Days after the birth of my first daughter, I lay in bed swollen, bandaged, bruised, and confused. While recuperating from a traumatic birth, I heard my husband cooing at our daughter and cheerfully changing diapers in the next room. It filled me with love, but to be honest, also with shame. He was a “natural,” and I felt like an awkward accessory.

Wasn’t this the reverse of how it was supposed to go? Weren’t mothers supposed to be guided by their intuition, naturally morphing into nurturing goddesses overnight?

As I carried my daughter through pregnancy, I was also carrying some seriously misguided assumptions. Growing up, I loved home ec classes (dated, I know): the baking, the sewing, the “DIY” craft projects. I coddled my two guinea pigs, and then my two kittens, and later their offspring. I started cooking wholesome dinners for myself in ninth grade when I became the only vegetarian in the house. I was the most sought-after babysitter in the neighborhood.

When it came to all the ingredients I was sure made a mother, I was a natural. Which is why I wasn’t fazed when the word “natural” popped up at just about every point in pregnancy: Was I planning to have a natural birth? Was I eating natural organic foods? Would I be breastfeeding naturally?

But after 40 hours of labor, two epidurals, a cocktail of drugs administered at the hospital, and an unplanned C-section, it seemed that, by some definitions, “natural” was off the table. I stared in woozy, adoring wonder at my wriggling baby as she rooted for milk against my chest. My body craved sleep, but the nurses kept waking me up at two hour intervals, coaxing me to nurse. I kept waiting for instinct to kick in, but breastfeeding felt foreign and clumsy. Wasn’t I supposed to know just what to do? Cheerful lactation specialists arrived and departed, but my confidence in my natural abilities was already eroding.

In the weeks that followed, I cried often, staring both tenderly and fearfully at the little being I was now tethered to. Our bond was not instantaneous, but gradual. It took time for me to get to know her, to feel into our connection, to experience a new depth of love.

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