Motherhood Changed Me -I Miss the Naivety: Infertility, Pregnancy Loss, and the Motherhood Identity Shift

Content note: This post includes personal discussion of infertility, pregnancy loss, medical procedures, depression, suicidal thoughts, reproductive trauma, and grief.

Before my journey into motherhood, I felt pretty damn sure of myself.

Not in an “I have life completely figured out” kind of way, but I knew who I was.

I was confident. I felt connected to my body. I was in graduate school. I had a loving marriage. There was still a little spontaneity in my life. I had plans, ambitions, a career, things I wanted to accomplish, and a general belief that if I worked hard enough, prepared enough, and did the “right” things, life would mostly move in the direction I expected it to.

My relationship with spirituality was already complicated. I was recovering from religious trauma and trying to figure out what faith, spirituality, and God looked like for me outside of what I had been taught.

But even with those questions, I still had something I did not realize was a privilege at the time:

Oh to be Naive.

I miss her sometimes.

The version of me who believed growing a family was mostly a matter of deciding you were ready.

The version who believed pregnancy would end with bringing home a baby.

The version who trusted her body without having to think about it.

The version who believed that, with enough planning, I could maintain some amount of control over what happened next.

Family planning took that illusion and slowly dismantled it.

No One Told Me That Becoming a Mother Could Start With Losing Myself

We often talk about motherhood as if the transformation begins when a baby arrives.

Mine started much earlier.

It started with infertility.

It continued through pregnancy loss.

It showed up in exam rooms, ultrasounds, bloodwork, procedures, waiting rooms, disappointing phone calls, hopeful phone calls, pregnancies, and losses.

It showed up every time my body became something that needed to be monitored, evaluated, tested, opened, medicated, scanned, poked, or discussed.

There is a word for the enormous developmental transition that happens when someone becomes a mother: matrescence.

Think of it somewhat like adolescence. Your body changes. Your relationships change. Your identity changes. Your priorities shift. Things you once believed about yourself no longer fit quite the same way.

But for some of us, matrescence does not begin with newborn snuggles and a cute announcement.

Sometimes it begins in grief.

Sometimes it begins in an infertility clinic.

Sometimes it begins when a pregnancy ends before you ever imagined it could.

And sometimes becoming a mother means grieving several versions of yourself before you ever get to hold a living child.

That was true for me.

The Loss That Changed Everything

After our 19-week pregnancy loss, something in me changed in a way I could no longer ignore.

I quit my banking job.

I postponed grad school.

There were days when I literally could not get out of bed.

That may not sound extraordinary when we are talking about grief, but for me it felt devastating.

I had always been someone who excelled.

I performed.

I accomplished.

I figured things out.

I kept moving.

Suddenly, getting through the day was the accomplishment.

I could not productivity-hack my way out of grief.

I could not achieve my way back into who I had been.

I could not organize the pain into something manageable.

And perhaps one of the most painful lessons was realizing that some of the people around me simply could not understand the depth of what had changed.

The lack of practical support was deafening.

People may care about you deeply and still have absolutely no idea how to sit with the version of you that exists after something life-altering happens.

I was also changing so rapidly internally that I did not always know how to communicate what I needed.

How do you explain:

“I am still me, but I also do not recognize myself”?

How do you tell someone that the future you had already started emotionally living inside of disappeared?

How do you explain that you are grieving a baby, a pregnancy, an identity, your sense of safety, your relationship with your body, your spirituality, and your belief that life makes sense—all at the same time?

I did not always have those words then.

Now I do.

I Miss the Body I Used to Live In

Infertility and pregnancy loss slowly changed my relationship with my body.

There was a time when I genuinely felt betrayed by it.

And there was shame.

So much shame.

My body changed. My weight changed. There were stretch marks and physical reminders of pregnancy, treatments, hormones, and loss—but no baby to show for it.

I literally felt like "BooBoo the fool!"

My body had done all of this work, carried all of these changes, endured all of these interventions, and yet I was grieving.

Eventually, my body stopped feeling like a place I lived and started feeling like a vessel.

Something doctors needed access to.

Something that needed to perform.

Something that was supposed to get pregnant.

Stay pregnant.

Make a baby.

Recover.

Try again.

There were so many moments of touch that had nothing to do with pleasure, comfort, or intimacy.

Touch became associated with exams.

Procedures.

Ultrasounds.

Pain.

Answers I was terrified to receive.

At some point, my nervous system started treating touch more like a threat than a source of connection.

I did not understand that immediately.

I just knew I felt increasingly disconnected.

There was numbness. There was dissociation. There was a loss of sensuality. There were times when intimacy became something I participated in because I believed that was what a “good wife” was supposed to do—not because my body actually wanted it.

And continuing to override myself only made the disconnection worse.

That realization would eventually change the way I understood intimacy, consent, marriage, my body, and even the way I work with couples.

But first, I had to learn how to hear my body again.

My Body Was Never the Enemy

For a long time, I looked at my body through the lens of what it had not done.

It had not carried the pregnancies the way I wanted.

It had not followed the timeline I wanted.

It had gained weight.

It had changed.

It had become anxious and hypervigilant.

But somewhere along the way, the story began to shift.

Because when I actually looked at what my body had endured, I stopped seeing failure.

I saw a body that had attempted to create life four times.

A body that endured miscarriage.

A D&C.

Another pregnancy.

Countless intravaginal ultrasounds.

Induction and vaginal birth after being told I had an “incompetent cervix”—which, by the way, is a horrible name. We can have the patriarchy-and-medical-language conversation another day.

My body endured depression, suicidal thoughts, extreme anxiety, and trauma.

It endured another pregnancy and another miscarriage.

Medication to manage that loss.

An emergency room visit after significant bleeding.

More tests.

More appointments.

More poking and prodding.

Then came a fourth pregnancy.

Biweekly intravaginal ultrasounds to monitor my cervix.

Extreme white-coat anxiety.

At 24 weeks, learning my cervix was opening.

A hospital admission.

Magnesium.

IVs.

Catheters.

Blood draws every few days.

A month hospitalized during COVID, when the only person who could visit me was my husband. (he stayed on the couch, outside of the occasional home and food run)

Then, somehow, my pregnancy held.

I was released at 28 weeks while still two centimeters dilated.

At 30 weeks, my water broke.

We rushed from northeast Raleigh to Duke while I was actively contracting.

0/10. Do not recommend.

Our daughter arrived in triage and was immediately taken from us to the NICU.

Then came another month of monitors, alarms, pumping, medical terminology, fear, and sitting beside an incubator while hearing what other families around us were facing.

At one point, while I was pumping, a lactation consultant touched my breast without warning.

My body had already experienced so many moments where other people needed something from it.

That moment mattered.

Trauma can live in what looks “small” from the outside.

All of that changed the way I understand my body now.

Those stretch marks?

They are not evidence that my body failed.

They are evidence of a body that fought like hell.

My body adapted.

My body protected me.

My body carried grief.

My body carried life.

My body survived.

And eventually, I stopped asking it to look untouched by everything it had endured.

I Miss Who I Was—and I Wouldn’t Trade Who I Became

There are absolutely things I miss.

I miss the naivety.

I miss having a body that did not react to every unexpected touch as if someone had pulled a fire alarm.

I miss having a brain that did not amplify every sound, movement, or disruption.

I miss the illusion of control.

And oooooh boy, do I miss being rested.

I took sleep for granted. Deeply. Recklessly. Disrespectfully. Not very demure not very mindful.

But there are things I gained that I would not give back.

I found boundaries.

I found my voice.

I found a deeper sense of self-worth.

I learned to advocate for my body rather than constantly override it.

I became clearer about the work I wanted to do and the people I wanted to support.

And somewhere along the way, I rediscovered what I jokingly—and also very seriously—call my goddess energy.

Because excuse me?

This body attempted to create life four times.

That is wild.

There is something powerful about no longer viewing my body through the narrow lens of what it looks like or whether it performed exactly the way society told me it should.

It deserves reverence.

Rest.

Pleasure.

Choice.

Protection.

And hell yeah, the world should be shaped more around women and the incredible things our bodies endure...

Again: patriarchy conversation for another day.

Maybe I Wasn’t Losing Myself

For a long time, I thought motherhood meant losing myself.

Now I think the truth is more complicated.

Parts of me absolutely disappeared.

Some parts needed to.

Some parts I still miss.

Some I am actively trying to reclaim.

And some new parts of me could only have been created through what I survived.

That is one of the things I wish we talked about more honestly when we talk about the motherhood identity shift.

You may not “bounce back.”

You may not want to.

The person who existed before infertility, before pregnancy loss, before birth trauma, before postpartum, before motherhood may not be waiting somewhere for you to rediscover her exactly as she was.

You may be grieving her.

You may also be building someone new.

And those two things can exist together.

I can miss who I was and love who I am becoming.

I can wish some of these things had never happened and still recognize what they taught me.

I can deeply love my daughter and still acknowledge what motherhood has cost me.

I can feel gratitude without using gratitude to silence grief.

I can honor the strength of my body without pretending I enjoyed what it had to survive.

There is room for all of it.

If You Don’t Recognize Yourself Anymore

If you are somewhere in infertility, pregnancy loss, pregnancy after loss, postpartum, or the early years of motherhood and you keep thinking:

Where did I go?

I want you to know that question makes sense.

Maybe you are not failing to “get back to yourself.”

Maybe your identity is reorganizing around experiences that changed you.

Maybe the goal is not to become who you were before.

Maybe it is to become curious about who you are now.

And maybe, for the first time, that version of you gets to be built with more boundaries, more softness, more truth, and a little less obligation to be everything for everybody.

I am still figuring her out.

But I like her.

A lot.

Coming next in Part 2: I Love My Family, But Please Stop Touching Me: Motherhood, Intimacy, Marriage & Being Touched Out — where I’ll talk about sensory overload, sex after reproductive trauma, anxious attachment, resentment, the mental load, outsourcing what we could no longer carry, and learning that depending on my husband did not mean losing myself.

If Motherhood Changed You Too

Motherhood, loss, and matrescence can change your relationship with your body, your partner, your faith, your career, and even the way you see yourself. If you have found yourself wondering, “Where did I go?” or “Why don’t I feel like myself anymore?” — there is room to explore that without judgment, shame, or pressure to simply be grateful and move on.

At On The Horizon Counseling, I support individuals and couples navigating perinatal mental health, infertility, pregnancy loss, postpartum adjustment, reproductive grief, and relationship changes in Raleigh, North Carolina, with virtual support available in North Carolina and South Carolina.

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