My first name is Mommy

Solanne has been getting used to the fact that Derek and I have other names besides Daddy and Mommy. She was naming everyone in our family: "Daddy is Derek, I'm Solanne, Maïa is Maïa, and Mommy is..." She had forgotten. Then Maïa tried to remember, but she could only come up with "Katrina," the name of one of her friends. She knew it was wrong, so she asked me, "Momma, what's your second name?"

It sent me into thinking about the radical identity transformation I have gone through since Maïa was born.

Last week I spent two whole days with a friend who has a three-week old baby. She's just beginning to reel from the reality of it. I remember feeling utterly useless and strange and completely out of touch with everyone I knew.

Watching my friend, I realised, for the first time, what I had gone through. I had lost myself. Truly lost Cristina. My roles as friend, daughter, wife were all a distant second to my new role of mother. And I didn't feel like a mom. I didn't think I was acting like a mom. I felt like I was some sort of imposter (I had no idea what I was doing). And at the same time, I felt like I would never again be those other things: wife, friend, daughter, person. I was in a strange identity limbo. I was nothing. It was devastating. For months, it was devastating.

And now, I laugh at the idea that Maïa thinks that my second name is Cristina. She'll likely not know I'm a person until she's into her twenties. But that's okay; I know I'm a person, a wife, a friend, a daugther. It's all okay now.