I don’t know if they never told me, or if I just didn’t want to hear it. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Because how could anyone ever be ready?
On communion days, I used to sing this song, Jesus’ words at the last supper set to music: “This is my body, broken for you.” I sang it in an automatic way, or at least without connecting myself to the brokenness, not really. Until motherhood and its holy awakening, its spiritual reckoning. Why didn’t anyone tell me about that, either?
Birth is a breaking open, always, no matter how you get there. There is no other way. But I wasn’t prepared for how motherhood, again and again, would break me open, lay me bare. Nothing I have encountered has been more vulnerable and strong, more generous and sacrificial than pregnancy and birth. Our bodies make space where there is none, go without, bear pain—so much pain that we think we might die--and then the breaking open, new life, new relationship, new identity. Nothing is ever the same as it was before.
On communion days, I used to sing this song, Jesus’ words at the last supper set to music: “This is my body, broken for you.” I sang it in an automatic way, or at least without connecting myself to the brokenness, not really. Until motherhood and its holy awakening, its spiritual reckoning. Why didn’t anyone tell me about that, either?
Birth is a breaking open, always, no matter how you get there. There is no other way. But I wasn’t prepared for how motherhood, again and again, would break me open, lay me bare. Nothing I have encountered has been more vulnerable and strong, more generous and sacrificial than pregnancy and birth. Our bodies make space where there is none, go without, bear pain—so much pain that we think we might die--and then the breaking open, new life, new relationship, new identity. Nothing is ever the same as it was before.
In ten years’ time, I carried six babies, brought four into this world and our home. And when you look at me, I think you can probably tell. When we first had four, I would say it almost for effect; “I have four children;” I would wait for a reaction from strangers. Now, mostly, they nod as if to say, “Yes, that seems about right.” Maybe it’s the softness in my eyes or abdomen that wasn’t there before, but I look like a mother now. I feel no sadness but considerable confusion about this.
We knew we would be giving things up in exchange for these beautiful children, right? I know we did. I knew I would lose sleep, but I was ill-prepared for how much and how long it would last and how competent I would be expected to be without it. I hoped my marriage would shift and adjust, worried as it groaned under the weight of all these extra people to take our attention, felt relief with its eventual expansion to accommodate all this love we had made. I knew my jeans might not fit again. But nothing prepared me for the spiritual sacrifice it would feel like to give up this body, or how readily I would do it, almost without thinking, again and again.
We knew we would be giving things up in exchange for these beautiful children, right? I know we did. I knew I would lose sleep, but I was ill-prepared for how much and how long it would last and how competent I would be expected to be without it. I hoped my marriage would shift and adjust, worried as it groaned under the weight of all these extra people to take our attention, felt relief with its eventual expansion to accommodate all this love we had made. I knew my jeans might not fit again. But nothing prepared me for the spiritual sacrifice it would feel like to give up this body, or how readily I would do it, almost without thinking, again and again.
My fourth baby’s little feet slap the hardwood floors all her waking hours as she runs and plays and discovers. She says, “hi,” “dada,” “dog;” she signs, “more,” “all done,” “eat,” “please,” “milk.” Her first birthday has come and gone, and we are gradually weaning; my body is changing again.
No one told me my body would never be the same. I might return to the same weight, but everything wouldn’t be where I left it. My hips would be wider, my chest flatter. Wrinkly marks would radiate down from my belly button, marking its expansion to flattening four times. Veins I never saw before would snake themselves down my legs long after the weight is gone. My body reads like a map, but that’s not all. Studies show that a baby’s cells alter the DNA of her mother for years after her birth, and this makes sense to me; it must be true. How do you recover from creating life, then birthing it, from raising a soul you created and gradually letting it go? How do you release a literal part of your body to make her own choices, her own mistakes while you watch—and even encourage—her to walk away from you? How do you bounce back from that?
We couldn’t possibly, right? Surely we can’t. And so, I resolve not to bounce back. Not now, maybe not ever. At thirteen months postpartum, I have not reclaimed my pre-surprise-fourth-baby weight. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. I do more sitting on the floor soaking in this last little one than I do on my yoga mat, more time running around with my children than running in the neighborhood. It won’t always be this way, and there is time for fitness and wellness amid the chaos of young family life—there must be—but I don’t have to figure the whole thing out today. I can smile and congratulate my loved ones—and even my younger self—when they “bounce back” without requiring it of myself now.
No one told me my body would never be the same. I might return to the same weight, but everything wouldn’t be where I left it. My hips would be wider, my chest flatter. Wrinkly marks would radiate down from my belly button, marking its expansion to flattening four times. Veins I never saw before would snake themselves down my legs long after the weight is gone. My body reads like a map, but that’s not all. Studies show that a baby’s cells alter the DNA of her mother for years after her birth, and this makes sense to me; it must be true. How do you recover from creating life, then birthing it, from raising a soul you created and gradually letting it go? How do you release a literal part of your body to make her own choices, her own mistakes while you watch—and even encourage—her to walk away from you? How do you bounce back from that?
We couldn’t possibly, right? Surely we can’t. And so, I resolve not to bounce back. Not now, maybe not ever. At thirteen months postpartum, I have not reclaimed my pre-surprise-fourth-baby weight. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. I do more sitting on the floor soaking in this last little one than I do on my yoga mat, more time running around with my children than running in the neighborhood. It won’t always be this way, and there is time for fitness and wellness amid the chaos of young family life—there must be—but I don’t have to figure the whole thing out today. I can smile and congratulate my loved ones—and even my younger self—when they “bounce back” without requiring it of myself now.
As I gently wean this precious last baby, I think about all it took to get here. Breastfeeding never came easy to me. With my first babies, I fought to pump at work, crying when I never got more than a few ounces at a time. I cried again when my day care provider told me she thought my first baby was hungry and when our pediatrician suggested I supplement with formula. Late every night I fought sleep with our second, squeezing in a pumping session before bed to ensure she got one full bottle of my milk each day, for a year. With our son, I battled to get a tongue-tie diagnosis, fought through seven months of painful nursing and plugged ducts to nurse him for a year. And then came number four: the one who latched immediately, who nursed happily, who is reluctant to stop. When I contemplate what will be left when this is all over, when I lament the changed body I will learn to accept as my own, I cannot divorce the loss from the love in the giving.
Maybe I didn’t understand the concept of communion before, of Christ’s body being broken for us, maybe this comparison shows that I still don’t. Certainly, I'm not suggesting that the sacrifice of motherhood is on equal footing with that of Jesus. But carrying, giving birth, and nourishing my babies with my body feels like the closest I will ever come to understanding what it means. I carry the marks and scars, I live with the loss, and I wouldn’t tell you it’s been easy to accept any of it. Motherhood and time are thieves, both of them, and while the gifts themselves redeem, I still miss what’s been stolen sometimes, still lament what once was mine.
But as I try to memorize the way this baby relaxes into me as she nurses, the way it soothes her as nothing else can, even as I look forward to my coming freedom, I mourn how I will never feel this again. I relish the closeness, the power and simplicity. Mothering my older children isn’t nearly this simple, and days are coming when I will wish I could cause myself physical pain to spare them theirs, but those days will be long gone, these lines and marks and scars on my body the only proof they were ever here.
What a privilege it has been, this opportunity to expand, to grow, to break, to heal. Motherhood is to walk with a limp: I will never look the same, never walk the same, never be the same as before my body gave itself up for these four children. Sometimes the shock of all of it still reverberates, still catches me off guard when I catch my reflection, but I would do it all over, again and again, for the joy and the pain of being their mother. In that, maybe, I see a small sliver of what Jesus meant. In these permanent remnants of the things I carried, a remembrance. The giver forever marked by the giving.
Maybe I didn’t understand the concept of communion before, of Christ’s body being broken for us, maybe this comparison shows that I still don’t. Certainly, I'm not suggesting that the sacrifice of motherhood is on equal footing with that of Jesus. But carrying, giving birth, and nourishing my babies with my body feels like the closest I will ever come to understanding what it means. I carry the marks and scars, I live with the loss, and I wouldn’t tell you it’s been easy to accept any of it. Motherhood and time are thieves, both of them, and while the gifts themselves redeem, I still miss what’s been stolen sometimes, still lament what once was mine.
But as I try to memorize the way this baby relaxes into me as she nurses, the way it soothes her as nothing else can, even as I look forward to my coming freedom, I mourn how I will never feel this again. I relish the closeness, the power and simplicity. Mothering my older children isn’t nearly this simple, and days are coming when I will wish I could cause myself physical pain to spare them theirs, but those days will be long gone, these lines and marks and scars on my body the only proof they were ever here.
What a privilege it has been, this opportunity to expand, to grow, to break, to heal. Motherhood is to walk with a limp: I will never look the same, never walk the same, never be the same as before my body gave itself up for these four children. Sometimes the shock of all of it still reverberates, still catches me off guard when I catch my reflection, but I would do it all over, again and again, for the joy and the pain of being their mother. In that, maybe, I see a small sliver of what Jesus meant. In these permanent remnants of the things I carried, a remembrance. The giver forever marked by the giving.
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