They didn't need to warn me

You may have seen this blog post circulating around the Interwebs in the past few weeks, in which a new mom extols the virtues of new motherhood by lambasting the critics who had warned her it might be less than glamorous.

"They should've warned me that after all those hours of labor (half of which was with an epidural, which made things totally bearable), the first time I saw her face my heart would burst out of my chest and shatter onto the floor. They should've warned me that crying because you're happy is actually a thing, and it's a thing you can't control when you're a mommy and you behold the beauty in your arms."

It's beautiful. It also made me feel like I was being stabbed. 

See, they didn't need to warn me. I already knew that's what motherhood was supposed to be like. Every schmaltzy movie, every tearjerking Hallmark commercial, every sentimental essay had taught me how overwhelming the joy of motherhood would be.

They didn't need to warn me that motherhood is astonishingly sweet when it comes immediately and effortlessly. They didn't need to warn me that motherhood was supposed to instantly and irrevocably change me into a more selfless and nurturing version of myself.

I had always wondered how I would be transformed in those first few minutes in the delivery room, after I finally met my child for the first time. But instead I wasn't. I had been laying there for hours, dutifully pushing when I was told; you know how sometimes you go to the movies and there are so many previews you forget you're actually there to see a feature film? When he finally came loose from me that's how it was: I felt vaguely stunned that it had happened, that I had really just released a baby from inside me. Someone deposited him on my chest, facing away from me. "I can't see his face," I kept saying, trying to summon those mystical feelings of awe. Perhaps someone should have warned him: Just hours earlier he had been tucked away inside me, nestled away from our probing hands and prying eyes. He had descended not knowing what awaited him on the surface, armed only with his soft head and a loud cry to mark his arrival.

They didn't need to warn me that the only thing I was supposed to have trouble with was containing my exultation; I already knew that I was failing motherhood in so many ways. I didn't change a single diaper in the entirety of my hospital stay. I didn't lay awake at night and watch him sleep. I breastfed him for hours, but only because I sort of felt like: Well, someone should, right?

What they should've warned me was that I would still be a mother even if I didn't feel like one at first, that my baby wouldn't be able to tell that I was panicked and uncertain and scared out of my mind. That one day eons in the future I would step into his room at night just to see my boy's chest rise and fall inside his fleece pajamas and I would think to myself, "We made it." That I would kiss his cheeks a hundred times and mirror his goofy laugh and forgive myself for worrying I'd never treasure them. They should've warned me there were no medals for early motherhood, that it wasn't a race to love the fastest or the strongest. 

They didn't need to warn me that there would be hard moments where I wondered what I was doing at all and that there would be moments that shone with loveliness and pride; I already knew those things would be true. But they also didn't need to warn me that motherhood would feel so different than I expected, wild and complex and achingly sweet. I figured that out on my own.