“Just wait until you have kids…” For years, I’d cringe when I heard those words. The very idea that you had to change after having kids bothered me. I found it insulting, demeaning, outdated, and even a little sexist. It conjured images of the 1950s housewife in my head. Why did parenthood have to change me? I wondered. Wasn’t I fine the way I was? Couldn’t I be me and a mom at the same time?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always wanted to have children. The idea that having them might change my priorities, values, or—worse—my personality was terrifying. I liked who I was: career-driven, competitive, focused. I didn’t really want to see who the new me might be. But deep down, I knew I would become one of those moms who could become totally consumed by my kid; I tend to get a little obsessive when I love something. And though I wanted to believe that motherhood changing me was just a patriarchal idea, I also suspected that it really would happen.
Couldn’t I be me and a mom at the same time?
So, I delayed starting a family—it wasn’t hard. After all, my generation developed a reputation for putting off the big milestones that our parents reached earlier in life, and I, like any good millennial, did my part to keep up the trend. First, I put off marriage for six years, and then pregnancy.
I may have put off pregnancy for much longer had I not found out that I had PCOS. Suddenly, my future fertility became a question mark. I worried I wouldn’t be able to afford fertility treatments or adoption, and my doctor told me that if I started trying now, while I was still young enough and took the medications she prescribed, I might get pregnant before 35. I wasn’t really ready to become a mom—but I also wasn’t ready for my body to decide I couldn’t be one either. So, I gave in… and hoped for the best.
And yes, I did change. Looking back, I’m not totally sure when it happened. Maybe it was the first time I threw up from morning sickness at a MetroNorth train station, then gathered myself together and got on that train to the office because my future son needed me to keep working. Or maybe it was at 29 weeks when, shortly after getting to the office, I realized I hadn’t felt him kick all morning the way he usually did on my way to work. I didn’t think twice about walking right out of my office to rush to the doctor, unfinished articles to edit be damned. Or maybe it was when I lay in the hospital, barely hours after my C-section, and the sound of my crying son pushed me to crawl out of bed to change his diaper—even though my entire body kept screaming at me.
But whenever “the change” happened, it was overwhelming and complete. It sounds like a cliché to say it out loud, but suddenly I understood why parents jumped in front of danger to protect their young. Or why people keep repeating that line, “Just wait until you have kids.” Being my son’s mom was almost all that mattered to me now, and everything else had become a distant second, including my career, my husband, and the rest of my family.
I wasn’t really ready to become a mom — but I also wasn’t ready for my body to decide I couldn’t be one either.
At first, I assumed this was a temporary change, a biological impulse triggered by how helpless my son was when he was a tiny newborn. But by the time I went back to work after five months of maternity leave, there was no question that my transition to “mom” was permanent. Kissing my son goodbye that first morning, I felt a sense of dread and obligation. Work was no longer the exciting thing it had once been for me.
The thing is, this transition—or matrescence, as my therapist called it—wasn’t easy. It was awkward and painful. “You wouldn’t expect a teenager to go through adolescence gracefully,” she told me. “It’s the same with matrescence, the process of becoming a mother.” Be that as it may, I told her, I was surprised by the effects it had on my self-esteem, my career, and even my marriage.
I felt ashamed that I had let go of the person I was, and I found myself a little jealous of friends who seemed to “bounce back” easily after having a baby, not just physically, but also in terms of returning to their pre-baby selves. I was a little embarrassed to admit to friends that I had kept his crib in our room for close to a year or that I was still breastfeeding my son two years later when most of them had weaned at six months. But at the same time, I didn’t want to change my parenting to “fit in.”
Work had also become something I clocked into and clocked out of. It didn’t fulfill me the way it once had. I found it difficult to work late, even though I could stay up all night if my son was sick without blinking an eye. My wardrobe became practical and simple. I stopped coloring my hair. I only wore makeup to the office or to social engagements.
Sometimes, putting my son first took a toll on our marriage. My husband joked that I fought him whenever he tried to sleep—and to be honest, maybe I did. I found myself disproportionately frustrated when he slept in late, slept through midnight feedings, or found time for a nap with my son midday. And it took me a long time to forgive him for being less “changed.” I couldn’t tolerate my newborn crying for even a few minutes before my breasts would start leaking—while he could somehow remain calm.
I could truly be the new me: a mom, who also happened to be a writer. Not a writer who also happened to be a mom.
But it wasn’t the new me who was the problem. I actually liked that person, and I was OK with work coming second. It was fighting my new identity and denying that my values and priorities had shifted that was a problem. Trying to pretend I was still a career-first person was an exhausting facade to keep up. It was only after I got laid off because of the pandemic that I realized how much relief I felt.
Suddenly, I didn’t have to pretend that I would always put the job first when I clearly hadn’t been. I could truly be the new me: a mom, who also happened to be a writer. Not a writer who also happened to be a mom. And I could find a way to make the two things coexist, in the new order I wanted them to.
It took me a year to realize that it was OK to change and be a new person with new priorities. Because the truth is that change is inevitable, but sometimes we have to let go of the past to see who we really are meant to be.