@stillbecomingmama: there is a math that happens in the early hours that i did not know about before this. not numbers. a different kind. the math of accumulation. 1am becomes 2am becomes the crying that starts at 2 and the baby who has been in it since 1 and the feeding that will not end and the hour that will not move and all of it stacking on top of all of it until the weight is not just tonight’s weight anymore. it is every night’s weight. every 1am and every 2am and every feeding that would not end and every hour that would not move, all of it present simultaneously in the particular heaviness of 2:something on a night that has already been going too long. and the shifted thing. i keep coming back to the shifted thing because it was not a shift i chose or engineered or even understood while it was happening. it was more like something that had been held at a particular angle for too long and then the angle changed. not the thing itself. just the angle. and what changing the angle did was change the math. because suddenly the accumulated weight of every night was not sitting on just me anymore. the dots redistributed it. not by taking any of it away. not by making the nights retroactively easier or the accumulation retroactively smaller. just by being there, all of them, carrying their own accumulated math, and making the weight of mine part of something larger than just mine. the angle shifted. the math changed. i could breathe again. #postpartum #newmom #postpartumsupport #momtok #momlife
