I read the birth books, studied the hypno-breathing, got my nursery ready, packed my delivery bag with my cutest slippers, baggiest pre-partum jeans and an old college tee shirt, assuming I would ‘want to be comfortable’ after birth. If you haven’t given birth yet,, I’ll let you in on the joke: my feet were so swollen after birth that I didn’t wear regular shoes for more than 72 hours. It took me two-and-a-half years to fit comfortably into those jeans.
I should have realized how ill-prepared I was immediately. You see, after 27+ hours of active labor, plus three hours of full-on pushing, the nurse helped me waddle into the washroom, handed me a pair of “one-size-fits-all, transparent mesh underwear,” a hard rectangle ice pack and a big puppy pee pad.
She taught me to position the hard plastic pack so the edges dug the least into your skin and how to fold the sumo roll along the gusset of the mesh—and then she helped me to stand up. The entire contraception fell to below my knees. The whole DIY was uncomfortable and completely non-functional. Not to mention, it lacked dignity and felt completely ineffective. I said “For real?” to the nurse, as I felt the itch of sutures tug my skin, the discomfort of swelling in areas I hadn’t even known existed. She didn’t even glance at me and said without a pause, “Congratulations, mama.”
All I could think was: We–women, mothers—deserve better.
I wore my one-size-fits-all mesh like the rest, and was grateful. I had a healthy baby. My insides were inside and my outsides, wellI was confident maybe I would have them back someday.
I am a mother now. I get to stand with the others who have gone through it, standing at the back of the baby showers, quietly comparing degree-tear stories and whispering our stats like war stories. You know: “No epidural and pushed for nine hours,” or “head was too big, emergency c-section,” and “I thought I was going to go to the bathroom—I have no idea, maybe I did.”
No one wanted to speak at full volume, in case the beautiful pregnant friend we were celebrating might flick her beautiful maternity hair and catch sight or sound of what is coming to her next.
What we don’t tell first-time pregnant moms is women have been ‘suffering through’ for decades. We stick cabbage leaves on breasts to help milk come in or ease the painful heat of clogged ducts or the balloon popping throb of our stretching skin. The hushed wives’ tales often are the closest we have come to sharing the truth about what we may feel or experience in the early, challenging days (and weeks and months) of postpartum.
In some instances, the only ‘innovations’ we have known is by following the advice of generations of mothers who have come before us. We aren’t taught this wisdom until we enter motherhood—so, it’s no surprise that we’re all shell-shocked.
They say “breastfeeding is intuitive,”but for me, it was a steady chorus of conflicting advice and judgment stained directives. I felt an intense pressure to ‘figure it out’ and parse through the loads of instructions coming from family, friends and specialists. It took a few months before finally realizing what I truly needed was to eat, be calm and drown out the noise to discover the best way to feed my baby.
I breastfed for nine months, a monstrous feat for me personally—even once hand pumping in a bathroom stall in Guatemala while on a work trip when there was not enough electricity for a regular breast pump. I cried the day my husband gave me a bottle of mezcal and a note that said “You have done a great job. You can be done now if you want.” That night I became deliciously drunk.
It was somewhere in the wildness of learning to live in a new reality as a Mother (capital M and all), figuring out all these skills that are necessary for baby survival, on two to three hours of sleep, while my identity was shifting and my body was healing that I realized: I recognized some of this. It was all new, sure—but some of it was familiar.
When I got my period, it felt like a mountain I had learned to climb had suddenly toppled and five new ones took its place. I started to think through life, of the many moments specific to womanhood: cysts, fibroids, miscarriages, period pains, endometriosis. These times that we just grin and bear through it. If you are lucky, a sage companion will share their story and you will be let in on what to expect or tips on how you can get through it. But even the wisest and most supported of us are still getting the equivalent to those cabbage leaves.
Again, we deserve better.
This realization led me to birth another baby, a company: Nyssa. A way to innovate for what we need as women. For our bodies and our recoveries. Nyssa is a product line. But it is also a way of thinking.
We took work meeting Zoom calls between feedings. We launched our first product as my baby was taking his first steps. Through fundraising, retail launches, the intense deeply emotional strains of startup hustle as well as the visceral wins; my baby sat on my hip or watched a video on my laptop at our conference table or was under the watchful gaze of my mother, who tripled as Nona, nanny and Nyssa’s Fulfillment Manager.
We launched in earnest at the start of the pandemic, while we lived in a large commercial building on the west side of Chicago. Business operations were on the first floor while we maintained family life on the top level. I never had guilt about sharing the space or parenting both a brand as well as my child.
As both grew, so did the opportunity for learning. Last year brought another test to this set of values, my second child was born moments after a round of fundraising had fallen apart and the brand faces several unprecedented hurdles. Literally minutes after giving birth, I was on email.
I struggled at first with the balance: CEO and evangelist of fourth trimester care; mother of two children—one old enough to recognize my stress and strain. Not wanting to disappoint my friends, family and all others that have invested in the dreams and goals of Nyssa.
In motherhood, as our identity shifts time and again, I sense these moments—these sometimes mere seconds of silence between someone asking for something or a part of the house crashes or a ‘MAMA’ gets hollered—when I am able to breathe and take stock. These three children are a part of me. Just as my two boys have led me to who I am today and tomorrow and on; my story is not complete without the joy, sacrifice and experiences of the birth and life of this brand.
This time around, I have more and more space to realize this. And my postpartum healing with this second baby was—stress of business life aside—a dream. I had the products that I needed, the understanding of what to expect, the empowerment to advocate for myself.
