Motherhood, with its intense physical and emotional extremes, is a crucible in which we are tested and altered. In the alchemical vessel of motherhood, the heat is turned up high.

Because their female partners are literally pouring life into them, at a steep cost to their own existence.

What he didn’t know, and what I had unconsciously come to realize, was that I was already a different person. I hadn’t delivered the baby yet, wasn’t officially a mother yet, but labor had already changed me.