have been chock full, almost unimaginably so, but with each new child that has entered our family I’ve grown in wisdom and mostly as a surprise to me, grace and permission towards myself towards rest, towards acceptance, towards shades of gray.
Photos by Abby Jean Photography
My time in the city before was heavily marked by the insane amount of hustle I put into building my photography business. I was determined to get to a place where I didn’t need a part time job to pay for essentials, so I worked nearly nonstop. I rarely granted myself rest, instead pouring glasses of wine or cold brew and editing late into the evening. I fixated on my goals, obsessively so. At the time I called my work my baby. I wanted a family and the life I have now, even if it felt out of step with the culture. I didn’t have the time to rest, I never granted myself permission.
After Priscilla was born, I steeled to prove to myself a few things: that I was a capable mother and that nursing would go well. Her first weeks of life were a sleepless delusion, I had too much pride from my experiences in childcare to think that mothering a newborn would be tricky. After having Langston in 2020, I vowed I’d have a better experience and focused on gentle sleep training, resulting in better rest for our whole family. With each birth I’ve learned I need to prepare for after baby is born as much as I do birth.
Postpartum, for me, feels like an inbetween—I am leaning into the mother baby dyad of early sleepless days and also the no longer pregnant body. Our entire family is adjusting to adding a new member. In this space I have learned to release myself from the shame of being able to ask for help. With our third baby we hired a postpartum doula, and worked with Better Beginnings again this time. I recognize that postpartum care in our country is nonexistent, broken, and that the ability to have an extra set of hands is a gift not available to everyone. I will also say that for mothers like me, there is often shame in this reality, that can result in feeling silenced. Being able to have a bit of extra help is something I’ll never not be grateful for, and unfortunately feeling badly because I can have help isn’t going to change another mother’s situation. I long for our culture to have more honest conversations around this topic without pitting women against one another, and for every mother to have the support she needs.
Our doula Karen arrived a few days after Penny was born. I’ve shared my birth story before, but it was the most challenging of all four. I was in pain and wasn’t able to leave my bed much in the first few days. The care that Karen provided was critical and greatly appreciated. She was instrumental in helping me figure out my new pump, nursing, making sure I ate quality meals and snacks, and that I rested. All of this aided in making this my smoothest postpartum experience of all four. So much of motherhood is truly selfless and requires a radical self-sacrificing. I’ve learned to balance this Holy truth with caring for myself. I know my children benefit from a mother who is as well as she can be.
I suspected, and had found out that I was right, that early support that didn’t feel like a burden to someone else would be incredibly helpful to getting life with a new baby off on the right foot. Karen helped us tremendously during our first week with Penny. The transition to four children made much smoother.
