In the same way I walked outside last Wednesday morning and felt the trueness of spring, there was a moment of lifting back in early spring 2022 when I laughed and felt it. Postpartum the second time around was more difficult than the first. I wrote about some of those feelings in this post, Mommy Is Human But Here ( and other postpartum reflections).
A few weeks after giving birth to our daughter that late March, I sat on our scraggly hillside with the fresh, nipping spring breeze swirling about, my newborn daughter against my chest, the cat curled in my lap, and my son playing in our little garden. I took a video lasting less than a minute to pull the season into my mother’s heart for good. And while there were stark ebbs and flows to follow in those first 4 months postpartum that moment of laughter in the garden is ever sweet.
I felt it.
Among other poetry expressing the emotions and moments of earliest motherhood, in my book, Swan Song of a Scarecrow, I describe postpartum like this…
Muddy days of earliest spring. Murky ground, no flowers blooming. Sun not light-hearted summer yet. Threat of frost, quiet, looming. Beauty slow in coming. And somehow fully held already.
Arms never more tired or happy. Never more scared of frost. Never felt the cold like this. Never known such warmth and color in a garden yet to grow.
Holding my breath for the true turn of season, and every exhale a triumph.
I am a mother.
-S.V.F., Postpartum
Sitting on our scraggly hillside with so much life around me, against my chest, and me finally feeling my laughter has its own poem in Swan Song of a Scarecrow. But this depiction of postpartum in the guise of early spring still strikes a chord with me.
Doesn’t motherhood feel like that sometimes?
Muddy, murky, sun alight but not quite warm. Arms tired and happy. Frost imminent. But the garden in full bloom. And not yet.
Every exhale a triumph.
When people ask me my favorite part of motherhood, I tell them my favorite part is getting to know a whole other person. My children are their own people, and I love getting to know who they are. In the same way friendship is one of the great joys in life, having the opportunity to love and get to know a human from their birth is quite a gift, a blessing, immeasurable gold.
There they are. A whole person. And you their mom!
Certainly the journey of motherhood is vulnerable, tenuous, March-like in its mixture of frost and bloom, but it is wholly good and truly worthwhile and very often, happy, too. That new mother does exhale again and again and again until she is weathered and golden with those grown children of hers.
And word on the street is…
they’re friends
Like those early and difficult days of postpartum melded into all sorts of years and seasons which turned into hearty and hardy roots and now friendship can’t help but bloom.
Maybe the endless work of motherhood is largely unseen simply because we are in the business of nurturing roots, becoming them.
And soon flowers will bloom.
In the future certainly, but surely now in the present when I’m planning her two-year-old birthday party and sorting 4×6 photos of these precious young years already bursting at the seams, steadily outgrowing the rocking chair, us growing together…triumphant.
My daughter stops to pick a flower or admire the creepy crawly going by, and I learn to take my time.
Because time doesn’t always fly and roots will not be rushed.
Ps- The day after I finished the first draft of this post, I returned a call from my Mom who was wondering if she should buy the unicorn paper plates for Heidi’s birthday. The consensus was OF COURSE. Later, she texted about these little dolls that could potentially be cake toppers. In a peak Grandma Move she bought both. OF COURSE.
The point is…
My mom and I?
We’re friends.❤
Sierra V. Fedorko 
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