I'll be right there.

The dichotomy and dysmorphia of postpartum.

In the week after I gave birth, I obsessively stared at my midsection, lifting my shirt to get a better look each time I passed the mirror. With sick fascination, I watched my pregnant belly deflate like a lingering birthday balloon. What took nine months to grow into a big, round house for my baby was rapidly being reduced to just another hum drum internal organ in a matter of days.

I remember having the same preoccupation with my first pregnancy, watching in real time as my body quickly reassembled itself like a transformer. The capabilities of the (female) human body are beyond comprehension. Like my last postpartum experience, I felt impatient for my body to prove itself even more bionic than it already was.

Postpartum is a period of extreme discomfort, not only in physical recovery but, perhaps, more so in mental and emotional reconstruction. My squishy outer layer of floof is an anatomical manifestation of a limbo where I don’t know who I am anymore, and not yet who I will become.

I’m too small for my maternity clothes, too big for my pre-pregnancy clothes, and nowhere near the same shape as before I had any children at all.

Who am I now? Who will I be when I emerge from the fog a second time? After my first, I made it out of the baby phase and into toddlerhood with my identity mostly in tact and, as for the parts that changed, I like to think they’re better. But, could I be so lucky again? It was, perhaps, my greatest fear in having another child. I proved an ability to maintain my identity with a plus one. But, with two? An all consuming experience of “mama needs her wine” motherhood seemed unavoidable.

Newborns are all consuming … and so are toddlers. Now, I have both and I’m too tired for wine.

After having my son, it took literal years to cultivate a daily routine that allowed me enough freedom to feel like ME again. And now, that carefully constructed Jenga-level world has been knocked over by the inconsistent and dramatic extremes of newborn life. I’ve reset the clock. Postpartum, no matter how many times you find yourself here, is a volatile rollercoaster of expansion and contraction –– a constant pulsation of too much and too little, but never enough.

Less time. Fewer showers. Less clothes. Little space. Less modesty. Decreased brain cells.

More texts. More tears. More food. More coffee. More couch. More perspective.

Everyone says I’m in the thick of it. At my six week check up, the doctor told me this was the hardest part. “You must be exhausted,” people cluck. Even if it’s over a text message, surely they must know it because of how tired I look, even without seeing my face in their Instagram feed. I am exhausted. I don’t shower every day. Nights can seem endless. I’m resentful that, once again, I wasn’t blessed with a “good sleeper.”

The diametric opposition of the increased demands of others with dwindling amounts of yourself to go around has me repeating, “I’ll be right there,” all day long.

My toddler. The baby. My husband. A text thread. An email. The Zoom meeting. A laundry pile. The full dishwasher. An overflowing trashcan. A crumby carseat. An invitation to socialize. My closet of beautiful clothes. “Hang tight. I’ll be right there.”

I’m faced with a daily challenge of my own scarcity. Each day a bit trickier than the last. I contain multitudes, but it doesn’t feel like much when it’s all spread so thin.

It’s as much as I expected. Though I wish it were not the case, I spent most of my pregnancy riddled with anxiety at the prospect of the very reality I’m experiencing. Everything was in such a good place. I had a handle on all of it. How could I deal with the impending chaos and havoc I was purposely wreaking on our family, and onto my own sense of self?

“But, it’s a good chaos,” the internet #mamasphere reassures me. The happy, messy, sticky pile of children, their bodily fluids and their STUFF. Sacrificing a tidy home, nice things, and a sense of freedom for the sake of a family is the supposed meat of a life we’re sold, and I’m expected to embrace it because what’s the alternative? Stressing out about it? I don’t buy it.

I don’t like chaos. There, I said it. Coachella is a good kind of a chaos, and even that wasn’t totally for me.

I have a Virgo moon! I don’t care for limbo. I cringe at mess. I don’t like uncontrollable situations. I don’t need to embrace it, but I do need to accept it. Maybe even relinquish control –– just a little bit. Growth and expansion come from disruption, even when it seems to make everything feel smaller at first.

But, I need to let the old mom of one go, just as I allowed the childless me to be packed away into organized digital Facebook photo albums. Perhaps my reticence is rooted in the fact that being a mom of one child was a fleeting identity. I barely got to know that person, who mostly existed within the lonely confines of pandemic isolation. She was just starting to find herself, and now she’s gone. Scroll down my Instagram profile long enough and you’ll find her. It almost feels like she was never here, and that makes me sad. She endured so much, only to be a pit stop. I don’t know that it ever won’t feel that way.

I don’t need to be happy about it all the time. Having to start over again, in any way, sucks. But, I should be open to evolving into this new, expanded, and more refined version of myself. She seems very fuzzy and deflated to me right now, but I have to remember this is a familiar place. I was here once before and eventually came into focus and felt filled up again.

It just takes time. And chaos –– both the good and bad kind. I don’t know exactly who she’ll be, but I’d like to tell her, “I’ll be right there.”