I am still rocking. Side to side. At the counter, at the sink, mid-sentence with Roman. She is not in my arms. The body does not care.

The fourth trimester is over. I feel somewhat normal. Somewhat is doing the work.

The mornings are not the same. I wake up next to her eyes. I smile before I am awake. I feed her. The rest of the routine has folded itself into one hand. I crack the egg one-handed. I fold the omelette. I refill the kettle. The other hand is hers.

The nights are not the same either. I talk to my mother almost every day. Sometimes twice. We have never spoken this much in our lives. She lives in another country. She is closer than she has ever been.

I thought normal would mean returning. It does not. What is happening is more like installation. Embedded functions, going in under the skin. The rocking. The one-handed gestures. The way my eyes go to her eyes before they go anywhere else. The alertness to a sound I could not hear before.

My body is different. Did not expect my hottest version to arrive postpartum. I will take it.

I am looking forward to the next leap — hers, and mine. She will roll, babble, grow a tooth. I will do something too. I do not know what yet.

What I have learned in four months: nothing is final. The exhaustion that feels permanent at three in the morning is gone by seven. The bad night ends. There has not been one that did not.

The sun rises. It has not failed to.

My hands hurt.

She’s in a growth spurt, which means she cluster feeds, which means she’s been on me for two days straight. My body is a location. A set. There’s no wrap time, no one calling cut.

I thought I could do everything with one hand. Walk with her, work with her, live with her. I ended up with carpal tunnel. My wrist gave out before I did.

Now I know: one hand means one hand. It means a life reorganized around a single point of contact. It means I can’t schedule a meeting, can’t commit to anything, can’t tell anyone when I’ll be available because I genuinely don’t know. There is no calendar. There is only her, and the next feed, and whatever I can manage in between.

I know this tired. I’ve been here before. And I’ve never been here before.

Long production days, weddings, commercials — you showed up not quite knowing what you were doing and did it anyway, on instinct, on adrenaline. The exhaustion made sense then. You got paid. You went home.

This is the same exhaustion. A completely different film.

At first I thought I was the assistant on this production. Learning on the job, slow, figuring it out. But this is our set. I’m not the beginner crew member — I’m the director who also happens to be doing sound, catering, and continuity. Nobody’s paying me for this. Directors don’t get hourly rates.

So far the team is three people. One of them can’t talk yet.

We don’t know the deadline. That’s the hardest part. Not the weight of it — the open timeline. You take it one day at a time and trust you’re building something, even when you can’t see the shape of it yet.

I went to the sauna today. For an hour I wasn’t a location. I was just a body that was warm.

We’re still filming.

The Fourth Trimester is a series of letters written during the first 40 days of motherhood. Not about the baby — about the woman becoming a mother, and everything she is quietly, imperfectly learning to do.

Day fifteen.
Maybe sixteen. Time has a strange texture now.

There are moments when the energy drops so low that even simple thoughts feel heavy. The body moving on instinct more than planning.

And slowly I understand something very clearly:
this is not the time for separation.

This is the fourth trimester.

A time for bonding.
A time when my presence is not optional.

No one else can give my baby what I can give her.
This cannot be delegated.
It is one hundred percent devotion.

And strangely, that realization brings peace.

The nights are fragmented.
We wake every three, sometimes four hours.

If Naomi doesn’t wake me, my milk does.

My body now belongs to a rhythm that existed long before me.

Cluster feeding is something I’m learning to understand. Some days she wants to stay on the breast for hours. At first it confused me. Now I see — this is how she regulates herself, how she tells my body what she needs.

And I am grateful.

Grateful that there is milk.
Grateful that something as simple as my body can calm her.

When she lies on my chest, she settles. My smell, my heartbeat, my warmth — these are her world.

And somewhere inside all of this, another realization quietly arrives.

When I think about how much love I received — from my parents, from my grandparents — it feels impossible to repay.

But maybe I’m not meant to.

Maybe this is how it works.

You don’t give it back.
You give it forward.

My parents gave to me.
Their parents gave to them.
And now I give to her.

Not as repayment.
As continuation.

Love is not a debt.
It is a current.

And right now, my only place in that current is here.

Still, in the quiet moments, another thought appears:

How will I give back?

To Roman — who has been doing everything.
To the people who bring food, who check in, who hold the space around us.

I feel the instinct to repay, to return the love immediately.

But right now I understand something else:

My only task is surrender.

I cannot push productivity into this moment.
If I try to create, organize, or “be useful,” the price later is enormous.

The body takes it back.

So I am practicing something unfamiliar:
letting things fall away.

Resting.
Feeding.
Holding her.

Trusting that this —
this devotion —
is already part of the circle.

This moment is temporary — everyone says that.

But it is also sacred.

So I want to let myself feel it fully.
The exhaustion.
The love.
The vulnerability.

Every emotion.

And then, slowly, I know life will open again.

Energy will return.
Work will return.
Creation will return.

But right now there is only this small universe:

a mother,
a baby,
and the quiet work of continuing love.

The Fourth Trimester is a series of letters written during the first 40 days of motherhood. Not about the baby — about the woman becoming a mother, and everything she is quietly, imperfectly learning to do.

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Today I had my visit with Alex, our midwife.
We also had three visitors — friends visiting , bringing us food and warmth with them.

In the last few days I even managed four walks.
To the park.
To the beach.

For the first time since birth, I feel something returning.

Aliveness.

The bleeding is less.
The pain is softer.
Sometimes I even feel like a superhero — as if I’m fully back.

But I know that feeling is a little illusion.

My body reminds me gently that I’m still rebuilding. I have to be careful with where my energy goes. Even something as simple as screen time drains me quickly.

So I nap.
A lot.

Life right now is beautifully fragmented.

Naomi eats every three hours, and each feeding takes about an hour. By the time we finish, change, settle, breathe — it’s almost time again.

Time doesn’t flow anymore.
It arrives in small islands.

My favorite moment of the day is the bath.

Warm water.
Oil.
A slow self-massage.

I mix olive oil with a little Ayurvedic oil, warm the bottle in hot water, and just take my time. It feels deeply nurturing — like giving my body a thank-you after everything it has done.

These two weeks we had something precious.

Time just for us.

To find our rhythm.

Inside our apartment we are slowly building a new map of life:

Where the changing station lives.
Where we sleep.
How we sleep.
What we eat.
When we eat.
How we move through the day together.

Cooking.
Resting.
Learning.

It feels like learning how to live again.

And maybe that is what these first weeks really are —
not a return to life,

but the quiet creation of a completely new one.

I don’t know if it’s day six or seven.

Time has dissolved into feeds, naps, cries, warmth, milk, and light.

The week of contractions before birth trained me.

It trained me for the nights.

Now I wake up at 3:00 a.m. — sometimes 3:30 — and I’m awake for an hour and a half, sometimes two. I feed her. I change her. I eat a little night snack. The house is quiet, dim, sacred.

It feels like I went to a music festival.

Like Burning Man.

Party at night. Drift through the day. Nap when you can. No normal schedule. No rules. Just survival and surrender.

Birth itself was a trip.

A psychedelic trip where you don’t get to control the dosage.

You surrender to your body. You let it take you. You breathe through waves you cannot negotiate with. And when you come back — you are not the same woman.

Our days now are slow and luminous.

I take photos of everything. Too many selfies. Every moment feels historic. The way my milk came in. The way she latches. The way her tiny hand rests on my chest.

My chest.

I have never really had breasts. My whole life I had nothing. During pregnancy, something appeared. And now?

They look like implants.

They hurt. They’re heavy. They need massage. They need constant feeding. But I love them. I love what they are doing.

I literally feed her with my body.

There is something sacred in that.

Breastfeeding feels like a private ceremony. Just us. Skin, warmth, breath, milk. She is gentle. She is calm. She knows what to do.

And my small chest is perfect.

I love eating nourishing food. I researched recipes for postpartum like it was an art project. Cooking feels creative again. I froze meals in advance. Now we’re reaching the end of that supply, and it’s time to ask for help.

That part is harder.

Asking for help.

But I feel like we’ve got this.

Roman and I are such a team. We’re organized. The house is clean. We are on it. There is something powerful in that unity — like we crossed a portal together and now we operate in a new frequency.

My mood, though — it’s unpredictable.

One hour I have energy. The next, I’m depleted. Crying. No reason. Every reason.

Pain teaches stillness.

Even walking to the fridge can feel like climbing a mountain. When I feel slightly better, I want to move, to do things. But this is the lesson: don’t.

Recover.

Stay.

Let the body close.

Benny came back after staying with Tanya for two days. He feels different. Curious. He smells her. He looks… sad? Maybe I’m projecting. But I see it in his eyes. Another transition in this house. Another nervous system adjusting.

And still, I feel healing happening.

Slowly.

I am grateful for the nights that give me space. I unexpectedly have my own room right now — Naomi and I sleep in the living room. The setup is perfect. Heater, table, oils, snacks, kitchen within reach. Everything I need is an arm’s length away.

It’s like a little postpartum temple.

And in this temple, I write.

I reflect.

I feel that this fits my soul.

This is what I needed — space to slow down, to feel, to witness becoming.

Some nights are harder than others.

Sometimes I need more sleep than I get. Sometimes the pain is loud. But I feel the healing underneath it all.

This is how it’s going.

Not glamorous. Not linear. Not always easy.

But sacred.

And I am grateful.

Naomi is four days old.

The house feels like a forest after rain.
Quiet.
Washed.
Holding something sacred in its corners.

Milk has its own smell now.
Sleep has weight.
Even light enters more softly.

Today my midwife came with warm oil.

Naomi slept beside us —
a small folded star.
Roman went out to bring food,
moving through the world for us.

I lay down.

My body after birth feels like earth after it has split for a seed.
Opened.
Tender at the edges.
Still remembering the rupture.

When the oil touched my skin,
it felt like sunlight poured into cracks.

Her hands were slow.
Not fixing.
Not correcting.
Just listening.

She pressed my womb —
still heavy like a moon that hasn’t decided to wane.
She held my bones —
as if they were doors that had just closed behind a miracle.
She showed me where milk gathers,
where it knots,
where it waits.

And then—

time loosened like a ribbon untied.

For a moment I was not the woman on the table.

I was the baby in the bassinet.

And this body
was my mother’s body.

Receiving tenderness she may have never known.

It was not imagination.
It was like standing between two mirrors
and realizing there is no beginning to the reflection.

Then the circle widened.

My grandmother.
Her mother.
Women with flour on their hands.
Women who birthed between chores.
Women who folded their pain like linen
and put it away.

I saw their backs bent over sinks.
Their silence.
Their strength that looked like endurance.

And lying there, warm oil on my skin,
I felt something rise in me—

not grief.

Love.

Love like warm bread.
Like hands cupping a face.
Like someone saying stay, I’ve got you.

So much love
it startled me.

I wanted to send it backward.
Like a letter that arrives before it is written.
Like a blanket traveling through generations.

I wanted to press oil into their shoulders.
Tell them to lie down.
Tell them their bodies were temples, not tools.
Tell them the world could wait.

I wanted to mother them.

And in that wanting, I understood—

time inside the body is not a line.

It is a lake.

Drop a stone in the present
and the ripples reach the past.

The daughter.
The mother.
The grandmother.

All moving through the same water.

The care I received today
did not stop at my skin.

It traveled.

Backward —
like warmth spreading through winter soil.

Forward —
into Naomi’s sleeping breath.

As I hold her now,
I feel held by women I never met.

As I let myself receive,
something ancient exhales.

This is lineage.

Not a chain.

A current.

Love moving through bodies
like milk,
like blood,
like light under the door.

And maybe this is how healing happens—

not by returning to the past,

but by loving so deeply now
that even yesterday feels it.