In a lovely essay adapted from her journals, the novelist Elizabeth Berg described waking up in the mornings following her daughter's birth and automatically putting her hand to her stomach, looking for her pregnant shape. "I worry about you, lost-looking in a crib that seems gigantic. I check on you a million times a day as you sleep there, your head nudged into the corner of the bumper pad. Is it familiar to you, that feeling of having your head pressed against something? Is that why you determinedly make your way there, regardless of where in the crib I lay you down? I am glad to have you out in the world with me at last, but sometimes we miss the way we used to be. Thus it is that I wake up and put my hand to my empty womb; thus it is that you inch your way up toward a memory, seeking a kind of solace in your sleep. We have not left pregnancy behind completely, either of us. We remember together."
21As clear and keen as mothers are about their birth experiences, most of them claim a kind of amnesia about their first weeks at home. I certainly have no memory of what I did all day when Maddie was a week or two old. I see myself shuffling around our tiny apartment, various pads shifting and rustling like the soughing of some big tired tree. I do remember that I found a pile of neatly folded burping cloths in the refrigerator one morning and that having a conversation complete with adverbs and adjectives was practically impossible. And, like many moms I spoke to, I rarely knew if it was day or night.
"I actually didn't remember certain visitors who came by to see me," my friend Nicole told me, which was no surprise, because I had been one of them. What was truly amazing, however, was how energized and alert she had seemed when I stopped by -- only a few hours after she had given birth to twins. "I can't believe how great you seem," I had gushed, admiring her beautiful rosy cheeks and glowing eyes.
"I feel good," she said. And then proceeded to make a fuss over the gift I had brought. She even volunteered to walk me down the hallway to see the babies, but I insisted she rest. "I actually have a lot of energy!" she chirped. Now I know that we were conversing in her dreams.
For many moms, elation, relief, and an energy high make the initial postpartum period far better than they had anticipated. Kathleen, who gave birth to her son on a beautiful California Christmas Day, ascribed her "intense euphoria" to feeling cleansed of the hormones that had made her nauseated for nine months. "I never felt better in my life than I did that day and in the weeks that followed. I would wake up at night and be soaked with perspiration, but I felt as though all of the bad stuff that had made me sick was being flushed out of me. And during the days, I was so up and happy -- it was wonderful."
Elise, also a California mom, found that "the euphoria lasted for days." Having been told that she would want to sleep and sleep, Elise was too excited to close her eyes. "I would just wake up and look at Ella and want to hold her. She slept so much that when she woke up and looked around, it was so exciting. I didn't want to miss it."
Notes
21. Elizabeth Berg, “ ‘I Can’t Believe You’re Here!’: A New Mother’s Diary,” Parents, April 1992, pp. 98–102.Excerpted from 'The 7 Stages of Motherhood' by Ann Pleshette Murphy. Copyright © 2004 by Ann Pleshette Murphy. Excerpted by permission of Anchor, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
