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.