Becoming a mother is this huge and powerful life transition that is called matrescence. It begins with our thoughts of wanting to have a baby and thinking about how to get pregnant. Some of us delay having children until later and then must struggle to have them with costly and painful fertility treatments. Others of us simply recognize that we are pregnant (whether intentionally or not). Still others of us are pregnant for nearly forty weeks and deliver a healthy baby. Those moms make it look easy. Unfortunately, a few of us deliver a premature baby, or babies, many weeks earlier than forty because of some unforeseen pregnancy complication, and that is traumatic.
Whether you deliver your baby vaginally or surgically can affect the way you feel about becoming a mother. I had three C-sections and was glad to suffer through them to have three healthy babies. Some of us become mothers when we physically lay hands on and learn how to take care of that baby (or babies). Moms of twins and triplets are supermoms in all they must learn to do in those early months.
Then there are the moms who tragically lose their baby in utero. Perinatal loss is a traumatic time of profound grief that a few of us must endure. They are still moms to their lost child. When you deliver a live baby or bring one (or more) home from the hospital, the process of matrescence usually progresses along for about six to twelve months after your child’s birth.
What a complicated and complex life transition it is to have a baby and learn how to be a mother. When you become a mother, you are no longer just a woman, or a pregnant woman, but now you are a mother, and nothing is ever the same in your life. Matresence can be joyful, painful, terrifying, traumatic, or filled with grief. Your matrescence can be all or any of these things.
My first matrescence story was indeed painful and terrifying. Only much later did it become joyful. Sounds complicated, and it was. Within the first year of my marriage, I unexpectedly conceived. We both wanted a baby, and since I was thirty-four at the time, we were lucky. However, the joy I felt about being pregnant was overwhelmed by my endless nausea and vomiting. I threw up every morning before work. I vomited during daily rounds in the NICU because the phototherapy lights (shined on the babies to treat jaundice) made me feel queasy. When my team and I walked past a bank of blue, fluorescent lights, I immediately felt sick and ran to a nearby trash can to vomit. My residents were amused by this behavior, yet I was determined to continue working through my rocky first trimester.
My pregnancy proceeded along with unrelenting nausea and vomiting for twelve weeks while I worked in the NICU full time. I survived on saltine crackers, peanut butter, and Coke. We both felt excited when the eighteen-week ultrasound revealed we were having a boy. I found myself frightened during the amniocentesis procedure. I felt confident in my obstetrician’s ability to perform an amniocentesis, however, during the procedure I was truly anxious watching that large needle being stuck into me, and I worried that it might stick into the baby. All mothers worry.
After my nausea resolved and the genetics test came back normal, we adjusted to the idea of having a son. Like most other pregnant women, I wanted to enjoy being pregnant and envisioned having a perfectly normal, healthy full-term baby. I often worried about catching some terrible germ in the NICU, and my husband kept telling me I was overthinking things. At twenty-four weeks gestation I noticed twinges of pain low down in my uterus, typically in the afternoons. The pains were worse after a long or difficult day in the NICU, especially while standing to perform procedures. When I went home and put my feet up, the pains subsided.
I was twenty-five weeks gestation, rounding on my patients in the NICU and feeling particularly tired, when my pelvic pains began to really hurt. I bumped into my own obstetrician, a friend and colleague, and he said, “You look terrible.” Then he took me by the hand to L&D to examine me. I did not expect what happened next. After finding that my cervix was dilated and I was in active preterm labor, he admitted me to the hospital right then and there. I was not prepared for that! No mother is ever prepared for the trauma of a pregnancy complication.
All I could think about was having a tiny premature baby boy who would require NICU care for months on end. I imagined the worst-case scenario, fully understanding the long haul of intensive care that a tiny premature infant must endure for survival. I dreaded the idea of watching my son go through this. My son might have been born - in 1984 - before life-saving artificial surfactant was approved as a treatment.
My labor room was freezing, and my husband found me shivering with cold and fear. He asked the nurses to get me a blanket and a sedative, then he went to discuss my situation with my NICU colleagues. In the dark and chilly labor suite, I lay crying, imagining the worst as I listened to David’s soft heartbeat on the uterine monitor. One of my partners popped in to visit and caught me crying. He smiled and asked, “Susan, what are you so upset about?” Can you believe that? I didn’t answer him and felt somewhat baffled that he even asked. Did I need to justify my fears? Wasn’t I allowed some normal maternal tears? Of course, he tried to reassure me, but I remained terribly frightened.
In our personal encounter with possible preterm delivery, we got lucky, and all turned out well. My aggressive perinatologist, a high-risk obstetrician, expertly directed my care. Two powerful medications effectively stopped my premature labor, and I received antenatal steroid shots to mature my son’s lungs and brain. My obstetrician also prescribed valium for me, intermittently, since I felt trapped in a net of excessive worry. Of course, then I worried about possible effects of valium on my unborn son. Again, mothers worry!
After two days in L&D, my preterm labor had slowed I was moved to a room on the obstetrical floor. It was nearly impossible to rest with all my NICU staff visitors. The OB nurses managed to protect me with signs saying, “Resting - please return later.” After my hospital stay of several weeks, I was permitted to go home. There I was able to rest, read, and listen to soothing New Age music. I imagined myself to be a large vessel, a pregnant uterus, whose purpose was one thing—to make this baby. I had never imagined myself to be something so simple and yet so complex.
Surprisingly, it was not easy to lie around and do nothing all day. I remained at home on bed rest for seven weeks. Our son was delivered at thirty-six weeks gestation, late one Friday night after my membranes ruptured. He was not ill, never needed artificial surfactant or NICU care, and breastfed like a champ (quite unusual for a “thirty-six weeker”). The experience of being a patient myself, particularly a pregnant-mother-patient, taught me a tremendous lesson. The degree of helplessness that you feel in that situation is difficult to describe. Your powerlessness seems inexorable if you are a trained and competent person used to getting things done or accustomed to solving problems.
I had witnessed many irresponsible, unwed, teen mothers with little to no prenatal care give birth to perfectly healthy full-term babies, without even trying. Here I was an educated neonatologist, who had done everything right, and yet I could not carry a baby correctly to full-term. My feelings of inadequacy and vulnerability during that time were boundless. I felt like a big fat failure throughout most of my first pregnancy, and it was not until I physically began to care for my son that I felt like a good mother. I absolutely loved caring for him, changing diapers, bathing, and breastfeeding. The sleep deprivation that so many moms suffer through was not so dreadful for me because of my previous six years taking night call, having experience staying awake at night in the hospital.
Matresence is a long and complicated process, and it is different for each one of us. Sometimes it brings joy, sometimes terror or pain, sometimes sadness, and sometimes even profound grief. Throughout all my years of practice in neonatology, as I met and counseled other mothers anticipating a preterm delivery, it was easy to empathize. I understood the feelings of fear and helplessness they endured through that most traumatic time. Over the years, I gladly shared my own story with mothers in preterm labor, or those with premature rupture of membranes, as they lay in hospital beds, receiving various kinds of treatment, awaiting the birth of their own baby or babies. As I recounted my story to them, many of them felt understood and grateful. Nevertheless, they would have to face their own difficult process of matrescence.
Every mother finds her own way through matrescence. I am sure that you vividly remember your story. For more on the physical, emotional and social aspects of your matrescence journey, please see the last note posted on ThriveCultureCoach by Lydia Fogo Johnson.