I’ve been stuck trying to write an intro to this, because it would need so many caveats. I guess I’ll make them a footnote?*
Zoom into my small existence and I just love my little family. I love my baby! Six months is a fun age!
I talk a lot about how things have changed by having a baby but at my core, I am the same person. And I find myself wishing I could tell the 20-something waif I used to be that I found a way (UHHH a big key is partnering up with a solid person) to be a parent but also stay myself, stay a person, and continue to read and write. It shocks, like, even some of the most reasonable and fair-minded people I know that I haven’t stopped reading books? My baby takes naps and I read then. Or I read stuff out loud to the baby. Not saying this works for all people but it has worked for me. I also commute by train, there’s time for a little reading then.
I just want this on the record, because in my lost and starving 20s I often assumed that people with kids or even one kid were at peace with killing off parts of themselves. And, uhhh, that’s not the case.
If I could, I would assure my past self by saying:
YES, your body will be different. I am not loving that hormones, or post-op, or something has given me insomnia issues, for the first time in my life. But because you have fed and nurtured your inner world with devotion to writing, books, music, art, and ideas, those things stay alive in you. You will remain a jumble of Greek mythology and tarot imagery and rock’n’roll, I promise!
There will be a solo project by Tunde from TV on the Radio during your Convalescent Era, and it will haunt you. The song “Drop,” in particular, needs to be heard at least once a day. And there’s something about the lyric, “Send no flowers, the visions never stop” that feels uncannily matched to your summer back at work. My body heals and feels better every day, but my brain and my sleep remain changed, feels like it is woven into the song somehow.
You will be hypnotized by a strange Japanese thriller and devour it in 48 hours, and not be quite sure if it was a story of supernatural elements, or just creepy vibes in a Feudal-era beach town where lots of people have visions during heat stroke?
There can be an ebb and flow. Time constraints are real and so are physical health and mobility limits. I know you haven’t learned that yet. It’ll take a long while to learn your limits and you will resist them and deny that they exist up until you can’t, really can not do so anymore. In 2025 my postpartum health issues took me away from my creative process more than giving birth did, and that is how it shakes out sometimes.
We get a lot of babycare help from family and this is a privilege. We do not take it lightly and try to express our immense gratitude. The baby is the center of our lives, our days, our everything. And yet, when offered the chance to read a little more, write something down, finish a crossword puzzle, listen to a podcast, or reach out to a friend and exchange stories because baby is being watched, I TAKE IT!!
The part of me that needs to consume and create stories has never disappeared. I brought reading material to my hospital readmission and ER visit. That story-seeking part stays strange. And hungry. Even when I am scared.
You will follow your obsessions, though those specifics may change. In your 30s you find a niche with horror tropes and revisit the teenage Anne Rice phase you are so embarrassed about now. You lighten up a little with the literary pretensions and stop taking yourself SO SERIOUSLY! And it brings you to reading an out-of-print book on Marian cults for vampire story research, finding that the academic library’s digitally preserved copy has someone’s hand-written marginalia preserved, too:
All I’m really trying to say is: I still have passions and do projects. Now I have a sweet little assistant, is all. Here he is at a reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 4:
He was with me while assembling utensil packs for a beloved soup kitchen’s to-go service … It breaks my brain that these were made with the stuff that comes with delivered meals. We ask for No Utensils and this is what arrives anyway, enough for 50 packets!
Your garden will bloom and buzz with pollinators:
You will watch sunflowers open, slowly.
Look, HAVING A BABY IS NOT EASY! Don’t mistake me here, and do not do it until you are certain you are ready.
But the great news is: you will get to that place. You will have a feeling and you will be right. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do and also the most joyful! Both things are true, and you feel both marked and different and totally, wholly, authentically yourself. You will regret nothing. You will not be diminished.
So anyone who tells you, gleefully, cynically, that you have to give up the wild and creative parts of you has their own agenda, their own damage, and their own politics. There’s no rule about this actually! You can negotiate time and care with your partner (or with whomever or however you are raising a kid). So trust your instincts on that one and don’t rush into this. It can and will be so so good and maybe there are jerks who tell you this is “late in life” but since when do you care about what jerks think?
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*Caveats, context: I can only speak for myself. My life was damaged in many ways due to unfathomable student debt, a uniquely bad reality for New Jersey residents, and coming of age in a Recession that led to bailouts for banks but not people. We are going to have exactly one child; I spent a long time thinking I’d never even get to do that. In our stratified, unequal 21st Century America, my one-child household is a privilege.
In my 20s I lived in a country that protected reproductive care, and NOW I DO NOT. I couldn’t afford to feed myself until I was 33 years old. Somehow the US is even more brutal to young people and hostile to starting a family now than it was 15 years ago! I spent my 20s just trying to survive and I cannot believe it’s been made worse for people younger than me.
I can’t pretend to extract my own little life from those broader political realities. It will always be a part of my pregnancy story that I was in my third trimester for the 2024 Presidential Election. Probably every parent worries about the future of their kid(s) but oh boy, I am TERRIFIED.
I have thoughts and take actions I won’t document on the Internet. But the last part of this caveat is: I am not ignorant of these facts. And yet, we had a baby as an expression of hope. We are living amidst catastrophic climate change RIGHT NOW, fascism is back baby, and disinfo has us divided worse than I’ve ever seen.
But I’m not going to roll over and give up. The only way out is through and the future is coming whether we are ready or not. We are trying real hard to raise a kid who has compassion for others, loves the planet, and can find hope in the darkness.
Laura Eppinger 