Claiming Postpartum: My Irreverent Journey Through Loss
(Please be warned that parts of this story may be triggering. Take care of yourself.)
Motherhood wasn’t always a calling. In my earliest 20’s, adventure -- the magic of wild mystery -- was what I was drawn to. Lovers in every country; a pile of worn trail shoes from walking various landscapes; maybe the peace corp; maybe a dazzling dance career.
Homesteading, child rearing, the simple life didn’t interest me.
My head sparkled with starlit wonder around my destiny. I fell in love with life over and over again, and couldn’t wait for mine to really begin. As if I was still yet in the preamble.
~~~
I know what it feels like to carry life inside me. It feels like a large piece of cotton -- just below my navel -- has gotten stuck. A thick, absorbent roll of cotton presses my abdomen forward against my jeans, until I have to unbutton them while seated at the movie theater. This feeling of early life...a cotton ball.
I am nauseous for weeks -- always in the evenings. But when the HCG levels stop climbing, the nausea of my pregnancy turns into the nausea of its ending.
Then, quiet. Like the sound of snow falling.
It’s late September, and we’re driving upstate to a friend’s wedding when we get the call from our midwife. A standard call she makes to one out of every four patients she has. Her sincerity wanes as I ask questions: is there any way you’re wrong?
We arrive early, and I take a walk in the woods by myself looking for answers from the wild. The goldenrod is in full bloom, and it follows me up the trail, pleasantly waving to me in the breeze.
A full month later, I still carry. Exhausted leaves tumble from branches and crunch under my aimless feet. In the depth of autumn, as Mother Nature doles out permission for release, my womb thoughtfully waits for her turn to let go.
During that time I want nothing more than the cleansing release from that queasiness. The kind you feel on a rocking ship, or from the backseat of a car after too-long reading with your head down. The kind that comes when your equilibrium is constantly shaken, your environment erratic.
I ache for an emptiness, a flush, a reset, a rest. It comes in cathartic spurts, with the smash of an umbrella in a rageful rain. Or at the drop of knees to floor in prayerful wails. But none of these moments bring the deep release of blood and tissue.
~~~
My first job in New York City was as a ringer.
That was what they called the dancing staff at a wedding or bat mitzvah, who help get the crowd moving, who essentially keep the party interesting.
It was spring 2007. My twenty-fourth year was just coming into view.
Throughout the tri-state area, I would don my black pants and tank top, a rogue smile on my lips. I’d show off all that my dance degree had afforded me.
It was a silly job, but I loved the weirdness of those extravagant parties. Though the guests tried hard to stay glued to their seats, their eyes danced in rhythm with my own hips, as they swung wild with youthful abandon. Before the night is over, not a chair was empty — everyone’s hips shaking in joy.
~~~
Four and a half weeks after finding out, I bleed. No more cotton belly. My Cosmic Baby, pours from me -- leaving a mother wound -- an unfilled prophecy on a sunny November afternoon.
Shortly after that, my nausea goes away for good -- like an unwanted houseguest who suddenly leaves without a word of warning, but whose imprint remains in the walls, the pillows and curtains. Their crisp scent in the air. While still tender, I feel freer and lighter than I have in months.
My new postpartum hips: Gaping. Wide. Blown open. Thighs squeeze together. Pelvic bones lock in surrender. I waddle for a week afterward with the destabilizing, disorienting emptiness within. That womb pain, like none other. My womanhood merged into motherhood by death, by the dissolution of life before life.
I feel the shadow shapes still between my hips. And while I know it’s over, my body still tries to hold the space for something bigger to emerge.
~~~
I met my future husband on a warm June night right after I turned 31, at a time when I still felt young enough not to make plans. I wore short, striped shorts and purple suede wedges. Both accentuated the length of my strong legs.
We had been pining for one another for months before, but just now got it together enough to realize it was more than that. This would be our rhythm throughout our relationship -- slow and steady, suspended, deliberate. After five years together, we would marry. And while we would get pregnant right away, neither of us were ready for it. Neither, it seems, was our Cosmic Baby.
~~~
Because I don’t complete the birth cycle, I don’t know I am postpartum. I don’t believe I have earned it. It doesn’t dawn on me that I did, in fact, earn it while on my hands and knees, surrendering to the most debilitating pain I’ve ever come across.
It’s a Monday, the day after my Cosmic Baby leaves my body for good. I want to feel ok. I need to rest, but I’m not in pain. Heavy winds whip the empty branches outside my window. I feel empty -- weighted but buoyant. Freed, but not happy about it.
I trust I can spend this day on my own. At first, I want to be alone. But by mid-day, I feel a darkening around the corners of my eyes. My breath gets shallow, an echo of panic to its rhythm.
I don’t know that I am postpartum — that being alone can be frightening. The hours of that day melt away as my panic wraps a belt tighter and tighter around my chest. My womb throbs as I bang my fists against the wooden floor.
~~~
Like me, Time is a performer. He twists and turns for us, repeating the same moves until the extraordinary feels commonplace. Before any of us realize, his show is over, and it has twisted and turned us too.
While Time twirled on, he carved out new spaces within me to explore. I found answers in stillness, in slowness. I discovered the feminine elements of my personality long-buried under the excitement of youthful adventure.
My interests wandered from the stage to the studio — from a dancer and performer to a teacher and healer. As I learned more about the magic held within my own body, I became enamored with its potential -- the wild magic of birth.
~~~
I started working with the female body almost a decade before my own pregnancy. I intended to help mothers feel alive in their bones, the spaces between bones, their flesh and breath. Without first-hand knowledge, I could still respect how significant this work was for them, and it was clear how ripe they were for the experience.
Every week, I would show up to hold space for the women who hold space in their bellies. I taught prenatal yoga and pilates. I hosted baby & me movement groups. I coached women one-on-one to restore their bodies organically, while celebrating their identity shifts.
After having expanded their inner being to allow a human into the world, it was clear to me that these mothers needed and deserved help reconnecting these spaces, to complete the birth cycle, to come back into themselves.
As soon as my own pregnancy stalled, ultimately let go, I teetered between the pain of loss and the distraction of showing up anyway. The days between loss and me collected like drops of spring rain into a bucket. I continued to feel triggered by swollen bellies or soft baby cries. It highlighted the emptiness in between my own hips. But sometimes it brought the peace I needed to feel hope again.
~~~
While I go through my own postpartum experience, I simultaneously create an online course just for postpartum women who want to return to their centers in a meaningful, holistic way. It never occurs to me in those six months of creation that I am creating the container I need to support my own postpartum recovery.
When I finally allow myself to be postpartum, to accept that it is mine, I recognize it as an opportunity to draw my loss out from the shadows of the forgotten. It’s a chance to reconnect with my body and honor my unique rhythms that cannot be shifted by will.
Only then does the magic arrive. I receive help from wise women who hold my bones and womb, who put them back together. I ritualize my grief in solo and group ceremonies and write poetry to my Cosmic Baby. I turn over the “why me’s” and settle into acceptance.
I claim postpartum as my nonnegotiable right, borne from birthing what might have been but couldn’t. And still, it was. Something. Everything it needed to be.
~~~
Kahlil Gibran tells us that our grief carves out the spaces within us that can then be filled with joy. I feel so far away from that cotton-bellied woman, and from that idealistic girl singing to the sky. Both of those women were ready to step into the wild mystery of their lives, but neither of them, having known no differently, had built the container to hold the heart-plunging, soul-affirming joy it could bring. Neither of them had yet experienced the grief of loss.
~~~
My postpartum journey, marked with confusion and complexity and magical awakening, has shaped my body and my perspective. I am more dedicated than ever to helping other womb carriers unequivocally stand in the power of their postpartum experience. I hold their joys and their sorrows with equal attention.
I still remember to dance, to keep the rust from my hips. I still remember to sing to the sky in gratitude. Now I do so with a recognition I didn’t have before. A primal knowing that grounds me to the earth like a thick taproot. This taproot is my postpartum experience. By claiming it as mine, I receive from my Cosmic Baby what she came here to show me -- that I belong, that my body is wise, that I already have all I will ever need.
To all my sisters who have held and lost: postpartum is yours. May you claim all of its magic.
Have you gone through a loss or know someone who has?
You are not alone.
You deserve postpartum care.
A Gift For You:
The audio meditation below offers you a chance to rest, heal and listen to your body. I promise, it’s worth it. (18 minutes of bliss)