A poem about becoming a mother
In the moment you arrived
and your cry echoed through my heart
I became someone new.
A different version of myself
as if I’d stepped from a cocoon.
Still the same but changed.
So deep deep in love,
exhausted,
transformed,
in awe
and terrified.
A mother.
Still Me but both braver and more scared than before.
Scared I wouldn’t know the words to your song.
Scared I wouldn’t know what to do
or how to be all that you needed me to be.
(I still am, five years on).
Those first few weeks of motherhood were a haze,
when the line between night and day
had been erased
by your constant need.
Time was measured by cries and nappies
and how much sleep could be snatched between feeds.
And slowly I learnt the steps of our dance
(still faltering sometimes, as we all do),
as the world turned to the new rhythm
of an us plus a you.