The Fourth Trimester

It's a slow adjustment, from my old identity to this new identity as Beckilina the mother. 

I forget sometimes. 

When I'm absorbed in a discussion about Burmese politics, or when I phone the doctor and have to say, "my 3-month old son," I wonder, could it possibly be that I have a 3-month old son? It was similar when I was pregnant, I didn't quite feel I had the right to say, "I'm pregnant." I often felt like I needed permission, and asserting it somehow felt like the beginning of being able to embrace it, to make it real. Perhaps this was also tied up in how few people ever saw me during pregnancy. In the COVID restrictions, I was only ever seen as a disembodied head and shoulders on zoom.  

When I was in the hospital for that searing, blistering week post-birth, the midwives kept calling us "mum." We were a sea of women, who come into the ward in waves, but to them we were all "mums". "Would mum like a cup of tea? Is mum ready for a rest? How's mum doing today?" As though the hospital was trying to ground us to our new identities, help etch this new self onto us. Remind us that we were now mothers. After two anxious nights in intensive care, my little man and I were able to be together for our first night. We were in a ward with three other screaming babies. I hadn't slept for three days and my scar ached when I moved. I fell into a slumber so deep that when I heard my little man cry, I dismissed it, thinking it must be the baby next door. The midwives woke me, telling me they would feed him (he was still feeding through a tube in his nose). I can't imagine sleeping through little man's cries now. My breasts bring milk regularly at 3-hour intervals ready for him to feast. And just before he cries I feel the milk coming in, soaking my top. 

And yet, the mother part is still not quite there yet. Or she is, but she exists in a vacuum. She is not integrated to the other parts of myself. As social beings we create ourselves in relation to others - and lockdowns make relationships virtual. We do not meet anyone in real life. It is just me, the grandparents and my best childhood friend next door. I remind myself I am lucky to have three people in my bubble. How luxurious compared to those entirely on their own. How lucky compared to single mothers. And yet, there is something eerie about the fact that just as almost none of my friends ever saw me pregnant, none of my friends see me struggling with this first few months of mothering. Months run by quickly in the real world - but here they are drawn out. Every hour is distinct. Every moment with my little man feels new. 

He is hot and sweet smelling and chubby with his rolls of fat and double chin. I drink him in. He turns to my voice and I turn to his cry as though we are still part of each other. He is learning this world and so too, I am re-learning the world. Just as I am learning to nurse, he is learning to feed. He is learning to be a son and I am learning to be a mother. And so too, we are learning to be separate beings. 

At night we sit in darkness, with a red light and a Ewan the sheep heartbeat, the backdrop to our quiet night feeds. Since Da Berg is up in London with the flat, it is just us in that hushed darkness. Once, I use to watch Netflix or listen to podcasts, but now, I sit in half sleep marvelling at this child. He flings his head around searching for me and the breast can calm him when everything else has been tried and found wanting. I'm told the oxytocin in your blood, released during breastfeeding makes it easier to manage the mundanity, the relentlessness. Just as one nappy change ends, a new one begins. The oxytocin is also suppose to make you better at reading expressions, all the better to read your child. I do find it joyous to watch him kicking half naked on his change mat. Other than at the breast, there is nowhere he is happier, feeling his legs, feeling his body. I try to lie him in the sun, by the patio door, where he can look out (and pee across the carpet or his mother). His Mor Far sings him Norwegian nursery rhymes on his knee. His Grandma takes him round the house at sunset every night "to do our work" of closing all the curtains in the house. Between 4 and 6pm is his grumpiest time. Often I throw him into his sling and bounce him around, climbing up and down the stairs, or taking him in his pram out for a walk. It is the same walk I have walked every single day since September. It is dull and yet, it is a path through trees and greenery and I am grateful to watch the sky change and to hear the birds sing and to relish the weather and seasons changing. My childhood friend and I use to go, escaping our parents homes, as though we had reverted to teenagers again. Teenage 38-year olds. Both stranded by COVID. Both in half transitions, awaiting our 'real life' to begin again. 

And when will we leave this chrysalis? The flat refurbishment draws on, slow and steady. Da Berg and his brother pick away at the mound of tasks, slowly ticking them off. Yet, like Sisyphus, when we look up, there's always so much still to do - the underfloor heating, the bathroom, the kitchen. But, I'm content here in this space of transition. Grateful to my parents. In love with this child. Playing out my fourth trimester for all its worth.