You’re Allowed to Miss Her

There’s something odd that happens during pregnancy.

Everyone around you is excited about who you’re becoming.

A mother.

They ask about the baby. They notice your belly. They want to know your due date, if you know what you’re having, whether you’ve picked a name, and if the nursery is ready.

And somewhere in the middle of all that attention, you might find yourself quietly missing the woman you were before any of this began.

The one who got dressed without wondering whether anything would fit.

Who made plans without calculating how tired she might be.

Who knew her body.

Who could have a glass of wine, sleep on her stomach, book a trip, work late, go out, stay in, without another tiny person entering the calculation.

You can be deeply grateful for your pregnancy, and still miss her.

Those two feelings are allowed to exist together.

No one really warns you about the identity part.

We talk a lot about what pregnancy does to a woman’s body.

The nausea. The exhaustion. The growing belly. The aches in places that never used to ache. The foods you suddenly can’t stand, and the ones you inexplicably need right now.

There are books and apps dedicated to every physical change happening week by week.

But the internal changes are harder to name.

Because pregnancy doesn’t just change your body.

It begins changing the way the world relates to you.

Sometimes before you’ve even had time to understand how motherhood will fit into your identity, other people have already started rearranging it for you.

You just become 'the pregnant one.'

Conversations turn toward the baby. People ask questions about your body they probably wouldn’t have asked six months earlier. Strangers offer advice. Friends who are already mothers tell you what is coming.

And soon, you know, there will be another name for you.

Mom.

It’s an extraordinary identity, to be sure.

But it’s not big enough to contain a whole woman.

You can love this and still miss your old life

This might be the part we don’t say out loud enough.

You can desperately want your baby and still miss your old life.

You can feel your baby move, be totally overwhelmed by how miraculous it is – and five minutes later, wish you could just have your body to yourself for an afternoon.

You can be excited about maternity leave and worried about what stepping away from work will mean.

You can imagine holding your baby and also wonder what will happen to your marriage, your friendships, your career, your independence, your Saturday mornings, your sleep, your sense of yourself.

None of those thoughts cancel out your love.

They simply mean you understand, perhaps more than anyone around you realizes, the magnitude of what is happening.

You’re not just preparing to meet someone new.

You’re becoming someone new, too.

And enormous changes rarely arrive without some sense of loss alongside everything we gain.

Maybe you don’t need to “get yourself back”

There is a phrase women hear constantly after having a baby.

Getting back to yourself, they say.

Getting your body back. Getting back into your old clothes. Getting back to work. Getting back into a routine. Getting back to feeling like you.

But maybe 'back' isn’t where you’re headed at all.

Because the woman you were before pregnancy hasn’t disappeared at all.

Her ambition is still there.

Her humour.

Her style.

Her opinions.

Her friendships.

Her curiosity.

Her creativity.

The parts of her that are messy and complicated and completely uninterested in being inspirational.

The things she wants for herself that have absolutely nothing to do with motherhood.

She doesn’t need to be 'recovered' after the baby arrives.

She just needs to be allowed to come with you.

Motherhood doesn’t have to make you smaller

There will probably be moments when motherhood takes up almost all the available space.

Especially at the beginning.

There will be days organized around feeding and sleeping and crying and tiny increments of time. There may be moments when you barely recognize your own life.

But that season? It’s not the whole story.

You are allowed to care deeply about your child and deeply about your work.

You are allowed to want time alone.

You are allowed to care about what you wear simply because it makes you feel good.

You’re allowed to want dinner with your friends, and conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with babies.

You are allowed to keep building things.

To change your mind.

To be ambitious.

To be frivolous.

To want more.

Motherhood can become one of the most important parts of who you are, without being the only interesting thing about you.

Bring her with you

Maybe becoming a mother isn’t about choosing between who you were and who you’re becoming.

Maybe it’s about making room for both.

You don’t have to say goodbye to the woman who walked into pregnancy.

And you don’t have to emerge from it unchanged.

Some parts of you may become stronger. Some may soften. Things you once thought mattered enormously might suddenly matter very little. Things you barely noticed before may become impossible to ignore.

That’s what real transformation does.

It doesn’t erase what came before.

It builds on it.

So if you find yourself missing her sometimes- the woman you were before pregnancy- let yourself.

Miss her, without guilt.

Remember what she loved.

Keep the parts of her you aren’t willing to lose.

And then bring them with you into whatever comes next.

Because becoming a mother should expand who you are – not erase you.

You’re still you, after all.

You always were.

And you’ll be on the other side of this, too.

---