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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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The First Year, The Second Time

Jun 23 Leave a Comment

The early-summer sun dips lower in the sky, casting the backyard in a golden glow. The last dregs of sunshine warm my legs as the breeze picks up, ruffling the hair on my arm, dancing among the leaves in the tree overhead. I drape a muslin blanket over the newborn snuggled on my chest, buying us a few more minutes before we need to go in.

My son is four days old, his legs still reflexively curled into his chest, hands up by his head, mouth wide open. His breathing is quick and shallow, then slow and deep, the rhythm of newborn life. I embed my nose into his blonde hair and trace my fingers along the swirl at the crown of his head. I breathe in deeply, drawing the elusive scent into my lungs. My heart swells and breaks at once, because I know that smell will soon fade from his scalp and from my memory.

I look up at my mom, who is sitting across from me at the patio table.

My plea breaks our companionable silence: “Please don’t let me forget how much I love this.”

***

My first child’s birth was smooth and uncomplicated. My postpartum experience with her . . . was not.

Selah cried constantly—through every diaper change, every time I set her down so I could use the bathroom, when I left the room for two minutes to find food. She even cried when I didn’t hold her the right way. When I laid her on my legs, she screamed. When I cradled her body in my arms, she howled. But when I hoisted her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, she lifted her head, opened her eyes, and gazed in wonder at the world, quiet now that she had gotten the one thing she wanted.

I struggled with debilitating pain for months on end, which left me traumatized and afraid to ever give birth again. New sources of pain sprang up every few months—my breasts and then my hands and then my hips.

Worry plagued me. Nearly every minute of every day, I wondered if my daughter was breathing, if she was bonding with me, if she was getting enough food. I worried about myself, too: Will I ever figure this out? Will I ever heal? Have I made a terrible mistake?

People say that once the pain of labor is over, you forget all about it. That’s how second and third and fourth babies are made.

I didn’t forget, though.

I didn’t forget the agony of labor, the trauma of postpartum, the deep ache that settled into my stomach from the constant dread that something terrible was going to happen on my watch.

The story I told myself during my daughter’s first year, and for too long after, was that I simply wasn’t cut out to care for a baby. I could be a mother; I was certain of that. Maybe not the best one, but a good one. And for as much as people knock the chaos of toddlerhood, Selah and I blossomed in it together. I would keep having babies, I thought, if I could go straight from the joy of pregnancy to the fun of having a two-year-old.

***

A few years later, when I’d had enough distance from the baby stage, I consented to doing it all again. My husband and I had always wanted more than one child, and neither of us felt called to pursue adoption. The only path to the family we envisioned involved another trek through infancy.

I got pregnant twice in quick succession—a miscarriage one month, a healthy pregnancy the next. Having a miscarriage stripped me bare and revealed just how much I did want another baby. I spent the first many months of my rainbow pregnancy feeling grateful and giddy, but as I waddled into the third trimester, something inside me flipped.

All the difficulty of Selah’s first year rose to the surface of my memories. The dread I thought I’d buried churned in my stomach, snaked its way into my chest and my throat, invaded my mind.

When people asked me if I was excited to have a newborn again, I answered honestly: “No.”

They’d laugh at my deadpan response, which I took as my cue to continue.

“I’m terrified, actually. Selah’s first year was hard, so very hard, and even though I know every baby is different, she is the only baby I’ve ever known, so I have no framework, no concept, no reason to believe that this baby could be different.”

Their laughter usually petered out into an awkward chuckle, and then they found someone less hormonal to talk to.

***

We didn’t get off to the best start, my son and I. With my daughter, I pushed for less than two hours, and many friends assured me that second babies tend to see themselves out within just a few contractions.

Instead, a nurse placed an oxygen mask on my face at the two-and-a-half-hour mark and told me I needed to get him out for both our sakes. The next part she didn’t say aloud, but I felt it in the set of her eyes and the tone of her voice: I was close to an emergency C-section.

Twenty minutes later, my son slipped out of me, my whole body trembling with weariness and relief and terror. Eamon took his first breath, which turned into his first scream, and then the doctor placed him on my skin.

He quieted instantly. He laid his head on my chest like he knew he was home, and it’s been his favorite place ever since.

After my second birth, I recovered quickly, with minimal pain and no complications. Eamon nursed easily and frequently and was happy to be held or placed in the swing or left in his crib while I showered. He had (and still has) the sunniest temperament—he’s so happy that he sometimes seems more like a cartoon character than a real baby.

Every sweet moment with my second baby brought me right back to the sweet moments I had my first—the ones that had been overshadowed by the trauma. I recalled the hours I spent laying on the couch the winter my daughter was born, watching The Great British Baking Show while she snoozed on my chest. I remembered gazing at her while she nursed and how bewildered I felt that my body could sustain and nourish her. I relived the pride that surged through my veins the first time she rolled over, pulled up to standing, took independent steps.

The first year with Eamon was still hard, of course—the first year is always chaotic and overwhelming, even with an “easy” baby. He didn’t nap consistently until he was six months old, and I spent hours rocking him in the glider, walking with him in the baby carrier, patting his bottom, willing him to sleep. He was uncharacteristically grumpy for weeks at a time when he’s cutting a tooth or going through a developmental leap. He is high energy, and in the span of one month, he learned to sit up and then crawl and then climb the stairs, causing me some maternal whiplash. I struggled under the weight of being needed by two tiny people at the same time. Postpartum depression buried me in darkness for weeks at a time.

But when I look back on the first year with him, the tint of my lens is not gray but rose gold.

Perhaps the difference in my perception is less about Eamon’s temperament and more about the perspective I earned in my first year as a mother. Back then everyone told me that this too shall pass. That every hard thing ends, and so does every good thing. That we would arrive at some proverbial other side. I didn’t believe them.

The second time, though, this wisdom accompanied me through every moment—when I thought I might lose my mind if I didn’t get a few more minutes of sleep and when I melted the first time Eamon reached his arms out for me.

Every season truly, heartbreakingly, mercifully, ends.

***

My mom pulls her sweater a little tighter against the sudden chill and laughs at my request. She would love nothing more than a gaggle of grandchildren, but I know she is surprised to see me enjoying these hard days so thoroughly.

“I mean it,” I tell her. “When I wonder if I should have another baby, if I can really deal with the first year again, remind me that moments like this make every night waking and every stitch and every moment of exhaustion worth it. Remind me that even though I think I’m not a baby person, I am. I so hopelessly am.”

I tuck my son’s pajama-laden feet into the blanket, longing to hold on to this moment just a little longer, not willing to admit that time is already passing at an astonishing rate. If I had a magic wand, I would wave it and set up camp right here in this liminal space.

The sun finally plunges beneath the horizon, and an inky twilight envelopes us. I rise from my chair, open the back door, and step inside.


Want more pregnancy and postpartum reflections?
My book Expecting Wonder explores the spiritual, emotional, and identity-level transformation women experience as they become mothers. You can order the book from Amazon or from your favorite retailer.

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Filed Under: Motherhood Tagged With: babies, contentment, family, motherhood, newborn, parenting, postpartum, pregnancy

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
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✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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