and I’m not saying they don’t love their children or that they never wanted to be mothers at all, that’s not what this is. just that at no point did they sit down with themselves and ask do I actually want to be a mother?

not do I want a baby?

not do I want a family?

not is it time?

not everyone else is doing it.

but do I want the daily, lifelong responsibility of being someone’s mother?

because where I’m from, motherhood isn’t presented as a choice. it’s presented as a path. a given, a next step.

you go to school.

you graduate.

you get a job.

you find a man (decent if possible, but let’s not get picky apparently).

you get married.

you have children.

that’s the script.

it’s not written down anywhere, but it’s everywhere. in conversations, expectations, and the questions people start asking once you reach a certain age. it’s in the way time is suddenly “running out” and the way a woman without children is often treated as if she is temporarily incomplete.

and because motherhood is treated as inevitable, most women don’t necessarily stop to ask themselves whether they actually want it. they just go with the program.

and I think that’s where a lot of the disconnect begins.

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a mother is not simply someone who gives birth. she is someone who holds, consistently, and shows up, repeatedly. someone who learns a whole human being—not once, but over and over again as they change.

a mother is presence, safety, regulation, softness when it’s needed and structure when it’s required. she carries—not just physically, but emotionally, mentally and invisibly.

and mothering as a whole asks for more than most people realise.

I realised very early on that women are not fully honest about what motherhood actually is. at least, not the generation before us. not necessarily because they were lying, I think a lot of them simply didn’t have the language for it and maybe they didn’t feel permitted to say it.

motherhood was supposed to be this beautiful, sacred, natural, totally worth it experience (and it truly is). so if it was hard, you were supposed to be grateful. if you got overwhelmed, you were supposed to remember how lucky you were. if you missed your old life, you certainly weren’t supposed to say that out loud. and somewhere along the way, we became very good at softening the truth, packaging motherhood into something more palatable because admitting that pregnancy is hard, or birth is traumatic, or breastfeeding is relentless, or motherhood can be deeply lonely somehow equals ingratitude.

so women arrive at motherhood loving their babies deeply but completely unprepared for what motherhood actually asks of them.

I saw this up close.

for years, I asked questions about pregnancy, labour, postpartum, motherhood, the questions people don’t always ask out loud and my patients, friends and sisters were honest with me. brutally honest, actually. they told me it was beautiful, transformational, absolutely worth it and in the same breath, they told me: this is the most ghetto experience ever. zero stars. would not recommend.

and that honesty changed everything for me because I realised that loving your child and loving every part of motherhood are not the same thing.

you can adore your child and hate being sleep deprived. you can be deeply grateful and desperately need a break. you can love being a mother and still mourn pieces of the person you were before. you can even have days where motherhood feels just fucking awful.

that’s not failure, that’s being human.

the problem isn’t that mothers experience those feelings, the problem is when we never gave them the opportunity to consciously consider what motherhood would actually require in the first place.

and then something else started happening… the pendulum swung. as women became more comfortable talking honestly about motherhood, more women became comfortable saying: actually, I don’t want this.

and good… they should be allowed to say that.

a woman who doesn’t want children should not have to defend that decision like she’s on trial. she shouldn’t have to explain herself or be called selfish. she shouldn’t be told she’ll change her mind. she shouldn’t be treated like there’s something fundamentally wrong with her because she doesn’t want the life everyone else assumed she’d want.

but somewhere along the way, I think we’ve started seeing another extreme emerge and I find that much more concerning.

because choosing not to have children is one thing, hating mothers and children is another.

I’ve seen the comments, the videos, the jokes, the “ew, children” content, the I hate kids personality, the idea that motherhood is inherently pathetic, that children are little life-ruiners, that mothers are boring, that having kids means you’ve “lost yourself”, that anyone who wants a big family must be delusional, and that anyone who enjoys motherhood must secretly be miserable.

and look, I understand the backlash. I really do.

for generations, women were told that motherhood was the ultimate purpose of their existence. so of course there was going to be a correction but a correction can become an overcorrection.

and I think that’s what we’re watching happen in some corners of the internet.

we went from “every woman should be a mother” to “why would anyone willingly ruin their life with children?”

and neither of those ideas leaves much room for nuance.

because we’re now seeing almost two extremes:

women who desperately want children and genuinely love motherhood, and women who don’t want children at all — and sometimes speak about children with outright disgust.

and then, sitting somewhere in the middle, are the mothers saying “I love my child. I just don’t enjoy being a mother” and that distinction matters.

I’ve seen those videos too, the ones where a mother says I love my child but I hate being a mom and honestly, sometimes I understand exactly what she’s trying to say. the relentless responsibility of motherhood is no joke.

you take a shower, you have to think about the child’s shower. you buy yourself something, you think about what the child needs. you get yourself ready, you have to get somebody else ready. you go to work, you’re still mentally keeping track of the person at home. you’re responsible for feeding them, clothing them, bathing them, getting them to school, remembering the appointments, the birthdays, the snacks, the shoes they’ve suddenly outgrown, the thing they told you three weeks ago that you somehow have to remember today and if you’re carrying most of that responsibility alone, of course you might fucking hate it sometimes.

that’s not the same as hating your child and I think we need to get better at understanding that distinction.

and there is another distinction we need to make… exhaustion is not resentment, burnout is not rejection, needing help is not regret and saying “I am drowning” is not the same thing as saying “I wish this child didn’t exist.”

those conversations matter.

because when we tell mothers they aren’t allowed to admit how hard motherhood is, we create silence and silence doesn’t make motherhood safer, it makes mothers lonelier.

and when “I hate motherhood” becomes an identity that is performed online for engagement, laughs and validation, I think we need to be careful too because there is a real child on the other side of that sentence and children are not abstract. they are not props in an internet argument about whether motherhood is worth it. they’re little people who will eventually grow up and understand the things their parents said about them and that matters.

and this is where I come back to my original question.

do you actually want to be a mother?

yes, maternal instinct is real but instinct doesn’t replace intention. it doesn’t automatically give you the emotional regulation to raise a child without projecting your own wounds onto them. it doesn’t give you the patience, awareness or capacity to meet a child’s needs day after day and different children need different things. one child might need softness, another might need structure, another might need more reassurance than you naturally know how to give.

motherhood asks you to keep becoming, to keep learning, to confront yourself, to notice the places where you are reacting from your own childhood instead of responding to the child in front of you and sometimes that is hard, so fucking hard.

so what happens when you never consciously chose motherhood in the first place? what happens when you had children because it was simply the next thing to do? because your friends were doing it, because your parents expected grandchildren, because you’d been married long enough, because you were afraid of regretting not having them or because everyone kept telling you that you’d understand once the baby arrived.

maybe you love that baby but what if you don’t love the life? what if you resent the responsibility? what if you resent the loss of your “freedom”? what if you resent the child for being the reason you lost it?

that’s where things can get complicated and sometimes, very quietly, children feel it.

we talk a lot about daddy issues but there are a lot of us walking around with quiet, complicated, sometimes completely unspoken mother wounds too and I’m not saying every mother wound comes from a mother who didn’t consciously choose motherhood.

far from it.

but sometimes I wonder how many people are carrying wounds from mothers who never consciously chose motherhood.

women who were simply following the script and maybe they did their best, maybe they loved their children the only way they knew how to, maybe they sacrificed everything for them but maybe somewhere deep down, they were living a life they had never actually chosen and that’s a difficult thing to sit with which is why I’m confused when women who choose not to have children are called selfish.

selfish?

for thinking carefully about whether they actually want the responsibility? for looking at the life they have and saying I don’t think motherhood is for me, for deciding not to bring a human being into the world unless they genuinely want to raise one?

what is selfish about that?

if you ask me, I think the more responsible answer is simply no. no, I don’t want this. no, I don’t have the capacity. no, I don’t think I would be a good mother (this does not mean they’re not a good person, a good person can still make a not so good mother). no, I want a different life. no, I don’t want to spend the next twenty years raising another human being.

and that’s completely okay because a child should never be the price of admission for becoming a “real woman.”

and this is where I might sound a little unhinged, but stay with me.

we treat motherhood like it’s inevitable, like it will just work itself out, you’ll figure it out when the baby comes, instinct will carry you through everything but wanting a baby and wanting to be a mother are not necessarily the same thing.

wanting the cute newborn smell, the family photos, the pregnancy, the nursery, the little clothes, someone who looks like you, wanting to experience the love people talk about are all understandable desires.

but motherhood is everything after the Instagram photo, the birth announcement and nursery reveal.

it’s tuesday, it’s 3:17 a.m., it’s the sleep deprivation, oh the sleep deprivation chile. it’s the tantrum, the school run, the doctor’s appointment, the financial responsibility, the emotional labour, the years of putting someone else’s needs into the equation often times above yours. it’s being responsible for a human being who didn’t ask to be here and these are the bits I wish more women were given permission to think about.

my friends joke that if I had one message for every woman in the world, it would be “girl get an IUD” and they are absolutely correct.

of course, I take contraception seriously. to me, contraception isn’t just about preventing pregnancy. it’s about intention. it’s a woman saying I get to decide if, when and how I bring life into this world and I think that is a powerful thing because bringing a child into the world is not a small decision. it shouldn’t be something we stumble into simply because we’ve reached the socially acceptable stage of life for it.

and no, I’m not talking about circumstances where choice was taken away, I’m also not talking about contraception failure, neither am I talking about situations where someone was coerced or lacked meaningful reproductive choice.

those are completely different conversations.

I’m talking about the cultural assumption that having children is simply what happens next.

here’s the other side of this conversation that I don’t want us to lose… some women genuinely want this. some women really do want the children, a lot actually. they want the chaos, the school runs, the birthday parties, the sticky fingers, the family holidays. they want to wake up and make breakfast for their kids, they want the house full of noise, they want three kids or five or just the one.

some women don’t feel like motherhood ruined their lives. some women feel like it gave their lives a completely different kind of meaning and they’re allowed to say that without being mocked or being told they’re brainwashed or they’ve “lost themselves.” they shouldn’t be made to feel embarrassed for genuinely loving motherhood.

you are allowed to want children and you’re allowed to not want them. you are allowed to find motherhood deeply fulfilling and you’re allowed to find it incredibly difficult. you are allowed to love your child and need a break from being needed. you are allowed to be child-free. you are allowed to want six children. you are allowed to change your mind. you are allowed to be happy with the life you’ve chosen.

the point is that it should actually be your choice.

because right now, I think we’re swinging between two unhealthy extremes… motherhood as destiny and motherhood as stupidity.

women being told “you aren’t complete until you have children” and women being told “why would you ruin your life by having them?”

both are reductive.

both take away the nuance.

and both make it harder for women to actually think.

the goal shouldn’t be to convince every woman to become a mother and it shouldn’t be to convince every woman to remain child-free either.

the goal is simply to give women enough space, honesty and information to ask themselves:

do I want this?

not because my mother wants grandchildren.

not because my friends are having babies.

not because I’m scared of being lonely.

not because I’m scared of regretting it.

not because I’m “running out of time.”

not because everyone tells me I’ll understand once the baby arrives.

but because I’ve actually thought about the life that comes with the answer.

and then, once you’ve answered yes?

there’s another question.

am I willing to become the mother this particular child needs?

because that’s the part I don’t think we talk about enough.

it’s not enough to want a baby, you have to be willing to raise the person who comes after the baby.

the toddler.

the child.

the teenager.

the adult.

you don’t get to choose their personality, their temperament, their needs, their neurodivergence, their interests. you don’t get to order the easy version. you get the human being you get and your job is to love them there. to learn them, grow alongside them, and repair when you get it wrong. to keep showing up for them. not perfectly but consciously.

so no, this isn’t a senseless rant and it’s not an argument against motherhood. it’s actually the opposite.

I think motherhood deserves to be taken more seriously.

seriously enough to be chosen.

seriously enough to be questioned.

seriously enough that we stop selling women a fantasy and start telling them the truth.

seriously enough that we stop shaming women who don’t want it.

seriously enough that we stop shaming mothers for admitting it’s hard.

seriously enough that we stop turning children into the enemy.

seriously enough that we stop treating mothers like they’re supposed to disappear into their children.

and seriously enough to understand that a woman can love her child fiercely without enjoying every single part of motherhood.

because motherhood is not supposed to be a punishment and children are not supposed to be a punishment for women who chose the wrong life.

this in my opinion is the conversation we actually need because the most radical thing we could give women is not another opinion about whether they should become mothers, it’s the space to sit quietly with themselves long enough to decide.

yes.

no.

not yet.

I don’t know.

all of those answers are better than it’s just what you do because when motherhood becomes a conscious decision—not a default path—it doesn’t just change the experience for the mother, it changes everything that comes after.

and that’s exactly what our children deserve.

ෆ

with grace for the in-between,

Lade

stay awhile:

There are still a few golden evenings. Still time for cold drinks, bare legs, late walks, sticky toddler fingers, music turned up too loud and doing absolutely nothing useful.

So here are a few tiny things to try before summer clocks out.

Nothing expensive. Nothing complicated. Nothing that requires a child-free weekend in Bali or a personality transplant.

Just little ways to make ordinary Tuesday-evening life feel a bit more like a holiday because you are allowed to enjoy your own life while mothering.

And I’m taking my own advice, by the way. I’m doing these too.

Not perfectly. Not all at once. And definitely not in some unrealistic “romanticise every second of motherhood” kind of way.

Just little things. A ridiculously good drink. A book. A random outing. Getting dressed because I feel like it. Saying yes to something silly.

Because I think sometimes we make enjoying our lives way more complicated than it needs to be. Sometimes you need the lipstick, the cold drink, the walk with nowhere to be, the book you picked because you wanted to read it, and the music that isn’t nursery rhymes.

So consider this a little summer bucket list for both of us.

Let’s squeeze a little more juice out of summer, shall we?

1. Take yourself on a 30-minute solo date.

No errands. No grocery shopping. No “while I’m out…”

Put on something you feel cute in and go somewhere just because you want to be there.

2. Buy the stupid little summer thing.

The sunglasses. The hair clip. The ridiculous drink. The book. The flowers.

Not because you need it but because you like it.

3. Make one playlist that is aggressively YOU.

Not baby songs. Not calming instrumental music. Not whatever Spotify thinks a you should listen to.

Your teenage songs. Your university songs. Your I used to be outside at 2 a.m. songs.

Put it on while you cook dinner, sing your mama heart out and bust out all your stale moves lol.

4. Take your baby somewhere purely for the joy of it.

Not the supermarket. Not an appointment. Not “we need to get out.”

A garden. A fountain. An ice-cream shop. Somewhere colourful. Somewhere you can watch them experience something for the first time.

5. Get dressed for absolutely no reason.

Wear the dress. Put on the earrings. Do your hair. Wear your most expensive perfume. Put on some makeup if you’re feeling extra.

Even if you’re just going to Lidl. Girl especially if you’re just going to Lidl.

6. Have a late-night balcony/terrace drink after the baby goes down.

Something cold and fizzy. Maybe a mocktail. Maybe a cocktail or some wine.

No TV. No scrolling for twenty minutes. Just sit there and listen to summer exist.

7. Read somewhere that isn’t your bed.

Park bench. Café. Balcony. Beach. Anywhere OUTSIDE.

Read three pages. That’s enough.

8. Buy yourself a little “I see you and I appreciate you” gift.

It could be flowers. Your favourite treat. A piece of jewellery. Something for a hobby you’ve been putting off. (I got myself a mini sewing machine, it’s about time i got back to DIYing some shit.) And if you’re extra like me, add a little note to it.

It doesn’t have to cost much. The cost doesn’t matter. It’s the intention behind it.

A little I see how much you’ve been doing. I’m proud of you. Here, have something nice — from you, to you.

9. Have a “yes to the tiny joy” day.

Want ice cream before dinner? Sure.

Want to dance in the kitchen? Obviously.

Want to take the scenic route home? Why not.

Want to sit on the floor with your toddler and blow bubbles for 25 minutes? Absolutely.

Cancel the imaginary appointment.

10. Take your toddler for a golden-hour adventure.

Shoes on. Snacks in bag. Out the door.

Let them run around while you sit somewhere beautiful and watch them be little.

There’s something about watching your child enjoy a summer evening that makes you remember that you are living your life too.

11. Go to a bookshop and don’t buy a parenting book.

This is important. Pick up something because you are interested in it.

Romance. Thriller. Memoir. Business. Something completely ridiculous.

Remember that your curiosity still belongs to you.

12. Go somewhere you’ve never been in your own city.

A tiny café. A museum. A neighbourhood you’ve never wandered through.

Be a tourist where you live.

13. Have a “girls’ hour” instead of waiting for a girls’ night or weekend.

Call your friend. Walk together. Get coffee. Sit on a bench and gossip.

One hour is still friendship. Your life does not need to be perfectly organised before you are allowed to have fun.

14. Let your child see you having fun.

Dance. Sing badly. Laugh loudly. Get excited about something.

Let them watch you be a person not just Mum.

15. Do one thing your pre-mum self would recognise immediately.

The book you used to love. The music you used to play. The outfit you used to wear. The hobby you abandoned.

Not to become her again.

Just to say: Oh hey. You’re still in here.

16. Have a little “pink back” ritual.

At the end of the week, ask yourself:

What made me feel like myself this week?

Write down three things.

They can be embarrassingly small.

The earrings.

That song.

The peach I ate over the sink.

Laughing with my husband.

The 20 minutes I read.

My toddler holding my hand.

That stupid TikTok rabbit hole.

Keep collecting them.

Because sometimes getting your pink back doesn’t happen in one dramatic transformation. Sometimes it’s just little flashes of colour.

We’re not trying to manufacture some perfect summer or trying to become a new woman before September.

The point is to just pay a little more attention to the woman who is already here. The one who is mothering, working, loving, tired, laughing, figuring shit out, and occasionally remembering that she likes things too.

So before summer clocks out, go be a little bit selfish with your joy.

Buy the thing.

Play the song.

Take the walk.

Eat the ice cream.

Wear the outfit.

Sit in the sunshine for ten whole minutes and let absolutely nothing productive happen.

Your life isn’t waiting for you to finish mothering. You are living it right now so go on, babe.

There are still a few weeks of summer 2026 left, go find some magic.

Let’s chat: What’s going on your “before summer ends” list? I want the tiny things, the silly things, the “why the hell not?” things.

Leave a comment

ෆ

chasing wonder,

Lade

Read more TITT:

Not who you were before.

Not just a mother.

Whole.

The other day, I caught myself changing the bio on my Substack. Not because there was anything wrong with it, it just didn’t sound like me anymore. It described the woman I needed to be a year ago not the one I’m becoming now. And that felt strange, sitting with it because for the past year and a half, motherhood wasn’t just part of my identity. It was all of it.

When you first become a mum—especially after a traumatic birth, a NICU stay, or months of simply trying to keep everything together—your world gets very, very small.

Not in a bad way, in a necessary way.

Everything becomes about survival. Feeding. Sleeping. Appointments. Milestones. Google searches at 3 a.m., the blue light on your face while everyone else sleeps.

You stop asking what you feel like reading because you don’t have the bandwidth to read anything that isn’t what to expect at xyz weeks. You stop wondering what you’d like to learn because all you’re concerned about learning is how to keep a tiny human alive.

Your curiosity doesn’t disappear. It just quietly changes address. Every question becomes a question about your child.

You don’t even notice it happening.

One day you just wake up and realize every version of you has been folded neatly inside the word mum. Filed away. Put in storage, like the clothes that don’t fit yet.

And then something unexpected happens.

Not all at once though… Quietly.

One afternoon you find yourself wandering into a bookshop for no reason at all. You pick up a novel you’ve been meaning to read for months and your first thought isn’t, “Do I want this?” It’s, “Will I even have time to read this?”

And then, almost immediately, “Shouldn’t I be buying something for my child instead?”

You start caring about work—not just surviving it. You catch yourself making plans six months from now, as if you’ll still be a person then, too.

You read an article because it interests you, not because it’s about toddler nutrition. You buy the lipstick. You think about travelling with the girls. You laugh with your partner about something that has absolutely nothing to do with your child.

And almost immediately, the guilt arrives.

Shouldn’t my baby still be my whole world?

I think we confuse being someone’s whole world with making them our only one. Those aren’t the same thing.

I wonder, actually, if they’re opposites because children don’t just deserve mums who love them. They deserve mums who are still connected to themselves. Who remember what excites them. Who have hobbies, get lost in books, build things, laugh with friends, dream about things that don’t require a diaper bag.

Not because those things matter more than motherhood but because you still matter inside it.

And maybe that’s the part we forget.

We talk so much about what children need from us—our time, our attention, our patience, our sacrifice—that we sometimes forget they are also watching us live.

They are watching us laugh. They are watching us get excited about things. They are watching us have friends, read books, make plans, try things, fail at things, change our minds, become new versions of ourselves.

Lately I’ve been putting my playlist on speaker while making dinner — not nursery rhymes, mine. Afrobeat, neo-soul, whatever I’m in the mood for. Me a year ago wouldn’t have dared. My son dances to it anyway, off-beat and delighted, bopping his head and spinning in circles, having no idea it wasn’t made for him. Watching him, it hit me: he doesn’t need me to disappear for him to be happy. We can both just enjoy ourselves. In the same kitchen. Both whole.

They don’t need us to disappear into motherhood to prove that we love them. In fact, maybe one of the greatest gifts we can give them is a mother who is still her own person too.

I realize now that this is what people mean when they talk about getting your pink back.

I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot lately because that’s exactly what it feels like. Not becoming the woman I was before—she doesn’t exist anymore, and some days I still think about her and miss her, and that’s allowed too.

But watching colour slowly return after everything felt monochrome for so long.

A season, not a life sentence.

If you’re still in the early trenches, this might feel impossible to believe.

Right now your baby probably is your whole world. That’s okay, it’s supposed to be that way.

Survival asks everything of you, and you give it because there’s no version of you that wouldn’t.

But survival isn’t supposed to last forever.

One day you’ll read a novel or three back to back just because. You’ll become obsessed with a podcast for no reason anyone can explain. You’ll go down a random TikTok rabbit hole gathering very niche tea you have no one to talk to about lol. You’ll remember a dream you had before you became someone’s mum—the kind you have at night, and the kind you have for your life.

You’ll realize you’ve gone an entire afternoon without thinking about wake windows and instead of feeling guilty, I hope you let yourself smile, dance a little, celebrate it because it truly is a milestone worth celebrating.

Your world isn’t getting smaller because your child matters less. Your child doesn’t matter less. It’s getting bigger because you’re finally finding room for yourself again, too.

I don’t think motherhood was ever meant to erase us. I think it asks us to become more people, not fewer.

This my dear friends is why this newsletter has felt quiet for a while. I’ve been doing the work of coming back to myself.

When motherhood was my whole world, it made sense that it was all I wrote about. I didn’t have another lens to write through. I was still becoming whoever I am now.

Girl, let’s be for real… I’m still becoming her but there’s more of me in the room these days. I have a lot more to say, so there’ll be a lot more of me on the page, too.

Not instead of motherhood. Alongside it.

Maybe this essay isn’t actually about motherhood.

Maybe it’s about permission.

Permission to want.

Permission to evolve.

Permission to care about things again.

Permission to be interested.

Permission to pivot.

Permission to become.

And perhaps that’s what getting your pink back really is.

Not becoming who you were before.

But finally giving yourself permission to become the person you’ve been growing into all along.

What’s something that has started mattering to you again lately?

Leave a comment

ෆ

being and becoming,

Lade

Keep Reading

• B*tch, I’m a Mother — my raw, wildly unexpected story of becoming a mother, from an IUD pregnancy and a premature birth to the NICU, and finding a new version of myself along the way.

• The Red Bouncing Castle — a reflection on motherhood, maternal inheritance, and the little girl we sometimes find again while raising our own children.

• She cried because I was wearing earrings — on postpartum support, the men we choose, and why the kind of partner beside you can change everything.

It’s a red bouncing castle in a lush, thriving garden.

I have no idea why. I don’t have a clear memory attached to it, no specific afternoon I can point to, no photograph that explains it. Maybe I jumped in one as a child and something about it lodged itself somewhere deep and quiet inside me. Maybe it’s entirely invented. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

What I know is that whenever life gets heavy enough, I go there in my mind. I jump as high as I can. I laugh until my belly hurts. I am so full of glee that everything I’m worried about in real life simply stops existing for a little while.

It is the purest kind of joy I know how to access.

Or at least it used to.

Subscribe now

Because it’s been a long time since I last went there. I actually forgot about it entirely.

Which feels important somehow.

I think motherhood has a way of rearranging the entire internal architecture of a woman so completely that she loses access to rooms she didn’t even realise she hadn’t visited in a while.

And then sometimes something small opens the door again.

It came back on an ordinary evening, mid-phone call with my mother.

She asked if I was still breastfeeding my eleven-month-old son and when I said yes, she laughed and said “Wow, you’re such an old woman. Why would you still be breastfeeding a toddler? You’re behaving like one of those women who couldn’t have a child for many years and God finally answered their prayers in their old age. They’re the ones who refuse to stop breastfeeding their children.”

She didn’t mean it gently and I wasn’t upset by her comment either because I understand my mother now in ways I didn’t when I was younger. She mothers differently. That is genuinely her philosophy.

“Some mothers mother differently.”

Those were her exact words after travelling thousands of miles to come help me postpartum, after my son was discharged from the NICU.

She said it casually while refusing to change his diaper or bathe him because she thought we bathed him too much.

Some mothers mother differently.

It’s true, of course.

And depending on the day, it lands as either wisdom or the most quietly painful thing a mother could ever say.

Her careless comments generally do not bother me but that evening it sent me somewhere I didn’t expect to go.

I started thinking about nurture. About where it comes from. Whether it’s something you’re born with or something that gets deposited in you the moment you become a mother or whether, for some people, it simply doesn’t arrive.

Because I don’t think nurture and motherhood are automatically the same thing.

Some women become mothers without ever becoming emotionally safe places for their children.

Some provide.

Some sacrifice.

Some endure.

Some survive.

Some perform motherhood beautifully from the outside while leaving emotional bruises nobody else can see.

And some mother from such deep emotional depletion that softness never quite reaches the surface consistently enough to be felt.

None of this makes them monsters. Some of them are doing the absolute best they can with what they were given. Some of them never had softness modelled for them either. Some of them are, in their own way, also little girls who never got what they needed still trying to figure out how to give something they weren’t shown.

Which brings me to the question I keep circling:

What actually makes a person nurturing?

And the question underneath that one, the one I wasn’t expecting to arrive at on an ordinary Tuesday evening:

What does becoming a mother reveal about the way we ourselves were mothered?

I don’t think I’m the only one who has stood in the middle of early motherhood and suddenly, unexpectedly, started doing emotional archaeology on their own childhood.

There is something about the intimacy of caring for a baby, the skin-to-skin, the feeding at 3am, the way you instinctively press your lips to their forehead, the things you give without thinking that cracks something open. And in that opening, things surface. Not always dramatically. Sometimes just quietly, in the background of an ordinary day.

You find yourself doing something tender for your child and thinking: I needed this too.

You find yourself protecting them from something and realising: No one protected me from that.

Motherhood has a way of introducing you to the child you once were.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

She appears in flashes. In your tenderness. In your triggers. In the things you give your child without hesitation. In the things you suddenly recognise as absences in your own story.

And I think that is why early motherhood can feel so emotionally disorienting in ways that have nothing to do with sleep deprivation or feeding schedules.

Because while you are raising someone else, parts of you are quietly being raised alongside them.

And that is when the red bouncing castle came back.

Not the way it usually does.

Usually I go there intentionally. I choose it. I step inside, I jump, I laugh, I let everything fall away. A door I open when I need to.

This time I didn’t open anything. The door simply appeared.

And when it did, I wasn’t inside.

I was standing outside. Present-day me. Looking in.

And for the first time, I saw who had been doing the jumping all along.

It wasn’t the me I thought it was.

It was a little girl.

Has it always been a little girl?!

She was jumping as high as she could go, laughing that uninhibited full-body laugh that children do before they learn to hold themselves back. She wasn’t thinking about anything. She wasn’t worried about anything. She was just there, completely and entirely there in the most joyful version of herself.

I stood outside and watched her and felt something crack open in my chest that I don’t quite have language for yet.

Has it always been her in there?

Or did the questions about nurture and mothers and little girls who grow up wondering call her forward today in a way that hadn’t happened before?

I genuinely don’t know.

What I keep coming back to is this:

Somewhere inside me, there is a little girl in a red bouncing castle who has been carrying my joy this whole time.

Keeping it safe. Keeping the garden lush. Keeping the castle bright and the laughter ready.

And I spent years going there thinking it was present-day me who got to feel that free.

But maybe I was always borrowing her joy.

Maybe she is the one who remembers what it felt like before things got complicated. Before mothers said things that stung quietly. Before you learned that the world doesn’t always protect the things you love most.

She kept jumping through all of it.

Maybe nurture is not something some women simply have and others don’t.

Maybe it is capacity.

Maybe it is modelling.

Maybe it is what happens when softness has somewhere safe to land.

Maybe some women arrive at it naturally because someone taught them consciously or not that tenderness is allowed. That a child’s needs are worth meeting. That love is supposed to feel like safety.

And maybe others have to painstakingly teach it to themselves in adulthood. Piece by piece. Often while simultaneously trying to give it to someone else.

Maybe that is its own kind of extraordinary.

I don’t know what it means that I’m standing outside the castle now instead of in.

I don’t know if that’s growth or grief or some version of both. I don’t know if I’ve lost something or finally found something. I don’t know if I’m supposed to go in and jump with her or simply stand here, grateful she exists, grateful she has been there all this time keeping my joy alive when I forgot to tend to it myself.

I don’t know if my mother was the best mother for me or simply the one I had.

I don’t know if the women who mother differently are broken or depleted or shaped by their own unloved childhoods in ways that were never their fault either.

I don’t have a neat conclusion about mothers and daughters and nurture and the things that get passed down whether we mean them to or not.

Only this, I think becoming a mother forces many women to meet the child they once were.

And in that meeting, in that strange, disorienting, tender collision between who you are now and who you used to be, something becomes possible.

Not resolution, necessarily.

Not forgiveness on a timeline.

Not even answers.

But maybe the beginning of understanding what you needed.

And maybe slowly, imperfectly, in the middle of everything else, the chance to make sure your child doesn’t have to go looking for theirs.

The little girl in the red bouncing castle is still jumping.

I saw her today for the first time.

I’m not sure I know what to do with that yet.

But I saw her.

And I think that matters more than I currently have words for.

ෆ

figuring it out,

Lade

Still in the trenches? Come sit with us in the Village Square (aka Subscriber chat).

No judgment. No perfection. Just mamas figuring it out together🤎

But for around 1 in 10 families, the timeline changes unexpectedly and often terrifyingly fast.

One moment you are moodboarding your maternity photoshoot and planning your baby shower and the next, doctors are talking about steroid shots, NICU teams and how many weeks they think they can realistically buy you.

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Prematurity has many causes. Some gradual. Some sudden. Many completely unpredictable.

And sometimes, despite all the scans and appointments and precautions in the world, babies simply arrive early anyway.

Here are the 10 most common reasons babies are born premature and the reality that often sits quietly behind them.

10. Placenta Previa

This happens when the placenta partially or completely covers the cervix.

Sometimes it causes painless bleeding that appears suddenly and heavily, turning an ordinary day into an emergency room visit very quickly.

For many mothers, the safest option becomes an early C-section because when the placenta blocks the exit, waiting can become dangerous for both mother and baby.

One of the hardest things about complicated pregnancies is how quickly “we’ll monitor it” can turn into “we need to deliver today.”

9. Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR)

IUGR means a baby is not growing at the expected rate inside the womb.

And emotionally, this one feels particularly cruel because pregnancy is supposed to be the place where babies grow safely.

But sometimes the placenta stops functioning well enough to support them.

In those moments, the NICU can actually become safer than the womb itself which is a heartbreaking sentence no mother ever expects to hear.

8. Gestational Diabetes

Gestational diabetes is more common than many people realise and when unmanaged, it can lead to complications involving the baby, placenta, or delivery itself.

Some mothers end up needing earlier deliveries because continuing the pregnancy simply becomes riskier than ending it.

Pregnancy can humble you very quickly.

Sometimes you follow every rule and your body still writes its own story.

7. Placental Abruption

A placental abruption is a true medical emergency where the placenta begins separating from the uterus before birth.

It can cause severe bleeding and rapidly cut off oxygen to the baby.

This is one of those situations where doctors move incredibly fast because there is no safe way to “wait and see.”

For many families, prematurity begins with absolute panic.

6. Multiples

Twins, triplets and higher-order multiples are significantly more likely to arrive early.

Simply put: the uterus can only stretch so far.

More babies usually means less room, more pressure, and higher chances of complications.

More than half of twins are born before 37 weeks.

And honestly, parents of multiples deserve several naps and a standing ovation.

5. Cervical Insufficiency

This is sometimes called the “silent” cause of prematurity because the cervix begins shortening or opening far too early often without pain or noticeable contractions.

Many women discover it unexpectedly during routine scans.

There’s something particularly unsettling about your body changing quietly without your knowledge.

Pregnancy teaches many women that danger does not always arrive loudly.

4. Infections

Even relatively common infections like UTIs or bacterial vaginosis can increase the risk of premature labour.

Inflammation in the body can sometimes trigger contractions or cause the waters to break early.

Which feels deeply unfair because sometimes something as ordinary as discomfort while peeing turns into a conversation about viability and NICU outcomes.

Pregnancy can shift from normal to terrifying with almost no warning at all.

3. Preeclampsia

Preeclampsia is a serious pregnancy condition involving dangerously high blood pressure and potential organ damage.

And the terrifying thing about it is how quickly it can escalate.

For many mothers, the only treatment is delivery regardless of how premature the baby is.

There are women who walk into routine appointments and leave being told they are having a baby that same day.

No one prepares you for how fragile “normal” can suddenly feel.

2. PPROM

PPROM stands for Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes which means your waters break before 37 weeks.

Sometimes with a dramatic gush.

Sometimes with a slow leak that makes you question whether you’re overreacting.

And one of the cruelest things about PPROM is how deceptively ordinary the beginning can feel.

You think maybe you peed a little.

Maybe you’re being anxious.

Maybe it’s nothing.

And then suddenly your entire pregnancy splits into a before and after.

Hospital rooms.

Steroid injections.

Monitoring.

Doctors using words like viability and infection and prolonging pregnancy for as long as possible.

Some mothers deliver within hours.

Others spend days or weeks in hospital trying to keep their babies safely inside just a little longer.

It is an incredibly strange thing to know your body has started something your heart is desperately trying to slow down.

1. Spontaneous Preterm Labor

This is the most common cause of prematurity and often the hardest to explain.

No infection.

No obvious medical issue.

No clear reason.

The body simply begins labour too soon.

And that uncertainty can stay with parents long after the NICU journey ends because humans naturally search for explanations after traumatic experiences.

We want reasons.

We want certainty.

We want to know what we could have done differently.

But sometimes there is no satisfying answer.

Sometimes pregnancy simply changes course without warning.

And that reality is incredibly difficult to make peace with.

The medical reasons are important to understand but they only tell half the story.

What people don’t talk about enough is the emotional reality of giving birth prematurely.

Not just the fear.

Not just the NICU.

But the grief.

Because prematurity doesn’t only change when your baby arrives. It changes the entire emotional landscape of pregnancy and postpartum too.

After making it through the NICU, people often act like healthy baby = nothing else matters.

Meanwhile many preemie/NICU mums are quietly mourning:

• the pregnancy they lost

• the birth they imagined

• the postpartum they never got

• the normalcy that disappeared overnight

In my case, the second my bump finally became visible… Pop! Ruptured membranes.

One moment I was looking forward to maternity photos and finally feeling visibly, beautifully pregnant and the next I was in a hospital bed praying I could keep my baby inside long enough to reach 30 weeks for a better outcome.

There was no maternity shoot, no slow final stretch of pregnancy, no immediate skin-to-skin after birth, no golden-hour moment where my baby was placed on my chest while I cried happy tears and soaked him in.

There were doctors, machines, fear and a whole NICU team.

All the parts I had thought were a given rite of passage just went out the window in an instant.

And even now, after all this time, seeing other people’s maternity photos still stings, a lot.

Not because I’m not grateful for my son.

Not because I would trade him for anything but because there was a version of motherhood I thought I would get to experience and I didn’t.

I think many preemie mamas carry some version of that grief quietly.

And if you do too, I want you to know that there is room for all of it.

The gratitude.

The sadness.

The relief.

The anger.

The trauma.

The love.

None of those feelings cancel the others out.

You are allowed to mourn what you lost while deeply loving what you have.

That grief can coexist WITH gratitude.

If you’ve experienced prematurity in any form, whether your baby arrived at 35 weeks or 25, whether your NICU stay lasted days or months, whether your pregnancy ended in panic or confusion or grief or gratitude or all four at once, you are not alone in it.

Whatever version of that experience you are carrying, the loud grief or the quiet kind, the anger that doesn’t have a name yet or the gratitude that sits beside something heavier… it is all valid.

If you’re a NICU mama, what changed the timeline for you?

Read Next

• Some Babies — a raw reflection on preemie motherhood, NICU life and the sacred little milestones most people never see

• The Quiet Things That Held Me — on the small emotional anchors that carried me through PPROM, hospitalization and the uncertainty of premature birth

• I Took the Easy Way Out Having a C-Section — a reflection on postpartum recovery, invisible pain and the stories behind every C-section scar

ෆ

always in your corner,
Lade

Still in the trenches? Come sit with us in the Village Square (aka Subscriber chat).

No judgment. No perfection. Just mamas figuring it out together🤎

Thriving in the Trenches is a free publication. This mama, however, runs on coffee, tiny cuddles, and a dash of chaos — if you’d like to support this space, you can keep the coffee flowing

buy me a coffee☕️

There is no one way to arrive at motherhood. No standard entry point, no universal experience, no shared first chapter that every mother can point to and say “yes, that’s where it began for me too.”

Some of us arrived suddenly. Some slowly. Some after years of waiting and hoping and grieving and trying again. Some through our bodies. Some through paperwork and patience and a love that chose its child. Some are mothering from a distance, in memory, in prayer, in the quiet ache of a child who is no longer here or not yet here or somewhere in between. And some are standing at the edge of it all, not quite in and not quite out, holding a hope that hasn’t fully taken shape yet.

This is dedicated to every version, every path, every kind of love that moves in the direction of a child.

I asked the mothers in this community to tell me two things…

what’s one thing you absolutely love about being a mum… and one thing no one really prepared you for?

not just the beautiful parts but the honest ones too. short, long, messy… I’ll take it all

What came back wasn’t a list. It was a portrait. Layered and honest and tender in ways that stayed with me quietly for a long time after reading. So I want to try to hold all of it together. Their words and mine because that’s what this space is for.

If you ask a mother what she loves, she will almost never give you the answer you expect. She won’t say the milestone or the achievement or the thing she can photograph. She’ll reach for something smaller. Something that barely fits into words. Brandi Rose talks about holding her daughter’s hand. It started in the NICU, that same hand, impossibly small, learning the shape of her mother’s palm. And it hasn’t stopped. Every night, as her daughter falls asleep, the hand is still there. That’s the thing about this love. It starts somewhere specific and then it just keeps going.

Janeica almost dropped a seaweed snack. Caught it mid-air. And her two-year-old looked up and said “good catch, mami.” Just like that, a tiny person, already in her corner, already cheering. The big hugs, the little laughs, the random I love you, mami that arrives out of nowhere and rearranges everything.

Mama Blur said her favourite thing in the whole world is her baby’s belly laugh. And then she said something that genuinely makes me a teary eyed mess every time I think about it — that she’s going to miss the younger version of her baby so much her chest hurts, while at the same time being completely in love with the now version and excited for every future one. All of that living in the same breath. The grief and the love and the anticipation, inseparable from each other.

I recognise that feeling. I think most of us do. The way motherhood asks you to hold so many things at once — yesterday and today and tomorrow, loss and love and hope, all of it tangled together and somehow still beautiful.

Haus of Weis loves the physical parts. The hugs. The little hand in hers. The dance parties. The way a small body finds yours and stays there. Amy loves watching her kids beam with pride over something they did entirely by themselves, she is teaching them that inner confidence matters more than outside validation, and watching it take root in real time. Shannon loves witnessing the friendships her daughters are building, the world they’re creating that has nothing to do with her and everything to do with who she helped them become. Renee loves hearing her children play together as siblings, that particular sound of them being each other’s people. Clare, whose children are now in their twenties, loves that they challenge her, that their viewpoints differ from hers and they feel safe enough to say so. She offered encouragement to every mother still in the early trenches: the poo-namis, the sleepless nights, the sticky cuddles (even though you won’t know it at the time and will sometimes just want to go to the bathroom alone with the door shut) IS one of the best things you will ever do. And Chaos, Cuddles and Code loves the tiny moments that catch her off guard. The ones that arrive without warning, a shared laugh, something ridiculous said at the dinner table, an unexpected cuddle and suddenly the hard day is gone.

I love all of these answers. I love that not one of them is the same. I love that between all of us, we have built something that looks like the full picture.

And then there is what no one told us. No one told Brandi about the severe allergic reaction to the solution used during her C-section. Three months of suffering that no one mentioned was even possible. The body doing something the books never warned her about.

No one told Renee she would feel so touched out — that by 6:30pm, after a full day of being needed by three small people, her skin would feel like it no longer belonged only to her. She still shows up every day but nobody mentioned that part, they could have given a girl a little heads up at least. No one told Amy about the noise. The whining, the yelling before trying a normal voice, the screams, even the happy ones. She bought earplugs and that’s valid, I respect it entirely.

No one told Haus of Weis how mind-numbing the small routines could be. The repetition that is also, quietly, the whole point.

No one told Readdaholic how fast it would go. Or the gutting, specific pain of watching a child leave home, a pain that arrives even when everything has gone right. No one told Shannon about the daily, relentless, simultaneous humility and inspiration of being in this arena. Both things, every single day, without a break. No one told Chaos, Cuddles and Code how much of motherhood would happen inside her own head. The guilt, the second-guessing, and the feeling of never quite doing enough. The missing parts of herself while loving them more than anything. No one told Jen what her son would face online. She had a map for her daughter, she lived through the 90s, she knew what was coming. But she has never been a tween boy, and the algorithm found him but thankfully, she is paying attention, building the foundation and staying close. But the not-knowing is its own particular weight.

I think about all of this and I think — we were handed something enormous and told very little about what it would actually ask of us. Not because anyone was hiding it but because some things genuinely cannot be explained in advance. They have to be lived. And then, if we’re lucky, we find each other on the other side of them and say “you too? I thought it was just me.” It was never just you.

My journey to motherhood took an unexpected turn at 28 weeks, landing me in a hospital three hours from home, with no family nearby and no road map for what came next. Fifteen months later, I am still finding words for what that experience was. Still understanding the ways it shaped me. Still meeting versions of myself that only exist because of what we went through — something that was terrifying and sacred in equal measure. I created this space because I needed it to exist. Because no one handed me what I needed and I had to piece it together alone. And because I kept thinking — surely, there are more of us. There have to be more of us.

There were, there are and you’re here. And that matters more than I know how to say.

This community holds more than mothers with children in their arms. There are women in this space who are waiting, hoping, navigating fertility journeys and health barriers and questions that don’t have answers yet.

Rosanne shared something that has stayed with me, she is in the middle of understanding whether motherhood is physically possible for her, holding a hope that feels uncertain, moving through something messy and hard and still, somehow, hopeful. She said this Mother’s Day hits differently.

To Rosanne, and to every woman in that particular kind of in-between — you belong in this space just as much. The longing is its own form of love. The hoping is its own form of mothering. You are not on the outside of this day looking in. You are part of it.

And to the mothers of angel babies — the ones who held a child and then had to let go, the ones who never got to hold them at all. You are mothers and your love did not go anywhere. It only goes forward, every single day, even when no one sees it.

To the adoptive mothers, the foster mothers, the stepmothers, the grandmothers raising grandchildren, the aunties who showed up when no one else did… motherhood is not only biology. It is presence. It is choosing, again and again, to love a child through whatever they need. You are all in this.

Motherhood is not one thing.

It is Brandi’s hand in her daughter’s, night after night. It is Janeica’s son cheering her on over a caught snack. It is Clare watching her adult children disagree with her and feeling proud. It is Renee needing five minutes where no one is touching her. It is Jen staying alert to what her son is being shown online. It is Rosanne, hopeful and uncertain, holding something she can’t fully see yet. It is all of it, all at once, all the time.

And if no one has said it to you today in the way you needed to hear it…

Happy Mother’s Day.

To the ones in the thick of it. To the ones on the other side of it. To the ones waiting at the edge of it. To the ones carrying it quietly, without a title, without a day, without anyone thinking to ask.

You are seen here.

Every single one of you.

So tell me, what does motherhood look like for you right now?

ෆ

always in your corner,

Lade

Still in the trenches? Come sit with us in the Village Square (aka Subscriber chat).

No judgment. No perfection. Just mamas figuring it out together🤎

Thriving in the Trenches is a free publication. This mama, however, runs on coffee, tiny cuddles, and a dash of chaos — if you’d like to support this space, you can keep the coffee flowing

buy me a coffee☕️

And when I say nothing, I mean absolutely nothing.

No cute little setup.

No “just in case” stash.

No organized drawers waiting for his arrival.

My entire newborn “setup” was a Nestlé Baby & Me bib and two size-2 Rascals diapers I got in PR.

That was my entire arsenal.

I wasn’t about to magically transform that bib into an all-purpose garment or perform a five-loaves-and-two-fish miracle with those two diapers… so I had to move fast. Very fast.

I had a long wishlist of things I thought I needed, the kind of list that makes you feel prepared, organized, and slightly delusional.

And this baby laughed at that list. Cackled, even.

Reality hit me very quickly, there’s a difference between what social media tells you you “must have” and what actually gets you through postpartum and newborn life.

At the end of the day, we had everything we needed.

Not everything I thought I needed but everything that actually mattered.

No, the Nuna Boona Doonas didn’t make it off my wishlist but the things that made life easier and the newborn stage comfortable for both me and baby definitely did.

So if you’re building your list and wondering whether you really need the twelve-step milk prep station, the vibrating shusher-wusher bassinet, or whatever TikTok and targeted ads are currently yelling at you about… the answer is a calm, confident:

no. absolutely not.

You need less than you think but more than they tell you.

These are the essentials.

Not aesthetic.

Not over-marketed.

Not influencer-curated.

Just the things that actually matter when life comes at you fast and the baby comes even faster.

This is for that early postpartum / newborn phase. I’ve broken it down into categories so you know what you actually need.

I’ve left out brand names for the most part because that’s not what matters except for bottles, because that one actually does. Focus on function, not brand. You don’t need the exact same items.

🍼Feeding

• Pump(s)

  Focus on Comfort + efficiency, that’s everything when you’re exhausted.

• Bottles

  If you’re doing bottle and breast, the bottle you choose can make or break your breastfeeding journey. More specifically, the teat matters.

  You want a slow flow and a gradual slope. That’s it. Those two things will save you a lot of confusion and heartbreak down the line.

  The bottles I personally swear by:

  → Lansinoh Natural Wave bottle

  → Evenflo Balance Wide Neck bottle

• Burp cloths (lots)

• Simethicone drops

  A lifesaver for colic.

  I’m not sure every baby goes through a colicky phase, but if/when it hits… this can make a real difference.

• Baby gas relief tube

  I know this one can be a bit controversial… but it really helped my baby.

  Newborns can get really gassy and haven’t quite figured out how to pass it on their own yet.
  Most of the time, things like tummy massage and bicycle legs will do the trick.

  But occasionally, it can get really uncomfortable.

  That’s where this comes in.

  Used gently (with lubrication), it can help release trapped gas pretty quickly — and the relief is almost immediate. Just… be prepared for what might follow

• Breast milk storage bags

• Breast pads

• Breast milk collector cups

• Nipple balm

• Pacifier (optional but real)

  Even if baby rejects it or you don’t plan to use it, it’s good to have.

• Bottle warmer / steriliser

  Bonus points if it’s a two in one. Mine was a 3-in-1 (it also defrosts) and it was the most convenient thing ever. I still use it till this day.

• Bottle drying rack

• Bottle storage

• Bottle cleaning brush

• Feeding pillow

👶🏽Clothing

• Footed onesies with mittens

• Bodysuits

• Footed pants

• Socks

• Mittens (very few)

• Hats

• Bibs

• Jacket for outdoors (seasonal)

🚗Transport

• Stroller

• Car seat

• Diaper bag

• On the go changing mat

🧼Hygiene and care

• Baby bathtub or bath seat

• Hooded towels

• Washcloths

• Baby wash & shampoo

• Coconut oil (for their hair):

  Just trust me on this one.

  I was terrified cradle cap was going to render my baby bald so I applied coconut oil to his scalp daily.

  When it eventually showed up, I’d slather his scalp about 10 minutes before bath time and use a cradle cap comb to gently lift it out and it worked every time

  I say all this to say… he did not go bald.

• Cradle cap comb

  you already know why ;)

• Body lotion / butter

• Vaseline

• Saline drops

• Nasal aspirator

• Nail trimmer

• Comb + brush

• Thermometer

• A comfortable changing station

  By comfortable, I mean at standing height (top of a dresser works perfectly).

  There will be a LOT of diaper changes.

  There’s already enough going on, you don’t need back and waist pain on top of it.

😴Sleep

• Dim light / night light

  For night feed sand diaper changes, prevents full wake-ups

• Crib + mattress

• Crib sheets

• Swaddles (optional)

  Some babies absolutely hate them including mine, don’t overcommit.

• Sleep sack

• Baby-wearing wrap

  this is a save-your-sanity with functional nap traps item

• Baby carrier

• Muslin blankets

• Baby lounger

🎈Play & Learn

• Bouncer

• Contrast cards

• Kick-and-play gym

  ---

🤎For YOU

• A supportive partner

  Not optional.

  Not a bonus.

  Not something to be grateful for like it’s a favour.

  A baseline.

• Postpartum recovery basics

  vaginal delivery:

  → Peri bottle

  → Adult diapers / heavy pads

  If you deliver vaginally, these are not optional.

  C-section delivery:

  → Comfortable high-waisted underwear that sits above the incision

  → Loose, soft clothing, nothing sitting on or rubbing the scar

  → A pillow to press against your abdomen when you cough, sneeze, or laugh — nobody tells you about this, and the first time you sneeze without one, you will understand immediately

• Comfortable feeding-friendly clothes

  Not “cute sets” but things you can leak in, sleep in and feed in. bonus points if they’re cute and practical.

• A bedside cart

  Have everything within reach:

  → your pump and pump parts

  → bottles

  → extra burp cloths

  → nipple balm

  → water

  → lots of Snacks (very important).

• Wrist brace with thumb support

  Please just trust me on this one. Mummy thumb is real. (De Quervain’s tenosynovitis if we’re being technical)

  All that lifting, feeding, adjusting, holding… your wrists will feel it.

  Future you will be very grateful you listened.

• Nursing bras

  Helpful if you’re breastfeeding or pumping.

  Nothing fancy, just comfortable, functional, and easy to reach.

That’s it! That’s the practical, functional list.

You’ll figure the rest out as you go.

You don’t need everything ready, you don’t need everything perfect, you just need what works for you and your baby.

Everything else, you’ll learn it, adjust and make it your own as you go.

What’s one thing you thought you needed but absolutely didn’t?👀

ෆ

yours in chaos and clarity,

Lade

Still in the trenches? Come sit with us in the Village Square (aka Subscriber chat).

No judgment. No perfection. Just mamas figuring it out together🤎

Thriving in the Trenches is a free publication. This mama, however, runs on coffee, tiny cuddles, and a dash of chaos — if you’d like to support this space, you can keep the coffee flowing

buy me a coffee☕️

She looked at me for a second and said “Oh my God… are those earrings you’re wearing?” she said it like it shocked her.

I laughed a little not thinking anything of it because… yes, they were.

And then she burst into tears. Proper tears.

The kind you can’t stop once they start.

“You just had a baby,” she said, still crying.

“Your hair is done… and you’re wearing earrings.”

And then, through tears, she said something that broke my heart, “when I had my baby… I looked a complete mess.” She apologised as she said it.

“I know this was five years ago… I’m not trying to compare and I’m sorry to dump this on you like this…”

But it wasn’t really about me.

It was about what she had lived through.

By her 6-week postpartum appointment, her doctor said she was already malnourished. Not because she didn’t care for herself but because she didn’t have the space to.

She had just had an emergency C-section in a new country, far from home or any kind of village and the one person who should have been there for her did not show up.

Her partner believed childcare was 100% a woman’s responsibility.

So was cooking.

So was cleaning.

So while she was recovering from major surgery, caring for a newborn for the first time in her life, navigating pain, exhaustion, and hormonal shifts… she was also feeding a grown man, cleaning up after him and holding everything together. Alone.

And as if that wasn’t enough, he brought his mother (who unfortunately shares the same mentality) to stay with them.

Another adult.

Another person to cook for and clean up after.

And instead of support, it became reinforcement of the same expectations. The same absence of care. The same quiet assumption that all of this, the baby, the home, the recovery was all hers to carry. Alone.

So of course, her reaction to my earrings made sense.

It wasn’t about the earrings, it was about the possibility of a different reality.

The truth is: postpartum is not just shaped by your body, it is shaped by your environment and most significantly, by your partner.

We talk a lot about pregnancy.

The vitamins.

The appointments.

The symptoms.

But we don’t talk enough about the man.

And not in a surface-level way.

In a real way.

Because biologically, he is more than just a “sperm donor”.

He is not irrelevant. Not even close.

A man’s health, his age, lifestyle, diet, stress levels all of it plays a role in pregnancy outcomes and fetal development.

He contributes half of the baby’s genetic and epigenetic makeup which means this isn’t just about “his genes.” It’s about the condition those genes are in.

Research shows that paternal factors directly influence placenta development, miscarriage risk, birth weight, and even long-term outcomes like metabolic health and neurodevelopment.

Things like smoking, alcohol use, poor diet, chronic illness, even environmental exposures don’t just affect him. They can directly impact the pregnancy.

And yet… we rarely talk about any of this.

Pregnancy is treated like something a woman carries alone.

When in reality, it begins long before conception and involves both people.

So yes, he is part of the process from the very beginning and it doesn’t just stop at biology.

Research also shows that when partners are actively involved, attending prenatal appointments, offering emotional support, being present in the process, it directly contributes to lower stress levels and healthier pregnancy outcomes.

Because pregnancy to postpartum is not just physical.

It is emotional.

Mental.

Environmental.

And beyond all of that, there’s the reality you can’t research your way out of:

how he actually shows up.

Because postpartum is already a vulnerable, demanding, disorienting time.

And the difference between surviving it and being slowly depleted by it often comes down to support.

And I know this, not just in theory but because I’ve lived the opposite.

Because even here, far from home, far from any built-in village, I have never felt unsupported. I haven’t had to carry anything alone. Not the baby. Not the home. Not myself. And it has made a difference in the quiet, everyday ways that actually matter.

In being able to rest.

To eat.

To recover.

To get my hair done on a random Tuesday.

To wear the fucking earrings.

To still feel like myself inside motherhood.

And in the middle of this conversation is when it really clicked for me… this is not about luck, this is about partnership.

When we hear stories like my friend’s, the question that quietly sits underneath is: how do women end up with men like this?

And the answer is not simple.

It’s not just “bad choices.”

It’s not just “red flags ignored.”

It’s upbringing.

It’s conditioning.

It’s what we are taught to accept.

Girls are raised to be accommodating.

To be nurturing.

To be patient.

To “understand.”

Boys are often raised to be served.

Excused.

Protected from responsibility.

Praised for doing the bare minimum.

And then those children grow up and enter relationships.

Where a woman believes: if I just try a little harder, love a little better, explain myself more clearly… he will show up.

And a man believes: this is normal.

So when a baby arrives — a moment that should expand care, responsibility, and partnership —it doesn’t create something new. It reveals what was already there.

And just like that, a woman is not just caring for a newborn, she is carrying the full weight of a household, of a relationship, of expectations that were never hers to hold alone.

And we say “that’s just how it is” but it shouldn’t be because support is not exceptional, it is not something to be grateful for, it is not something a woman should have to earn.

It is the baseline.

And yet, for many women, it is missing.

So no, this is not just about earrings, it’s about what those earrings represented.

Space. Capacity. Care.

The quiet evidence that someone, somewhere, was being supported.

And over the past few days, in conversations with other women… I’ve been reminded just how many women are quietly carrying this weight.

So maybe the real conversation is not: why did she have to go through that?

But: why do we keep accepting that women will?

Because motherhood is already demanding. It does not need to be made harder by the absence of support that should have been there all along.

Maybe, before we talk about pregnancy plans and baby names… we should be asking a different question:

what’s the evidence that this man will show up when it actually matters?

Not just as a father but as a partner.

Because that part?

That part changes everything.

And I think about that often now, not just in theory but in practice because I am raising a child, a boy.

So this is no longer just a conversation about what women endure, it’s a conversation about what men become.

About what they are taught to expect, what they are taught to give, what they are taught to notice and what they are allowed to ignore. Because the truth is, men like this don’t appear out of nowhere.

They are raised.

Raised in homes where care is invisible, where mothers carry everything quietly, where daughters learn to help and sons learn to be helped and no one calls it out because it looks normal, it feels familiar. It’s how things have always been.

Until one day, that same dynamic follows a woman into motherhood and suddenly, the cost becomes visible.

In her body.

In her exhaustion.

In the way she slowly disappears into responsibility that was never meant to be hers to shoulder alone.

So I think this is where it starts, not when we’re choosing partners but much earlier. In how we raise our children, in what we tolerate and what we model because if we raise boys who are not taught to care, we will continue to raise men who do not show up and if we raise girls who are taught to endure, we will continue to raise women who over-function in the absence of support.

And then we call it love or patience or “that’s just how men are” but it’s not. It is conditioning and it can be unlearned. Slowly, intentionally, uncomfortably, at times but it can be unlearned because I refuse to raise a son who believes that care is optional or that partnership is passive or that motherhood is something a woman carries alone while he stands beside her, untouched by it.

And I refuse to raise a child (any child) who grows up believing that love must be earned through exhaustion.

It’s time for the conversation to shift from:

why do women end up with men like this?

to:

how do we stop raising men like this?

Because until we answer that, we will keep having the same conversations and telling the same stories.

Watching different women live through the same quiet depletion and noticing things like earrings… as if they are evidence of something extraordinary when really they should be nothing special at all.

And I want to say something that might be uncomfortable because while all of this is systemic, while it is cultural, generational, deeply ingrained…

and I say this with softness, I fully understand that life is rarely simple but at some point, awareness meets choice because not every man is like this and not every woman ends up here which means, somewhere in between what we were taught and what we now know… there is room for a different choice.

Not always an easy one.

Not always a clear one.

But a real one.

I know love (as we’ve been taught to understand it) can be very persuasive, it can make you explain things away, minimise red flags, hold on to potential, believe that effort, patience, and understanding will eventually turn into change and sometimes it does but many times, it doesn’t.

And motherhood has a way of removing the illusion because a baby doesn’t create character, it reveals it.

And if care was never there before it does not suddenly appear just because a child does.

So yes, we need to start taking men seriously.

Not their words.

Not their intentions.

Not their potential.

But their patterns.

How they show up when things are inconvenient.

When they are tired.

When there is nothing to gain.

Because that version of them?

That is the one that will meet you in motherhood.

And I say this with so much softness… but also with clarity:

love is not enough.

Not for partnership.

Not for parenting.

Not for the kind of life that requires two people to show up, fully.

And choosing who you have a child with is not just a romantic decision.

It is a structural decision.

A life-shaping one.

Because the right partner doesn’t just make motherhood easier.

They make it possible to remain yourself within it.

To be.

To rest.

To recover.

To wear earrings if you feel like it… without it being remarkable.

And that should not be a luxury.

That should be normal.

looking back, what do you wish had been different about your postpartum experience?

if you feel like sharing🤎

Sources:

• Global Foundation for Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (GFCNI) — Paternal health and fetal development

• UNM Health — Attention, Dads: Your Health and Lifestyle Affect Baby, Too

• ABC News — Men’s health impacts pregnancy and child outcomes

• Fertility and Sterility — Association of preconception paternal health on perinatal outcomes

ෆ

with grace for the in-between,

Lade

Still in the trenches? Come sit with us in the Village Square (aka Subscriber chat).

No judgment. No perfection. Just mamas saying the things we don’t always say out loud 🤎

Thriving in the Trenches is a free publication. This mama, however, runs on coffee, tiny cuddles, and a dash of chaos — your support keeps the coffee flowing

buy me a coffee☕️

You prepare for it for months, sometimes years.
Reading books. Attending classes. Saving posts. Listening carefully to women who have walked this road before you.

And in many ways, that preparation helps.
It gives you language, expectations, and a sense of control over something that is, by nature, wildly uncontrollable.

I genuinely thought I had prepared well.

The books were read.
The podcasts were saved.
The advice was collected, sometimes requested, sometimes aggressively volunteered.

I knew motherhood would be life-changing, exhausting, beautiful, overwhelming, and deeply transformative.

But now, standing on the other side of my baby’s first year (a full orbit around the sun as someone’s mother) I realize:

what shapes you most isn’t what you expect.

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It’s the quiet things.

The oddly specific things.
The deeply human, slightly chaotic, sometimes tender realities that catch you off guard and slowly reshape you.

The moments that make you pause mid-day and think:

…why did nobody tell me this part?

This is a collection of those things.

Pregnancy surprised me with…

1. Vivid dreams (deeply disrespectful)
And I don’t mean one weird dream a night. I mean 9 completely unrelated, unhinged dreams in a single 2-hour sleep cycle.

Then you wake up to pee, go back to sleep… and it’s another 7.

Full storylines. New characters. Emotional arcs.

No continuity.
No warning.

You’d wake up exhausted like you’ve lived several parallel lives before breakfast.

2. Hunger is not hunger. It’s an emergency.
One minute you’re fine.
The next, your body is like: eat immediately or we shut this whole operation down.

3. Lightning crotch feels exactly like it sounds (and it is RUDE)
Sharp. Sudden. Completely unprovoked.

One minute you’re walking peacefully, the next you’re questioning everything in public.

4. Constipation can become a full-time side quest
You will think about it more than you’d like to admit.

You will celebrate small wins.

You will understand struggle in a very personal way.

5. Round ligament pain feels like you pulled a muscle in your uterus
Which sounds fake… until your body is like, no, this is very real.

6. Rolling over in bed becomes a full production
Not a turn.
A negotiation.
A three-point maneuver with sound effects.

7. Nosebleeds and bleeding gums can randomly become your personality
Out of nowhere.

You’re brushing your teeth… bleeding.
You blow your nose… bleeding.

And at some point you’re like is this just who I am now?

8. Side sleeping comes with a level of hip pain nobody warned you about
When you’ve built your entire identity around sleeping like you’re in a mattress commercial, face down and spread like butter…

this can be very jarring.

9. You may outgrow your shoes. Permanently.
Not swollen-for-now.

Not temporary.

Just… new feet, new shoe size.

10. Pregnancy can feel lonely in a way that surprises you
Even when you’re loved.
Even when people are excited.

There are parts of carrying a baby that only you experience inside your own body.

11. The fear of something going wrong can sit right next to excitement
You can be happy. Grateful. Excited.

And still quietly anxious.

Both can exist at the same time.

Birth taught me…

12. Birth plans are hopes, not guarantees
You write them with hope.

And you can do everything “right” and still find yourself in a completely different story.

13. Things can change very quickly
One moment you think you know how this is going to go… and the next, you’re in the hospital with a pregnancy emergency being prepped for surgery.

No slow transition.
No time to process.

Just… now.

14. There is a quiet kind of grief when things don’t go how you imagined
Not because one way is better than the other.

But because something you pictured so clearly just disappears without warning or ceremony.

15. Post C-section shivers deserve their own warning label
Full-body, teeth-chattering, uncontrollable shaking.

No warning. No explanation.
Just your body recalibrating in real time.

16. You can feel completely disconnected from your body at first
Like it doesn’t fully belong to you yet.

Like you’re meeting it again.

17. You may have to relearn basic movement
Standing. Sitting. Walking.

Things you’ve done your whole life suddenly require thought, effort, and patience.

18. The “get up and walk” moment will humble you
At some point, someone will look at you (kindly) and say:

“you have to get up now.”

And you will even when your body feels like it absolutely should not be doing that yet.

And then… the NICU rewrote everything

19. You may leave the hospital without your baby and become their visitor for a while
You walk out with a body that still thinks your baby should be with you.

Arms empty.
Heart still tethered to a room you had to leave behind.

And then you learn a version of motherhood where you have to go home without your baby again and again and again.

20. You may find yourself staring at photos of your baby while pumping just to encourage let-down
Because sometimes your body needs visual proof that your baby exists safely somewhere.

21. You may become fluent in machine beeps you never wanted to learn
You start recognizing the difference between “something is wrong” and “baby just moved dramatically.”

22. Celebrations and Milestones change when the journey changes
Sometimes you’re celebrating weight instead of weeks.
Stability instead of timelines.

Grams gained.
Oxygen reduced.
Tubes removed.

Progress becomes microscopic… and monumental.

And those wins matter just as much.

23. You may have to learn to parent through glass, wires, and waiting
Presence becomes something quieter, but just as real.

24. Strength can start to look very different
Sometimes strength is not doing.

It’s sitting beside your baby, watching monitors blink, whispering to them… and staying.

25. You can feel gratitude and grief holding hands
Overwhelming thankfulness and quiet mourning for what you imagined.

Both can exist at the same time.

Early postpartum humbled me in ways I didn’t expect

26. The first post C-section poop deserves its own survival guide
You will prepare mentally.

You will bargain.
You will pray.
You will consider simply never going again.

And when the moment finally comes… you realise this is not for the weak.

27. Your uterus contracting during milk let-down after surgery…
There are no words.

28. The bleeding (lochia) has a plot twist timeline
Red → brown → yellow → gone → surprise red again.

29. The night sweats are unholy
You wake up like someone poured water on you.

No. Just hormones.

30. Postpartum rage exists and nobody talks about it enough
Not sadness.
Not tears.

Just sudden, overwhelming anger.

(especially while your husband sleeps and has the audacity to snore while you’re doing a midnight feed… you will see red — even if he handled the feed before)

31. Your body feels like it belongs to everyone else for a while
The baby needs you.
Doctors check you.
Hands are always reaching, adjusting, helping.

And somewhere in all of that you realise you haven’t quite come back to yourself yet.

32. Breastfeeding is natural, but not always instinctive
It is learned.

By both of you.
Often while crying.

The latch learning curve is steep and sometimes painful

33. Cluster feeding will make you question your entire existence

You just fed the baby.

They’re hungry again.
And again.
And again.

At some point you’re like… is something wrong?

No. It’s perfectly normal, they’re just doing baby things.

34. Clogged ducts will bring you to your knees
One minute everything is fine.

The next… there’s a painful lump, your breast feels like concrete, and suddenly feeding feels like you’re being tortured for a confession.

You’re googling, massaging, applying heat — no, that’s outdated — cold compress,
dangle pumping, football hold, reconsidering your life choices…

asking God why.

All at once.

35. Your nipples will go through several personality phases
Tender.
Cracked.
Numb.
Heroic.
Confused.

Sometimes all before noon.

36. The emotional side effects of milk let-down can be wild (D-MER)
Sudden sadness.
Anxiety.
Nausea.

Nobody explains this enough.

37. Being touched out is real and complicated
You love your baby deeply… and sometimes you want nobody touching you for five minutes.

38. You might smell different for a while — and no, it’s not a hygiene issue
Apparently it helps your baby find you.

Which is beautiful in theory… but a different story in reality.

39. Time stops being measured in days
It becomes feeds.
Naps.
Wake windows.

Everything blends.

Motherhood is still teaching me…

40. The guilt is extremely creative
If the baby sleeps too long.
If the baby doesn’t sleep.
If you rest.
If you don’t.

Somehow… it always finds a way in.

41. You will become weirdly efficient at doing everything one-handed
Eating. Texting. Cooking. Opening things.

Your non-dominant hand will rise to the occasion whether it likes it or not.

42. You will forget basic words because sleep deprivation deletes vocabulary
Mid-sentence.
Fully blank.

Like your brain said: no thoughts, just vibes.

43. Being medically knowledgeable does not make motherhood emotionally easier
You can understand everything logically and still feel completely overwhelmed.

44. Survival mode can delay emotional processing
You keep going.

Doing what needs to be done.
Getting through the day.
Handling the next thing, and the next.

And then one random day… it all catches up.

45. A virtual village may be all you have
Motherhood in the diaspora is a different kind of hard.

You’re in a new country.
Nothing is familiar.
All your loved ones are thousands of miles away.

So your village becomes phone calls, voice notes, safe online spaces, and “are you awake?” messages across time zones.

You learn to mother without a village physically around you.

46. Baby hiccups are cute… until they happen every 7 minutes
And the solution is Milk.

Not threads. Not herbal remedies.

Just a little milk. (thanks mum)

47. You don’t just give birth to a baby — you give birth to a new identity
And that transition is beautiful… and disorienting.

48. Motherhood expands your capacity for love and fear at the same time

49. Joy is quieter than you expect
Not always fireworks.

Sometimes just watching your baby breathe and thinking:

“I would do all of this again for you.”

50. You will miss versions of your life you thought you’d outgrown
Your old routines.
Your old pace.
The quiet.

Not because you want to go back…

but because becoming someone new doesn’t erase who you were.

A year into motherhood, I’m learning this:

the things that shape us most are rarely the big moments.

They’re the small ones.
The strange ones.
The ones nobody can fully explain ahead of time.

Because some parts of motherhood can only be understood once you’re living inside them.

If you’re pregnant, newly postpartum, or somewhere in your own first year:

I hope this feels less like a warning and more like someone sitting beside you, gently saying:

hey… you’re not the only one figuring this out as you go.

One year ago, my baby was one week old, living in an incubator, and I was learning how to be his mother through plastic walls, beeping machines, and whispered prayers.

Today, I’m still learning.

Just in different ways.

And if this first year has taught me anything, it’s this:

motherhood is not something you arrive at fully formed.

It’s something you grow into…
moment by moment,
surprise by surprise,
day by day.

What’s one “nobody told me this part” moment you’ve had?

We’re listening🤎

ෆ

here, now, and a little sleep-deprived,

Lade

Thriving in the Trenches is a free publication. This mama, however, runs on coffee, tiny cuddles, and a dash of chaos — your support keeps the coffee flowing

buy me a coffee☕️

Nobody tells you that you can be cut open and expected to stand up five hours later like nothing happened.

Not gently. Not ceremonially. Just… okay, time to get up now.

As if your body didn’t just get split open to bring your baby into the world.

I had an emergency C-section. Not the kind you plan for with intention and a playlist. The kind where everything speeds up and your body is no longer fully yours in that moment.

And then, five hours later, I was on my feet. Not because I was strong in some cinematic, heroic way but because I didn’t really have a choice.

My baby was born at 1:23am and went straight to the NICU.

No slow, skin-to-skin moment to land.

Just… surgery, and then absence.

At 6:00am — six in the morning — a sweet nurse comes to wake me up.

Soft voice. Gentle face. Sweet smile.

“Good morning mama, congratulations on the baby! It’s time to get up.”

And I remember thinking… get up?

No, sorry, there’s been a mix-up.

“You must have the wrong mama. I just had major surgery like five hours ago. Surely you don’t expect me to be on my feet?” I said

And she goes — kindly, but firmly — “Oh no darling, it’s you. You have to get up, take a shower, have breakfast, and try to pump. The sooner you do all this, the better.”

And then she adds, “I know you’re tired… but you’re a mum now.”

Excuse me???

That sentence alone deserves some processing time.

You’re a mum now.

As if that somehow overrides the fact that my body has just been through seven layers of surgical chaos.

Anyway.

We begin the process of getting me out of the bed. And when I say process, I mean it was a full production.

Backrest up. Bed down. Legs lowered. Turn left. Pause. Turn right. Pause again because what do you mean my core is gone???

Like 37 maneuvers later — and I promise I’m not even exaggerating — I am finally upright. Standing on legs that feel like jello. Shaky. Disoriented. Feeling like my insides are being politely held together by vibes and a paper clip.

And I just remember thinking:

This is actually insane.

Because how do you literally go through major surgery and get back to handling business in less than 24hours?!? Walking, pumping, taking care of a baby like you weren’t sprawled out on a surgical table with your organs shifted 6 hours ago.

And somehow, in the middle of all of this, there is still a conversation happening about C-sections being “the easy way out.”

And it’s not always said directly.

Not always “you took the easy way out. Sometimes it sounds like:

“at least you didn’t have to push.”

“you skipped the hard part.”

“you’re lucky.”

“you didn’t really experience birth properly.”

Quiet things.

Casual things.

The kind that land and sit in your body a little longer than they should.

I’m sorry… what? Easy for who?

Because I remember the way my body felt like it didn’t belong to me.

I remember the fear, the fog, the pain that sits deep, not loud, just… constant.

I remember learning how to stand again, figuring out how to sit, how to lay down, how to walk.

So no, we’re not doing that conversation.

Not in 2026.

Not ever, actually.

Also — and I need us to be serious for a second — once the anaesthesia wears off, the strongest thing they’re giving you is… PARACETAMOL! IV paracetamol for 48 hours.

And I’m sorry, but what exactly is paracetamol supposed to do against seven layers of surgical wounds???

Be so f*cking for real.

When I tell you I felt raw… I mean raw in a way that I can’t even fully translate into words.

And for some reason — nobody talks about this — one side felt extra raw. Like it was still actively being cut open.

Is that a thing??? Because it felt like a thing.

And then — because apparently that wasn’t enough — the shaking. The mothersmurfing shivers!!

Why does nobody prepare you for the post C-section shiver???

One minute you’re lying there, and the next, your body is vibrating like you’ve been plugged into something.

Teeth chattering. Bones shaking. This deep, uncontrollable, full-body shiver that comes out of nowhere.

And you can’t stop it, you’re just… inside it.

Raw, stitched up, shaking, feeling every single suture, trying to process what the f*ck is going on.

The actual torture.

And yet, five hours later, you push the pain aside, you get up, you shower (loosely speaking), you try to eat, you start your pumping journey.

Because you’re a mum now and your baby needs you.

Even if that “need” looks like showing up to a NICU room later that day in painfully slow, careful steps.

Seventy-two hours later, I was discharged while my baby stayed behind.

Which means healing isn’t this slow, cocooned,“stay in bed and recover” experience people imagine.

It means walking.

Shuffling like a baby giraffe, really.

Holding your abdomen like it might fall apart while you make your way back to your baby again and again and again.

Because whatever your body is going through, you go.

You just go.

C-sections don’t just happen for fun.

They’re not some random detour women casually take because they couldn’t be bothered.

There are reasons. Real, medical, life saving, sometimes urgent, sometimes slow-burning reasons.

Like when your baby is in distress — heart rate dipping, signals changing, that quiet shift in the room where everyone suddenly moves faster.

Like when labour just… doesn’t progress. Hours and hours and your body is trying, you are trying, but your cervix is like, “uhmmm.. not today.”

Like when baby is breech — feet first, or sideways, or just not in a position that makes a safe vaginal birth possible.

Like placenta previa, where the placenta is quite literally blocking the exit.

Or placental abruption, where things become dangerous in the blink of an eye.

Like infections.

Like preeclampsia.

Like multiple births where things get complicated.

Like your body saying, in its own way: we need help here.

And none of those scenarios come with a softness. None of them feel like “oh great, let’s just take the easy route.”

They feel like decisions being made in real time.

Often fast.

Sometimes with fear sitting right next to you.

Most times with no time to even fully understand what’s happening before it’s already happening.

I remember how quickly everything shifted.

How one moment I was wrapping up on FaceTime, saying goodnight to my husband telling him I was just going to watch one episode of The Mentalist and go to sleep.

and the next moment… I was being prepped for surgery.

There’s a kind of grief in that.

Not because one way is better than the other but because something you imagined quietly slips away without ceremony.

And you don’t even get to pause and process it, because your baby is arriving now.

And then after all of that, after the surgery, after the stitching, after your body has been through something major, you are handed a newborn.

Or in my case… you are handed distance.

A premature baby in the NICU.

Which adds a whole other layer that people don’t always see.

Because recovery is one thing.

Recovery while separated from your baby is something else entirely.

You’re healing… but not resting.

You’re recovering… but also commuting between pain and longing.

You become this strange mix of patient and mother and visitor.

And still, somewhere out there, someone is reducing all of this to “the easy way out.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so… exhausting.

Also, no one warned me that a year later my scar would still be active. It itches like it has a whole personality.

Like some days it wakes up and chooses chaos.

And it’s not just a scar.

It’s a moving, shifting reminder that healing is not linear and definitely not quick.

Also, can we talk about how nobody explains the after properly?

Not just the scar. But the occasional numbness around it.

The weird pulling sensation when you move too quickly.

The way you instinctively protect your stomach like it’s still fragile months later.

The way your body doesn’t feel like a place you fully recognize for a while.

The way healing is happening, but it’s not dramatic enough for anyone to check in anymore.

It’s just you and this long, quiet recovery.

Mothers are… honestly, something else.

Your body created a whole baby from scratch. Adapted when things didn’t go to plan.

Went through surgery.

Got up.

Walked.

Visited.

Kept showing up.

Even when it hurt.

Even when it was inconvenient.

Even when nobody was clapping.

A C-section is not the “easy way out.”

It’s just… a way through.

A way through when your body needs help.

A way through when your baby needs help.

A way through when things don’t go to plan (because they often don’t).

And the end goal was never the method.

It was always: you and your baby, here, alive, together.

So if you have a C-section scar — fresh or years old — this is me saying:

Nothing about what you went through was easy.

Nothing about how you showed up was small.

The getting up.

The walking.

The quiet, unseen parts.

Especially those.

So no, we’re not reducing C-sections to a debate topic. We’re not flattening them into lazy opinions or throwaway comments.

Because behind every C-section is a story.

And most of those stories sound a lot like: we did what we needed to do to keep mother and baby safe and healthy.

So i believe this is what C-section awareness month is actually asking of us.

Not flowers.

Not polite acknowledgment.

But an end.

An end to this tired, unnecessary, honestly ridiculous conversation about the “easy way out.”

Forever.

Because if we’re being real and I mean really real, birth, in any form, is a wild f*cking ride.

The pregnancy. The decisions. The fear. The not knowing. The actual birth. The recovery. The postpartum fog. The identity shift. The “who even am I now?” of it all.

None of it is easy.

Not vaginal birth.

Not C-section.

Not any of it.

So what exactly are we comparing???

And more importantly… why are we competing?

Because that’s what it quietly turns into.

Struggle olympics.

Who had it harder.

Who sacrificed more.

Who did it “better.”

Who gets the invisible medal.

Meanwhile, we are all (every single one of us) already carrying so much.

Sleep deprivation. Healing bodies. Tiny humans who need everything. Versions of ourselves we’re still learning.

And on top of all that, we’re meant to be sizing each other up too?

Be so serious right now. Be serious!

If anything, this is the moment we should be doing the opposite.

Less comparison.

Less quiet judgment.

Less of this subtle punching down on each other.

Because if we’re honest… that kind of division doesn’t come from us. It’s learned. It’s inherited. It’s the kind of thinking that keeps women separated, distracted, and just a little bit disconnected from each other.

And I don’t know about you, but that feels like the real loss.

Motherhood in all its forms was never meant to be done like this.

Alone.

Defensive.

Trying to prove something.

So no.

No more “easy way out.”

No more ranking pain.

No more turning different experiences into a hierarchy.

Just this:

You brought your baby into the world safe and sound, however that looked.

And that alone is more than enough.

If you’re also a C-section mama and you feel like sharing… what happened?

Not the polished version. The real one.

We’re listening🤎

ෆ

with grace for the in-between,

Lade

Still in the trenches? Come sit with us in the Village Square (aka Subscriber chat).

No judgment. No perfection. Just mamas figuring it out together 🤎

Thriving in the Trenches is a free publication. This mama, however, runs on coffee, tiny cuddles, and a dash of chaos — if you’d like to support this space, you can keep the coffee flowing

buy me a coffee☕️

Apparently, the secret to thriving in motherhood is waking up before your baby.

Not just waking up.

Waking up before.

Before the cries.

Before the chaos.

Before you are needed.

Every productive mum on the internet swears by it.

Wake up at least an hour before the baby and if you can make it 2 hours before, even better.

The idea is simple.

You get up first and pour into yourself. You become a person before you become a mother. Become your own woman before you become someone’s mother.

Pray. Journal. Stretch. Drink water with lemon. Do something just for you.

It sounds beautiful right?! I know.

It sounds very peaceful. Very soft. Very unattainable if you live with an employer who doesn’t respect labour laws.

But nevertheless, I tried it. And honestly? It worked.

And for those two days? For two days, I was insufferable. I woke up early, brushed my teeth in silence, took a shower without an activity center parked in the bathroom. Stood in the kitchen like a woman with options. Made coffee and drank it while it was still hot. HOT!

Do you know how illegal that is in motherhood?

I felt ahead. Superior, even. Like I had unlocked motherhood’s VIP section.

Then on day three, my son woke up Immediately my feet hit the ground.

Not five minutes later. Immediately.

Like he heard my spine uncurl.

Like he sensed the audacity.

Like somewhere deep in his nervous system, an alarm went off:

She thinks she’s a person again.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t fuss. He just opened his eyes and looked at me, calm and alert.

The message was clear: Where are you going?

I froze because now I had a choice, lay back down and preserve the illusion or move… and activate him.

I moved, silly me. He sat up. Of course he did.

Because he calls the shots around here. This is his organization. I am middle management at best.

But I was determined to be one of the mamas “killing it” so I kept trying for weeks. It would work for two, maybe three days. Then on the fourth day, he’d catch up to me like, haha you thought.

I adjusted my strategy.

I woke up even earlier, timed it better, breastfed him twenty minutes before my planned escape then lay there another ten minutes pretending to still be asleep and it worked.

For another two days then he said absolutely not.

If I sit up? He’s up.

If my feet hit the floor? He rolls over like, Oh, we’re starting? Cool.

It became almost comical.

Like we were locked in a psychological experiment neither of us consented to.

And slowly, something started happening.

I stopped feeling productive and started my days already feeling like I was failing. Failing at mornings and therefore failing at motherhood.

Every morning I didn’t wake up first felt like I was behind.

Behind who?

I don’t know.

The me I was before I had a baby?

A version of myself that has never lived longer than 48 hours?

Girl, I DO NOT KNOW!

But what I do know is: that feeling would follow me through the day.

Baby on hip. Toothbrush in mouth. Hair half done thinking, If I had just woken up earlier…

I’d start the day irritated.

Not at him but at myself for not doing motherhood correctly.

As if waking up before your baby is the difference between thriving and drowning.

As if motherhood is a game you can win if you start early enough.

This feeling inevitably bled into everything and before noon I would feel overwhelmed by all of the things I felt like I was behind on then fatigued and paralyzed by the overwhelm… enter Ms. Loud-Mouth Mum Guilt, and the vicious cycle continued until one morning I just got tired.

Tired of racing my baby to consciousness.

Tired of my entire sense of competence being tied to whether or not I beat a baby out of sleep.

A baby!

It was ridiculous.

So that morning, I woke up before him and just didn’t move, I chose rest over self-improvement.

I just lay there staring at the ceiling. Not optimizing. Not becoming my best self. Just… being.

Because I had learnt by now: if I get up, he gets up. And I wasn’t ready to be needed yet.

So I stayed and decided I was done.

Done chasing a fantasy. Done performing balanced motherhood. Done losing my peace of mind.

Now, if I wake up before him, I don’t even try to get out of bed.

Most days, he wakes me up, breath warm, hair wild, no concept of productivity and we begin the day together.

There is no cinematic stillness. No aesthetic sunrise routine, just a warm little body stretching beside me while babbling my ears off, ready for the day.

Yes, I brush my teeth with a baby on my hip.

Yes, I negotiate mirror space with someone who cannot speak but has very strong opinions.

Yes, everything takes a little longer.

Yes, my mornings are not exactly efficient.

But I don’t feel like I’m failing anymore.

Because I stopped measuring my motherhood against a version of myself that doesn’t live here.

My nervous system is calmer and my days feel softer. whew!

One thing I realized on this failed “wake up before the baby” experiment is that a lot of advice about “winning” at motherhood quietly assumes you’re sleeping alone.

We co-sleep.

Which means there is no leaving without consequence. My wakefulness is his wake up alarm and my independence is… suspicious.

Perhaps the mamas waking up at 5am are doing exactly what works for them.

Maybe it works beautifully and that’s the point.

It works for THEM.

Not everything is universal.

Not every system belongs in every home.

Not every “secret” works for every set up.

And forcing it can cost more than it gives.

The most important questions to ask are:

Does this make my life better? Does it make my days feel softer? Does it reduce friction?

For me, the answer was a big fat NO. It was causing hella friction.

So I’m sticking with what works for us because at the end of the day, this is just a season, it wouldn’t last forever.

And if there’s one thing I’m determined to do in this season, it’s make it easier for myself because Lord knows it already comes with enough challenges.

So maybe I’m not killing it according to Beyoncé’s internet. Maybe I’m not ahead. Maybe I’m not a balanced 5am mum.

But I am here.

Rested enough.

Calm enough.

Present enough.

And somehow, that feels a lot more like killing it than waking up before him ever did.

ෆ

awake, but not getting up,

Lade

Still in the trenches? Come sit with us in the Village Square (aka Subscriber chat).

No judgment. No perfection. Just mamas figuring it out together 🤎

Thriving in the Trenches is a free publication. This mama, however, runs on coffee, tiny cuddles, and a dash of chaos — if you’d like to keep the coffee flowing, you can do that here

buy me a cup of coffee☕️

I was past clogged ducts,

I got a different kind.

Because of course I did.

Yes — there’s another one.

A behind-the-nipple one.

A hiding-in-plain-sight one.

A blister-instead-of-milk-bleb one.

A surprise-you’re-not-done-here one.

A burst-open-and-scab-at-the-nipple one.

A looks-like-healing-but-feels-like-punishment one.

A resolves-in-stages-and-relief-is-not-instant one.

Oh ice pack, my old friend.

We meet again.

Pressed awkwardly into my bra

like a truce I didn’t ask for.

Oh ibuprofen, my trusted companion —

small white promise,

taken with hope and a glass of water

while whispering,

please work faster than this.

Will you grant me sweet relief?

Or just take the edge off enough

that I can survive the next latch?

Gentle latch.

Calm feeds.

Deep breaths I forget to take.

Because when the baby opens their mouth

and finds the nipple,

I grit my teeth.

Jaw tight.

Shoulders stiff.

I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth

to trap the scream

that wants to tear out of me —

raw and animal and utterly unhelpful.

So I count.

One.

Two.

Three.

I remind myself:

This is temporary.

This is love.

This is milk, not glass.

Even though my body disagrees.

The pain spikes.

Then dulls.

Then lingers.

Like a bad guest who says,

“I’ll just stay a minute.”

Who will tell the baby

that his hunger arrives

wrapped in my endurance?

That his comfort

costs me this particular ache?

I push through.

Because the baby is eating.

Because the baby is calm.

Because the baby does not care

about my inner monologue.

And I would still choose this.

Even while muttering

what the actual fuck

into the quiet room.

Hmmm.

If you’d like to fund future ibuprofen and iced compresses:

buy me a coffee☕

I know i don’t usually write to you on Saturdays. But today marks one year since everything changed, and this feels like something that needs to be shared on the day itself.

A year ago today, my life split cleanly into a before and an after.

I was admitted to the hospital following a preterm premature rupture of membranes — PPROM for short. My water had broken far too early, at 28 weeks, suddenly and without warning.

It was the first time in my entire adult life that I was in a hospital not as a doctor, but as a patient.

On the other side of the curtain.

That realization alone brought me immense gratitude.

I knew the systems. I knew the terminology. I knew the physiology. I knew the risks, perhaps too well. And I was now the one lying still, waiting, hoping, praying. Pregnant and hospitalized while time slowed down in ways I had never experienced before.

I spent three and a half weeks in that hospital ward. Three and a half weeks on bed rest. Three and a half weeks of constant monitoring. Three and a half weeks of trying to make it past one more day.

There were days my world shrank to a bed, a CTG monitor, and the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Days measured in vital checks, meals I didn’t choose, sleep that was constantly interrupted and having to use a bedpan instead of the toilet, which is one of those things you don’t forget once you’ve lived it. It will humble you quickly.

Looking back now, a year later, I can see the quiet things that held me together during that time.

Not grand gestures.

Not constant strength.

But small anchors that kept me from spiraling.

Here are the things that helped me survive those weeks.

I. Music

Music became my nervous system

Music has always been a companion in my life. It gives language to feelings I don’t always know how to name. I carry soundtracks in my head constantly, for everything.

Yes, I’ve been accused of always bursting into song. It’s ironic that I don’t like musicals, considering I live inside my own personal musical — but I digress.

During my hospital stay, music became regulation.

Three songs, in particular, carried me:

• Million Little Miracles by Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music

• Open the Eyes of My Heart by Jordan G. Welch

• No Fear by Madison Ryann Ward

That second song mattered more than I can explain — especially the line “silence the noise in my mind, Lord.”

Because here’s the thing about being a doctor going through a medical emergency:

you don’t just feel fear — you can name it.

You know a 100 differentials.

The possible complications.

The neurological risks.

The cascading “what ifs.”

There was so much noise in my mind.

For the first four days in hospital, I listened to that one song on repeat. Over and over. It didn’t fix the situation, but it eventually silenced the noise enough for me to breathe, to ground myself, to feel my feet back on solid ground — or rather my back on the hospital bed.

II. Feeling my feelings

I let myself feel the feelings — without correcting them

I’ll be completely honest with you (always): it still stings sometimes.

I never got to experience a “proper” third trimester. I was really looking forward to it. I never had a maternity shoot. I only have a handful of bump photos. I sometimes feel like I was cheated out of experiences I thought were part of the deal.

And I can say all of that and be deeply grateful for our journey.

Two truths can exist at once.

Eleven months postpartum, I still feel that complexity — so imagine how heavy it was while I was living it in real time.

In the hospital, it was easy to slip into either defeat or toxic positivity. So I made a quiet decision:

on days I felt sad, I let myself feel sad.

No reframing.

No rushing to gratitude.

No spiritual bypassing.

Just honesty.

Because gratitude that’s demanded is not healing, it’s pressure. Real gratitude came later, when my nervous system felt safe enough to hold it.

One of my journal entries from January 18th, 2025 reads:

“I feel like I failed my child. Like I failed to protect him and keep him safe.”

I wrote about regretting telling too many people I was pregnant. About feeling robbed. About holding back tears because I thought I needed to count my blessings instead.

That entry wasn’t pretty.

But it was real.

And I needed to let it out.

III. Hypnobirthing

Hypnobirthing shaped my mindset — not my outcome

From the moment I found out I was pregnant, I began learning about hypnobirthing. I read Hypnobirthing: Practical Ways to Make Your Birth Better by Siobhan Miller, and I truly believe every pregnant woman deserves access to this information.

Hypnobirthing is not about controlling outcomes.

It’s about preparing your mind for any outcome.

I didn’t get the birth story I imagined.

But hypnobirthing helped me feel prepared, grounded, and informed — even in uncertainty.

It taught me that calm is not denial.

That preparation is not rigidity.

That surrender can coexist with strength.

That knowledge stayed with me in that hospital bed.

IV. Having Faith

Faith steadied me when nothing else could

I didn’t walk into that hospital bed with unshakable faith. Nope. As I said, the first few days were mostly fear, lists of “what ifs,” and endless scenarios running through my head. But the music I told you I’d been leaning on quietly started to do more than calm my nerves — it started to build something steady in me.

By Day 17 in hospital, my baby reached 31 weeks.

I celebrated like we’d won a championship.

I wrote:

“We made it to 31 weeks and I know we’re going to make it even further, safe and sound.”

Spoiler alert: we didn’t make it much further.

We only made it three more days before an infection set in and the waiting was no longer an option.

I held tightly to the text in Mark 4:38–39. A reminder that just because there was a storm around me doesn’t mean there needs to be a storm within me.

The storm was real.

But so was the peace I chose, moment by moment.

God was in my boat.

And therefore, my boat was safe.

Looking back, a year later

I didn’t get the pregnancy I planned.

But I became the mother I needed to be.

Those weeks in hospital stretched me, softened me, broke me open — and prepared me in ways I couldn’t have predicted.

If you’re reading this from a hospital bed, a season of waiting, or a place where the story looks nothing like you imagined — I want you to know this:

You are allowed to grieve and hope.

You are allowed to feel fear and faith.

You are allowed to rest inside uncertainty.

A year ago today, I was just trying to get through the next hour.

Today, I’m holding a living, breathing reminder that even in the most fragile seasons, something sacred can still grow.

In a recent conversation with one of the mamas in this virtual village, I shared that while it was incredibly hard, looking back, it feels like a necessary season — one I don’t fully understand yet, but one I know I didn’t walk through alone.

She replied that this community itself wouldn’t be what it is if it hadn’t been shaped by that pain — that sometimes we’re able to reach others most deeply from places of suffering and softness in ways we simply can’t otherwise.

Knowing everything we went through (which I truly haven’t fully processed) not only made me a better mother for my baby, but brought me this beautiful, honest, uplifting village of mamas.

I’ll never take any of it for granted.

There is peace on the other side of the storm.

And joy, so much joy. Please believe that.

And If believing feels like too much today, that’s okay. Sometimes all you need is to stay. To feel. To breathe. To let the hour pass. That counts too.

And maybe the most important thing I’ve learned is: even when the season is raw, uncertain, or just plain scary, you can still find little threads of grace, love, and hope woven through each day. They might be quiet. They might be messy. They might feel invisible. But they’re there. And they are enough.

ෆ

scribbling instead of sleeping,

Lade

2025 was a year like no other — the first year of motherhood for so many of us here.

It was full of sleepless nights, small victories, messy moments, and heart warming joys. And somewhere along the way, this little corner of the internet became more than a page, it became a village.

As we crossed the threshold into a new year, I asked this community two simple questions: what’s one piece of advice you’d pass on to a first-time mum, and what helped you the most as a mother this past year?

The answers poured in — honest, practical, and deeply heartfelt. What you’ll find below is a collection of lessons, hacks, and lived wisdom from mamas walking the same trenches, holding one another up as we go.

“Mama to mama — what’s one piece of advice you’d give a first-time mum to carry into next year?”

Here are some of the insights that stuck with me:

• Block out the noise. Haylee reminded us to tune into the voices that lift us up, not the ones that stress or shame us. “Lean into the mother you want to be. Give yourself grace,” she said.

• Your best is enough. Home to Grow offered a grounding reminder: don’t let guilt take the wheel. Your best really is enough — and always bring snacks. (Honestly, elite advice.)

• Trust your gut. Naked Motherhood echoed something so many of us need to hear again and again: you know your baby better than anyone. Yes, we’re learning. Yes, it can be scary. But most of the time, your instincts are right. Even when it doesn’t feel like it — you’ve absolutely got this.

• One day (or one minute) at a time. May’s advice was so simple, yet so profound: mothering is enormous, and patience with yourself is everything. Trust your body, find community, and carry your own understanding like a shield.

• Motherhood is badass. Paige McGregor didn’t mince words. It is. Never forget it.

• Let go of the sleep stress. Mom Does Pilates offered this reframe: they won’t sleep — whether you stress about it or not. So you can be stressed and they won’t sleep, or you can go with it… and they still won’t sleep. Your choice.

• Hack the little things. Sweet Tea & Science suggested a cart + cooler by the bed with bottles, diapers, and wipes so nights feel a little lighter. Magdalena recommended meal trains, good wraps, and a fitness ball — small systems that save sanity.

• Grace, always grace. Brenna, Fly Homeschool, Emily Boozer, — all of them reminded us: messy doesn’t mean wrong, rest doesn’t mean lazy, and a bad moment does not make a bad mother. Celebrate wins, even the tiny ones.

Then I asked another question in our Village Square (aka subscriber chat):

“What’s one thing that helped you most this year?”

The answers were just as real, practical, and grounding:

• Janeica embraced simplicity and carved out time for herself while leaning on her husband and her community.

• Ariel highlighted therapy and the work of tending to herself.

• Magdalena, a first-time mama, learned patience, trust, and taking one day at a time, plus staying fed, hydrated, and wearing headphones at night to survive the sounds of infancy.

• Anja’s morning reading routine with her kids became a small daily anchor.

• Rocelyn’s beach walks reminded her to breathe and be present.

• The Long Middle shared that simply leaving the house for a walk within the first hour of her son waking up became one of the most helpful anchors once winter set in. That early exposure to light and movement helped ease the weight of winter blues — a small shift that made the days feel more manageable. Sometimes the medicine is as simple as stepping outside.

• Olivia Rose found joy in contact naps, babywearing, village support, and writing — gentle reminders that self-care and baby care can coexist.

• Mom does Pilates and The Wandering Narrative reminded us: everything is a phase. A mindset that makes the difficult times durable and good times treasurable.

Taken together, these reflections form something powerful: a reminder that motherhood was never meant to be done alone.

As we step into 2026, take what resonates here and leave what doesn’t. There is no perfect way to mother, no single system that works for everyone, and no shame in needing support.

Your village is here, in these shared stories, in the wisdom passed hand to hand, in the quiet knowing that your best is enough. Always.

Here’s to another year of learning together, trusting our instincts, celebrating the small and mighty wins, and showing up — imperfectly and faithfully — for ourselves and our babies.

Mamas helping mamas. In the trenches, and never alone.

ෆ

Sleep-deprived and always in your corner,

Lade

Sometimes small, mostly grand. Quarterly ones. Big ones. Romantic, Pinterest-coded ones. And every year… I rarely hit them.

This year, though, I set just one.

To welcome my baby and be the best, most present, happiest mother I could be for him.

And somehow — through pregnancy emergency, a premature baby in the NICU, the isolation, the fear, the sleepless nights, the financial stress, the career free-fall — I can say this with my whole chest: I did that. I DID THAT SHIT!

Through the most harrowing, painful, humbling circumstances — I really and truly did that.

And I’m still doing it.

I never once complained.

I never once lost hope.

Living abroad with no village.

No family. No friends nearby.

No paid maternity leave.

Instagram permanently deleting my page (a major source of income) in February, while my 2 weeks old baby was still in the NICU.

Still no complaints.

Applying for jobs endlessly from March. Interview after interview, squeezing them in while my newborn napped.

Rejection after rejection.

Still choosing joy.

My husband and I starting a business in June.

No clients. Just crickets.

Still laughing. Still pumping. Still vibing.

Without stuttering, I can say this was the single most challenging year of my life.

Motherhood alone is WOW — nothing prepares you for how much it asks of you. And then life said, “Cool, let’s add a few more plot twists.”

Trying to rebuild from scratch and not merely survive but thrive while keeping a tiny human alive.

A wild fucking ride.

And then… August.

Our first client.

September came, I had a dream. In the dream, I had a Substack. I saw it so clearly — A little corner of the internet full of mamas, just being, hanging out, telling the truth, loving on each other.

I wasn’t even on Substack at the time.

It took me three months of second-guessing… but I finally did it.

In November, I started writing. Publicly. For the first time in my 31 years.

And in five short weeks, something beautiful has happened.

I’m building a space I am so deeply proud of.

A place where women from all over the world are walking motherhood together.

A place that feels like a source and a resource.

A place where we talk about the things we’re all experiencing but no one seems to want to say out loud.

I’ve found community where I once felt so alone. It turns out — even in my loneliest moments — I was never actually alone.

And I DO NOT take that lightly.

I don’t want to forget this feeling. Ever.

Yes it’s been the most challenging year of my life but it’s also been hands down the best year of my life and looking back here and now, I wouldn’t change a single thing.

So for 2026, I’m not setting goals.

I’m not even getting a new notebook (I knowww… so scandalous!)

No goals. No vision boards. No pressure. No manifesting spreadsheets.

Not for my life. Not for my business. Not even for Substack.

I’m walking in with a heart full of gratitude.

A nervous system learning safety again.

A mind open to experiencing, and saying YES to whatever comes next.

And if you’re reading this… Girl, pour yourself a cup of coffee (or two) and pat yourself on the back — you too DID THAT and I’m so proud of you, mama.

ෆ

Still in the trenches.

Still full of hope.

Still so, so grateful,

Lade.

buy me a cup of coffee☕

Thriving in the Trenches is free and will always be a free publication. This mama, however, runs on coffee, tiny cuddles, and a dash of chaos — your support keeps the coffee coming…

Still in the trenches? Come sit with us in the Village Square (aka Subscriber chat).

No judgment. No perfection. Just mamas figuring it out together 🤎

Some babies are born prematurely through life-saving emergency C-sections.

Some babies (and mums) don’t get skin-to-skin right away.

Some babies need more time to “bake” in an incubator.

Some babies need extra help just to breathe or eat.

Some babies spend days, weeks, even months, in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) learning to breathe without machines.

Some babies get their food through a tube down their nose because they don’t yet know how to suck and swallow.

Some babies go through test after test, needle prick after needle prick, blood draw after blood draw.

Some babies don’t get to be held by their mums or anyone for weeks.

Some babies fight a lot harder to be here.

And some babies require their mums to pray harder, believe harder, and toughen up in ways they didn’t know they could.

Some babies have non-traditional firsts long before they ever get the “normal” milestones —

first time without an oxygen mask,

first time out of the incubator,

first time seeing their little faces without tubes and tape,

first time feeding without a tube,

first time being dressed without monitor sensors everywhere.

For preemie mums especially, these firsts aren’t small.

They’re sacred.

They’re the milestones you hold in your chest because you watched your baby fight for every single one.

You felt the fear behind them.

You prayed your way to them.

Postpartum is already challenging enough. Add a NICU baby on top of that? Whew. That’s surely for the strongest of God’s strongest soldiers.

I was unexpectedly discharged three days after my emergency C-section, I say unexpectedly because I had thought I would atleast get five days before being sent home. I know wanting to stay in the hospital longer sounds crazy but going home meant leaving my baby behind.

Not just in the hospital but in a whole different state.

The pain from my incision was nothing compared to the pain of leaving without him.

That rawness? That emptiness? I’ll never be able to fully explain it.

My baby.

My three-day-old premature baby.

The baby I had carried in my belly for seven months, always with me, closer to me than anyone would ever be.

Now I had to leave him in a small box, in a room full of small boxes, surrounded by strangers.

Amazing, capable strangers whose job was to keep him alive but strangers all the same.

And I had to trust them.

Trust that they would love him, care for him, and make the right decisions for him.

This is not what I thought my introduction to motherhood would look or feel like.

So joyful, so nerve-wracking, and so heartbreaking, all at the same damn time.

I had known before his birth that he would have to spend some time in the NICU — but the knowing does nothing to prepare you for the actual feeling.

When I say I have never cried the way I did the moment the doctor said I was discharged, I wept — it was like I felt my heart split open.

Even now, I get a little misty-eyed every time I remember that feeling.

But there was no choice in the matter…

So I packed my bags, left the ward that had been home for almost a month, and went back to a home where my baby wasn’t.

He wasn’t tucked under my ribs anymore.

He wasn’t one floor away.

He was three hours away.

The to-do list was simple but relentless:

• Pump every three hours, day and night.

• Visit daily.

• Bring enough breastmilk for him.

So I did what mums do.

I pushed through the pain of being CUT OPEN. I willed my milk to come in.

And every morning I dragged my stitched-up, swollen, walking-like-a-baby-giraffe self onto the 7am interstate bus for that three-hour ride to the NICU to sit beside his incubator, press my hand on the glass and whisper “Mama’s here”…

And then do the same three-hour ride back home. Exhausted and completely heartbroken, leaving him behind never got easier.

Some days I cried the entire ride home, full-on silent heaving, trying to keep my soul from leaking out of my eyes, staring out the window like I was in a sad music video.

Other days? I fell asleep from the exhaustion before my bum even fully landed on the seat.

(And why am I crying writing this now. That girl really thought postpartum was going to be cutesy but it was all so bloody hard and she still showed up every single day with a cooling bag full of overnight pumped milk, a pocket full of enoxaparin syringes to stab herself at noon, and a smile she stitched together with all the faith and hope she could muster.)

Here’s the thing: pregnancy, delivery, postpartum —

it’s so freaking beautiful, yes.

But it’s also HARD.

Even when everything goes “right.”

And when it doesn’t?

When the unexpected hits?

It can shatter you.

The questions never stop circling your head:

Did I do something wrong? Could I have prevented this? Did I massage my belly the wrong way and somehow trigger labor? Should I have taken a different brand of prenatals? Should I have slept on my left side instead of my right? Did I ignore some small symptom I shouldn’t have? Is my baby okay?

But if I’ve learned anything, it’s this:

The best thing you can do (for yourself, for your baby) is to release all the could’ve, would’ve, should’ves, and let go of whatever picture you had in your mind.

Forget the expectations of how it “should” be.

Embrace what it actually is.

Hold tight to faith and gratitude, even when it feels impossible.

Because some babies fight harder to come home.

And some mums fight harder too.

💌To the NICU mums reading this:

If you’re pumping in a hospital chair, sitting next to an incubator, having lunch in the hospital cafeteria, or crying on your way home after another visit, you’re not alone.

If today you’re just surviving, pumping half-asleep, googling things you shouldn’t, praying in the bathroom stall, or staring at monitors like they hold your child’s entire future, that’s okay.

I see you.

I know the ache, the exhaustion, the fear, the heartbreak.

Know this: you’re doing enough.

You’re doing more than enough.

And very soon, your baby will be home with you, and you’ll both be stronger and happier than you ever imagined.

ෆ

Sleep-deprived and always in your corner,

Lade.

So I became a mom this year and everything about my entry into motherhood was sudden, abrupt, mad dramatic, and nothing like I ever imagined it would be.

You know how, when you get on any form of contraception, they say there’s an x% chance of failure? With IUDs, it’s around 0.6% to 0.8%, that’s roughly 1 out of every 125 to 167 women. Tiny, right? I for sure would never be the 1. I mean, the odds have never really been in my favor. My brother and I always joke that “lottery-type luck” doesn’t run in our family.

So imagine my surprise when, after four years of having an IUD in place, Miss Scarlet did not show.

Yup. That 0.6% to 0.8% chance of IUD failure? That’s me. I’m 1 in 125 to 167.

Pleasure to meet you.

Perhaps I should actually get some lottery tickets, clearly, my luck has shifted.

But I digress.

At that point, getting pregnant was quite literally the last thing on my to-do list.

So here I was — pregnant, with an IUD occupying the same space as the baby.

Yes, you’re thinking the right thoughts. That’s not good.

In most cases, one has to give way for the other.

I took a home pregnancy test on a Saturday, and by Monday morning, I was calling every OB-GYN covered by my insurance. I eventually got the earliest possible appointment with a doctor in a completely different city I’d never even heard of. But I took it with both hands, and my husband and I headed straight there the next morning.

Because from the second those two red lines appeared on that test (August 3rd, 2024) I was absolutely, utterly, irrevocably changed.

I knew without a doubt that my baby chose me (IUD be damned)… for such a time as this.

And I knew I’d do anything and everything to make sure my baby was okay.

Someday soon, I’ll go into more detail about that appointment: how the doctor said it was an empty sac, “no baby,” a genetic-ish error that should “flow out like a period in a few days.”

(It didn’t, obviously.)

And then, just when we thought we were in the clear, at 28 weeks, while celebrating entering the third trimester, creating mood boards, shortlisting maternity photographers, and feeling so in awe of how far we’d come, my water broke out of nowhere.

No contractions. No signs. Nothing.

It’s January 6th, 2:46 a.m. I’m fast asleep, and at this point in my pregnancy, waking up to pee five or six times a night was routine. But this was different. Till this day, I don’t know if I heard it or felt it but there was a pop, and I jumped right out of my sleep, fully convinced I’d peed myself. On some level, I immediately knew what it was though, because I said to my husband, who was still awake at the time: “I think my water just broke. If it did, then we have a problem.” But I really didn’t want it to be true, so I went to the bathroom, peed for real, cleaned myself up, and went back to bed completely ignoring the panicked man lying next to me asking if he should call an ambulance.

Because… how?

What do you mean my water is breaking at 28 weeks and 1 day? My bump just started showing. I have all these cute ass outfits planned, all the bump pics I want to take…

But alas, it was amniotic fluid.

Apparently, you can do everything right, stay hydrated on a cellular level, eat all the colors of the rainbow, never miss a prenatal vitamin, do all the recommended movements and still, POP!

Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes.

Absolutely terrifying. And not as uncommon as you might think.

There were days I cried so hard I couldn’t tell if it was frustration, anger or sheer disbelief.

Days I felt like my body had failed me and my baby.

Days the beeping machines in the NICU felt louder than my thoughts.

And yet, somehow, through all of it, there was unwavering faith and grace.

Quiet, unassuming grace that found me in countless blood draws, hospital gowns and hallway prayers, in the 3 a.m. pumping sessions, and in the way my baby’s tiny fingers would curl around mine like, we made it, Mama.

I love being a mom.

No, it’s not my entire personality — at least, not yet — but it’s given me purpose.

Not that I was wandering the earth purposeless before, but this?

This is different.

Life just makes so much more sense now.

Somewhere between the chaos and the quiet, I found pieces of myself I didn’t know I’d lost.

Pregnancy and motherhood aren’t always picture-perfect.

Mine went nothing like I imagined but maybe that’s the point.

It’s not what they show you on Instagram or the Pinterest boards.

It’s a rollercoaster.

It challenges you.

It changes you.

It heals you.

It exhausts you.

It breaks you open.

and it’s… oh so beautiful.

I’ve met different versions of myself over the past year, some softer, some stronger, all more honest.

And as someone who never played about her sleep, can I just say, the sleep deprivation goes crazyyy.

They don’t call it the trenches for no reason.

But in these trenches, we’re thriving.

So… welcome to Thriving in the Trenches.

A space where I report from the trenches of first-time motherhood sleep-deprived, slightly delusional, but still in love sharing my experience and thoughts as it actually is: messy, magical, mildly unhinged, and mine.

No sugarcoating.

No perfect morning routines.

Just me figuring it out as I go.

The moments no one warns you about.

The victories so small they barely fit in your hand.

The heartbreaks that make you question everything.

And the kind of love that feels like it could lift you or break you at any moment.

Some posts will be about pregnancy, my time in the hospital trying to hold this baby in past 30 weeks, the early days of being a preemie rookie mama with a baby in the NICU, the postpartum pain, the sleepless nights, the pumping schedules.

Some posts will be about the later trenches — colic, breastfeeding, nap schedules, starting solids, and trying to balance your identity with your baby’s needs.

All posts will be honest.

All posts will be me, right here, in the trenches with you.

Motherhood isn’t a highlight reel.

But if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s this:

It’s a journey worth sharing together.

Because the truth is, not everyone gets a physical village but no one should walk this road alone. So maybe ours lives here, between the words, the stories, the exchanged tips. the shared sleepless nights. A virtual village, still full of heart, still in it together.

Welcome to Thriving in the Trenches.

ෆ

Sleep-deprived and thriving-ish,

Lade

So what’s your story?

When did you find out you were about to be somebody’s mother — and were you expecting it, or were you just as shook as me?!

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