The Aftermath, The part no one warns you about.

Baby Rahmi- 1 week old.

Everyone talks about the birth. The moment. The cry. The skin to skin. No one talks about what happens after. Not really.

Rahmi was born just over six pounds and had jaundice. I was told that was common. What no one told me was how terrifying it is when your newborn starts losing weight and the doctors start looking worried.

The first few weeks were a blur. I was in and out of the hospital, still healing from a C section, walking through snowstorms in Toronto with a stitched up body and a fragile baby. I spent thirteen hour days in windowless hospital rooms, holding him close, waiting for someone to tell me I was doing it right.

They never did.

Instead, I got contradictions.Nurses said breastfeed exclusively. Don’t worry about pumping. Then a doctor told me to pump and bottle feed.Then another told me not to.Then a nurse told me to relax because I was stressing the baby out. I was trying to keep a tiny human alive while being body slammed by hormones and sleep deprivation, and everyone had something to say.

And can we talk about the unsolicited opinions?

Motherhood is like being handed a pop quiz every day, with strangers grading your answers out loud.

Feed him this. Don’t use that bottle. Don’t pick him up too much. Wait, why aren’t you picking him up?

It’s endless. Exhausting. A drag.And somehow, through all of that, people still find the audacity to ask me

So, do you think you’ll have another?

I was asked that ten days after major abdominal surgery. Ten days.Stitches still fresh, my body barely mine again, and someone is already leaning in like, So, when’s number two?

Number two? I haven’t even taken a proper shower.

Let’s calm down.

Rahmi is bottle fed now, organic goat milk from Holle, and he’s thriving. He eats like he’s been through things. He laughs like he’s in on a joke I haven’t heard yet. And when he smiles at me, I feel like I survived something impossible.

My mom got me through those early weeks. She did the night shifts. She held him. Fed him. Let me sleep.Sleep felt like oxygen. And she gave it to me freely, even when she was exhausted herself.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay her for that.

And then there’s Abee.

My girl. My first baby. Cane Corso mix. Fierce, sensitive, soft when she needs to be.She got bumped from my side of the bed. She watched me fall in love with a new baby. And still, she stayed. She accepted Rahmi in five minutes. A quick sniff and that was it. He was part of her pack. She hasn’t left his side since.

She protects him like she was born to do it.And I’ll never forget that.

Rahmi is almost six months old. He’s rolling, reaching, trying to eat his feet. He’s loud, silly, sweet, dramatic. I’m obsessed with all of it. Every little thing feels like a miracle, even when I’m exhausted.

But this wasn’t some peaceful, glowy chapter. It was brutal. Beautiful. Bloody. Boring. Bizarre. All of it.

I didn’t just become a mother. I became someone else entirely.

Because that’s what no one tells you.

When the baby is born, so are you.

And while this chapter is about Rahmi, the next one might be about the man who stood beside me when everything was falling apart. The one who held my hand through the chaos. The one who wasn’t supposed to want any of this, not marriage, not kids, and yet showed up as the most natural father I’ve ever seen.

I met him after years of learning the hard way.Learning what I didn’t want. What I wouldn’t settle for.What love actually should feel like. Quiet. Steady. Safe.

And then I met him. Adrian.Steady. Solid. Calm in the way that keeps you grounded.And yes, if you’re wondering, he’s beautiful. In the kind of way that makes people pause. But it’s not just his face. It’s the way he listens. The way he pays attention. The way he makes everything feel like it’s going to be okay.

He still doesn’t care about weddings or rings or the paper. But he’ll do anything to make me happy. And he did.

And that story? It’s a fun one. In the best ways, but I’ll save it for the next post.

Because motherhood may have shaken the ground beneath me, but the love that followed, in all its forms, is what built me back up.

This is the aftermath.