Confessions of a New Mother - The Joyful Sadness of Labor

The MotherHood: Vulnerable Stories from Powerful Mothers

Confessions of a New Mother - The Joyful Sadness of Labor

Written by Ilana Shapiro Yahdav, MPA, ACGRS

Becoming a mother is one of the best things I have ever experienced. Maybe even the best. It is also, literally the hardest, most challenging thing I have experienced. I know I’m not alone in these feelings.

As a grief specialist, I recognize all the grief in motherhood. Grief is the normal and natural reaction to the loss of any kind and the conflicting emotions around the beginning/end/change in any normal pattern of behavior (Grief Recovery Institute). Hello motherhood!!

Like grief, the array of emotions of motherhood is not talked about as much as it should. I can understand why. We don’t want to sound ungrateful or like “bad mothers” for not loving every second. The presence of conflicting emotions in parenthood is the elephant in the room.

As a new mom, despite understanding the grieving experience, it was - has - been a struggle to process the many seemingly conflicting emotions. It has been a challenge to allow myself to be okay with the fact that I do not enjoy every second of motherhood and that that does not make me a bad mom, but a normal mom. I love my children with every fiber of my being AND sometimes need to go to the bathroom alone for one minute without any cuties joining me.

I believe it’s incredibly important for us to share - in a safe environment - all our feelings, not only to feel less alone but to encourage and give space to others to share what's on their mind and heart. So, here I go.

It was love at first listen.

The first time that I heard my daughter’s heartbeat, I was smitten. I didn’t know she was a ‘she’ yet, but I knew I was in love. I knew I couldn’t wait to meet her, hold her, and experience all the things with her. I was finally going to get to be a mom, something I had always wanted to be. I didn’t even mind that I was starting my family at the ripe-old advanced maternal age of 37 (doctor’s words, not mine). My girl was healthy and that was all that mattered to me.

It was not love at first sight.

Like in any new relationship, it took time to blossom fully and hasn’t stopped since. I did love her immensely and my heart did explode when I met her. But, when I first laid eyes on her in the NICU, I did not feel that “momma gravitational pull” I always imagined. I assumed when my baby was born, I would be madly in love, that my heart would recognize her, and I would see her - even in a room full of babies - and know she was mine.

This was not the case. When they wheeled me into the NICU, I had NO idea which little shriveled prune was mine. Total panic ensued. Under all the wires and medical equipment, they all looked the same, like tiny little aliens. I remember feeling this awful pang in my heart that I was already failing as a mom. What kind of mother doesn’t recognize her own baby?

How could I not recognize my own baby?

Is it because she came early and I only carried her for 8 months? Was I already failing my baby? (To be fair, they literally let me hold her for a second before they whisked her away and rushed her to the NICU. How was I supposed to recognize her when I barely got to meet her?)

Enter all berating thoughts and negative self-judgment. Funny how it didn’t take long for those feelings to start. One of the group leaders in my mommy groups always said that “guilt is born with the placenta.” She couldn’t have been more correct.

When I first got to hold my baby girl in the NICU, I was terrified. She was so tiny. So quiet. She was covered with all kinds of wires and blinking things that made awful noises if you moved in a certain way.

I did love that we had matching bracelets that sang each time we got near each other. So, even if I didn’t recognize her, at least my bracelet did.

Did my body fail her?

Why did my water break? Why was she born a month early? Why did she go into fetal distress and have to be vacuumed out? Why didn’t she cry? Did you know that not all babies cry when they are born? I didn’t.

You could hear a pin drop when she was born. All the doctors were busy at work on both my baby and me.

That first hour, which I had imagined would be a joyful one of us snuggling and getting acquainted, was terrifying. I had no idea what was going on. I was holding onto my husband tightly while it took my doctor the better part of the hour to sew me up from all the trauma.

When the pediatric ER doctor walked in, eyes looking somber and asking me how I was, my heart dropped. He let us know that she was okay - thank goodness - she just needed help breathing. There were a few other complications that they couldn’t quite explain, but he assured me that I could see her once they were done putting me back together.

She was alone hooked up to all kinds of wires. Again, that awful pang in my heart that I was failing as a mom and I had not even left the hospital yet.

The breastmilk saga.

My heart re-shattered (who knew that your heart could break so many times, in so many ways, in such a short period?!) when I found out that the first breast milk my baby had, was not mine. My body, which had nourished her this long, was not going to continue to do so right away.

It stung harshly and deeply. And, I’m very grateful to the generous mom who donated her milk so that my preemie could be fed liquid gold in those early days. Intellectually, I know that it doesn’t really matter who the milk came from. Setting the ego aside, she was nourished which is all that matters, but I really struggled with sitting with those juxtaposing emotions and feeling like a failure. The hormones, the exhaustion, and the shock of a preemie baby with a 5-day stay in the NICU were a lot to navigate.

In my heart though, it felt like another momma fail to add to an already growing list.

Hello to parenthood, the emotional roller coaster of a lifetime.

Fed is best.

While my girl was in the NICU, we tried nursing many times. Needless to say, it did not go well. We were both in tears. I had multiple hospital lactation consultants give advice which was not helpful as they all contradicted each other. They all agreed, however, that I should pump every two hours for 20 minutes.

My body desperately wanted - needed - sleep, but I listened to them and not my body. After all, I thought, I was a new mom and admittedly knew nothing about pumping and nursing. Weren’t they the experts?

However, I am the expert on my body, and it was at this moment that I started to realize the importance of listening to my body, myself, and my intuition in motherhood. (Still working on this one - but in my exhausted state, it was a profound thought. Awareness is the first step. Acting on it is the next.).

This was the start of my intense pumping journey. I dutifully pumped around the clock feeling so guilty that I couldn’t nurse. There is little sense of control in motherhood and I grasped at pumping as a way to find a modicum of it. In fact, I think it is how I coped with my postpartum anxiety - I focused my energy on how many ounces I pumped. I pumped a lot and often and missed out on a lot of time with my baby. I was proud to make sure she was fully breastfed even if we couldn’t nurse.

In retrospect, I don’t really know what I had imagined labor would be like, but it was definitely not what I ended up experiencing. I’m so grateful - and I’m so hurt- that my baby got donor breast milk while in the NICU. My new momma heart ached.

I know not everyone’s story looks like mine. We all have our own unique birthing experiences sprinkled with aspects that anyone giving birth can relate to. All feelings are valid. All experiences are valid. The non-linear journey of motherhood is full of a wide array of emotions.

I’ve had to grieve what I thought birth and meeting my baby would be like. I had to grieve thinking I would be able to nurse her.

A powerful lesson that is constantly reinforced for me is how so many seemingly conflicting emotions can and do exist in the same space. The feeling of utter joy and total sadness can exist in the same moment and there’s nothing abnormal about it. It’s totally okay to feel all that we feel and not judge ourselves.

I’m constantly working to remember this and extend the same loving compassion to myself as I would to my loved ones. It’s a work in progress, and that too, is okay.

Ilana Yahdav is a certified motherhood coach, grief educator, speaker, writer, and CEO of The Non-Linear Journey. As a mother of two young children, she combines her expertise and experience to guide moms through motherhood's physical and emotional transformations—from embracing their new identity to grieving the life they've left behind. With gentle humor and deep empathy, Ilana makes challenging topics approachable by creating a safe and supportive environment.

You can connect with her at: www.thenonlinearjourney.com