I was ten years old the first time I stepped into a birthing center, eager to watch my new cousin Anna come into the world. At that point I hadn’t even considered the possibility that I could one day be a mother myself (I was the kid who was more interested in building tree forts with my brother and his friends than playing house with the other girls), but that day a very firm and knowing voice popped into my head and casually stately, “I’m going to have a baby here one day.” And , as fate had it, exactly twenty years later, almost to the day, I did indeed return to have my first baby in that same birthing center, fulfilling that almost forgotten prophecy.

But then, something unexpected happened. Instead of being flooded with all the love and joy every movie ever made had promised me, the first words out of my mouth were “holy shit”, as if it were a surprise that a whole-ass human had been growing in there the past 9 months or so.

Though my labor had been swift and uncomplicated, and I had been praised for being so very calm and “quiet” through it all, I realized in that moment that I was very much unprepared for this sudden birthing, not just of my baby, but of me, as a new mother. Yes, I had diligently practiced my self-hypnosis techniques, learned everything there was to know about the stages of labor, infant care, and initiating breastfeeding, but there was something entirely missing from my preparations: how to navigate the massively jarring social-emotional shift from maiden to mother.

In the weeks that followed, I found it difficult to bond with my son. Yes, I found him cute and perfect, but I found myself feeling like a babysitter waiting for the “real parents” to arrive so that I could go back to being “me”. Except, that “me” no longer existed. As I sobbed while brushing my teeth - the last shred of familiarity still standing from my pre-baby life - I desperately wished for some sort of anchor, a sense of continuity from pregnancy with all its dependable, grounding labor prep rituals, Hypnobabies tracks, and appointments. I just wished I could rent a big sister figure to help me figure out this whole being a mother thing, and to help me get my bearings again in this new, foreign identity. I wanted someone who’d been through it already to hold my hand and show me the way.