What I want my husband to understand about my motherhood

Here I am. Third trimester in the middle of a Mississippi summer, where the heat hit me hard and sent me indoors once depression and anxiety finally subsided.

Here I am. Scared for what life with two children under three will mean. Worried about what time and energy I will have for my writing and business in this coming year. Thinking that my husband couldn’t possibly understand or appreciate the magnitude of the changes that I’m undergoing.

Do you know what it’s like to have the insides of your body rearranged, to feel your mental acuity wavering, to experience the rewiring of your emotions, to live in a body that feels unfamiliar? All at the same time.

My heart beats faster and harder, pumping an extra 50 percent of blood through my body. I give off a ripe, earthy, animal smell. I am a body radiating primal scent signals of the regeneration of our species. My sense of smell intensifies, and I can smell myself all day, like an animal in heat answering her own call. Food tastes different. My areolas darken into chocolate targets. I grow thicker hair on my head and my body. I change shape and change underwear twice a day. My vagina feels swollen and heavy, like a soaked softball without its skin. I feel like I need to hold a catcher’s glove under it in case it falls to the floor. My pelvis feels like it might split open when I separate my legs to roll over in bed, spilling the secrets of the universe. I wake up coughing acid and run to the bathroom in case I throw up. My toes seize up like the gnarled feet of a dead chicken, and I stand next to the bed in the dark, waiting for softness to return.

I have no sexual desire. I’m being touched from the inside at all hours of the day. Do you know what it’s like to feel tiny hands fiddling with your cervix internally, a strange sensation of being touched somewhere “down there” but through layers deeper than you can even picture or name? A tiny cherubic harp player who lives in my uterus plucks away at my pelvic ligaments, composing aubades and nocturnes with the orchestra of my digestion. On the outside I’m being poked and petted by yogurt toddler hands, and the hands have started to absentmindedly pinch my nipples when the child gets overwhelmed in public.

Once the baby is born, a whole new line-up of sensations will be at the ready as my body learns to find itself again, hormones recalibrating and organs resizing and rehoming to old locations. My body will learn to function without the baby it protected and nourished for nine months, following a new set of rules about where blood and oxygen and nutrients go. My body will say goodbye to the new organ it grew for the sole purpose of giving life to that baby. I will bleed steady red for weeks from the wound where my placenta tore away from my uterine wall. My body will say hello to milk, and my breasts will swell up like heavy balloons filled with sand. I will wake in puddles of my own milky dreams, my breasts hard rocks strapped to my chest like ammo. I will bring my baby to my breast and sigh in relief as I feel the pressure draining, my barrels emptying.

I’m not complaining. I’m not even saying I wish it were any different. What I’m saying is “This is hard. Do you realize the magnitude of what I am experiencing and giving, what only female bodies can give?”

One night I tell my husband:

“I want acknowledgment for what I am giving to bear and raise our children, even if it’s what I wanted, even if it inspires me and challenges me and transforms me for the better in so many ways.”

He tells me:

“You are asking me to affirm things that I don’t have words for, affirming something that is at the very core of your womanly experience.”

Well, I’ll give you the words then, I say. I’ll have them on your desk by 8 a.m. And from henceforth you will know the words I need to hear. I will make a slice down the middle of my experience and show you the messy, glorious life at the core, at the cellular level. You will study it and learn it and be able to make a diorama of it like you’re a sixth-grade science student. You will carry it tenderly in your hands as you walk to class, holding steady its Reese’s cup nucleus, fruit-by-the-foot golgi appartus, and gummi worm endoplasmic reticulum. There will be no grade, but I will devour it and feel your love.

….

Here’s the love letter of appreciation and awe that I wrote to myself, from him. It’s cheesy and it’s shameless, but let’s face it, right now I want all the cheese (both literal and figurative). And I have zero time for shame.

Dear cas,

Love of my life, mother of my children, elegant lover, builder of worlds, gloriously unsilenced woman, FUN lady,

You are undergoing massive changes right now at every level–physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. These changes are all tied to carrying our child.

I know being a mother is something you always wanted and I know how much you love being given the gift to mother, but I just want to stop and say, WOW, you are giving so much of yourself to our family. It must be really disorienting to have such big shifts within you and outside you, to struggle to find a sense of self amidst a new mothering identity.

You deserve the space to write through these feelings and the time and financial resources to talk to counselors and wise women about your experiences. You deserve time to figure out what kind of support you need to feel whole in this time. These are major life transitions, and you are moving through them with courage and generosity of spirit. It is beautiful to see the woman you are becoming. I loved the woman you were, and I love the woman you are. You are working hard to become her with gratitude rather than resentment, with intention rather than blind inertia, with transformation and healing rather than brokenness. In all your becoming, I want you to know that I have always loved you exactly as you are.

I am in awe of the vibrance of your spirit and your endurance in your inner work.

You are willing to do the hard work of identifying and working through old wounds and inherited patterns in order to free yourself and our family from that pain. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where your individual work ends and the work you do in order to be a healthier mother and wife begins. In these years, it all feels so intimately connected, and you weave the web of that connection with so much care and love.

I see you as a woman. I see you as a mother. I see you as a lifemate. And I see how in these years it can be so difficult to separate any of those parts from each other and to figure out, “Where am I? Who am I? When all the doing of these roles ends, who is there at the end of the day?” I will stand by you and remind you whenever possible of the woman I see in front of me: resilient, brave, passionate, deeply sensitive, intentional, kind, patient, perceptive, creative. A woman with radical vision and a powerful voice. A sanctuary builder. A transformation warrior with a sense of awe and gratitude. A goddess walking toward the light.

I appreciate all the changes you are navigating in your body to grow and birth our child.

I appreciate that you have to contend with hormone fluctuation, which can sometimes make you feel unstable, less resilient, and more vulnerable to the world. You have no control over these changes, and that must be scary. You are brave and so strong. You find ways to meet these new challenges and devote significant energy to maintaining the support that helps you be a loving, secure mom to our child. You are resourceful and determined.

The power of your body, along with your initiative and willpower, WOW me and make me so proud to be your partner.

As your body changes in pregnancy, you work hard to grow with healthy movement that maintains your circulation, your body awareness, and the confidence that your body is capable and strong. That’s hard to do when every day seems to bring some kind of bodily discomfort–joint pains, acid reflux, a butt pushing your rib cage, a little hand punching your cervix. The couch and bed are so comfortable and inviting, but you get up and sit on your birth ball and go through your Spinning Babies routine even when you don’t feel like it. You amaze me. 

You were picking up momentum and purpose in your work of writing, teaching, and speaking when this pregnancy began. You faced physical challenges, anxiety, and depression, and knew yourself well enough to know that cutting back on your work commitments would benefit your health. I know that felt like a loss for you. You were just coming into your own in your new business and were full of energy and enthusiasm. In your self-awareness and wisdom, you made a choice based on what you knew was needed, and you followed through with your plan with confidence and courage. I saw your heart breaking, though. My plans and dreams continued, and you put yours on pause.

Only you can carry and nourish this baby.

Only you can rest your body and quiet your heart to build the peaceful womb sanctuary where you want our baby to grow. I will never experience what it is like to be so fully needed. I will never experience what it is like to feel my body and inner life drastically restructured for the survival of our child. The personal sacrifices you made to give our baby what he needed–while also caring for our older son–are far-reaching. They can’t be quantified. They can’t all be verbalized. It is a gift that no one can wrap in a box or seal in a greeting card. It is the unreturnable, irreplaceable gift of a mother, but it cannot be taken for granted.

You hold so many emotions in tension: gratitude alongside loss, surrender alongside summoning all your strength, a steady vision alongside flexibility. You are a brave explorer of the unknown places, crossing into uncertain territories to grow and birth our child.

I am so grateful for all you give us and all you give yourself so you can feed your wholeness and keep your sense of self alive. We want to see you radiant, fulfilled, fully you, manifesting your dreams, and sharing your light with the world. Your light is bigger than what this house can hold. Our children will see in you that women are strong leaders, powerful thinkers, compassionate feelers, world changers. You shape and change our world every day.

However equal we try to make our roles, the demands on you in these childbearing, birthing, nursing, and deep baby attunement years are different than the demands placed on me.

You are all in–body, mind, spirit, heart. You give things that I cannot. You grow life. You make milk. You are the familiar body-home for our children; they know your heartbeat better than they know their own. You are their first safe space, offering a comfort and connection so deep that even the word “love” can’t contain. I know that it sometimes feels like a burden you carry alone. It sometimes feels unfair to you that so much weight is on you that I can’t share. No part of you is left untouched and unchanged. Our best balance in these years is one that still puts an uneven, immeasurable weight on you.

I know that right now it feels like a different relationship than what we slowly negotiated over the years and the balance we had found in our marriage. I will bring my time, my energy, my endurance, and my reliability to trying to create as much balance as possible. I am committed to bringing my full self to this family and working with you closely and with open communication to meet the needs of you and our children in these care-intensive years.

Though you sometimes feel alone in the midst of the most rigorous and continuous demands of your life, I am your partner, and I am here. We will do this together. You will have a break. You will have windows of freedom. You will have thinking space. You will have a chance soon to commune with yourself. You will have quiet. You will feel peace. I will pick up where you leave off when you head out the door, and you will have unscripted hours without little bodies climbing all over you.

Have I told you how beautiful you are?

I still find you irresistible. As you navigate body changes, touch fatigue, a mother-sexual identity, and waning of desire, know that you are my constant fire-lighter. I see your body as more beautiful than ever because it holds the soul of the woman I have loved and cherished for all these years. Your body, with its fierce tiger stripes and c-section scar and life-giving, sloping breasts, tells the story of the life we have built and shared, the family that was born from our love. Your body is a temple of love and passion. I will kneel at the temple and bring offerings of chocolate and wine. I will recite words of adoration.

I listen eagerly for the emergence of new desires and new ways for me to honor your body through loving touch. I want our physical intimacy to be healing, empowering, energizing, comforting, freeing, and authentic. I want it to deepen our connection and to deepen your connection to your body and creative life force.

You give everywhere else in your day. Could our physical intimacy be something you give yourself? It’s a place where you meet yourself and where we meet each other. It’s a place where our vulnerable souls meet our vulnerable bodies. I know that penetrative sex is uncomfortable for you right now and takes much emotional grounding. Know that it’s not the goal, the endgame. I want to be close to you. We have the opportunity to explore intimate connection in other ways. At your pace, at your guidance.

You worry that I am disappointed in you or frustrated with you because sex is so complicated and infrequent. I know sexuality is one of the most vulnerable territories of your womanhood. I know it is an area where you hold some of your greatest hopes for transformation and healing. I am in awe of all the energy you give to this aspect of your journey, both for your own quality life and for the depth of our relationship.

You, my love, are a luminous woman. It’s impossible for me to not see her in you, and I hope you will meet her, too. Soulful, rapturous, magnetic, expansive, curious, playful, adventurous, confident, sparkling, comfortable in her own skin. This is how you deserve to feel, and I hope your exploration of your sexuality will support your ever-growing realization of the woman you are, the woman I love.

I am here for it all, through it all.

Right now the mothering part of you feels so big and the other parts feel so small. I am here for all of you–the mother, the wife, the writer, the visionary, the activist, the friend, the teacher, the yogi, the lover, the sexual pioneer, the thinker, the feeler. You are wondrous and expansive. You challenge me, you inspire me, you make me proud. You are my lifelong journey partner. There is no one else I’d rather adventure with. I’d choose you a hundred times to the moon.

My mom was right when she told me, “Marry a smart woman.” But she had no idea how much more you would be. I’ll keep reminding you when you forget, when the amnesia of spit-up and yesterday’s crusted dishes and piercing cries and sore nipples and clumps of hair coming out in your hand in the shower wash over you. I will sing the song of your multitudes. I will hum it as I’m scrambling eggs and beat-box it while I’m loading the laundry machine, and it will always be on my breath. Our children will know it and learn it as simply as the nursery rhymes and hymns of their childhood. You will catch the earworm and find yourself singing it, too, and it will be the anthem you belt with the windows down.

You are the melody that holds us together. What a beautiful harmony we’ve made.

With love cascading,

L

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