The only constant is change

If motherhood has taught me anything, it’s this: nothing stays still for long. Not my pregnant belly (nor my post-natal one - it’s like an elastic band that got stretched a few too many times…). And certainly not my babies (I’m glad they’re not like foals and running within 1 hour of birth, but they still go running far too soon for this Mama).

I just keep coming back to this profound yoga teaching: the only constant is change. Sometimes it’s slow and tender, sometimes brutal and breathtaking, sometimes so subtle you only notice it years later when you look back and realise you’re not the same mother you were – you’re not even the same woman you once were.

Pregnancy was my first great lesson in impermanence. Hyperemesis gravidarum made 40 weeks feel like 4000 (so you can imagine what going to 41 + 3 felt like)! Time stretched and warped, each day a mountain, each week a marathon. I know I’m not alone in that — so many chronic conditions can make pregnancy feel endless, like you’re suspended in a body that won’t give you a moment’s peace. But even the hardest pregnancies end. They have to. No one stays pregnant forever, even though it can feel like you might.

Birth, too, is finite. It looms so large in our minds — the fear, the anticipation, the stories we carry — but the actual window of active labour is usually no more than 24 hours. Most often it is less. Some of us get days of pre‑labour, yes, but even that has its limit. And once active labour begins, there’s no going back. You’re in it. You’re moving forward. You’re crossing a threshold that will change you, whether you want it to or not.

My own births have been some of my greatest teachers in change — and in surrender. My first unwanted caesarean left me feeling like I wasn’t enough, like my body had failed some invisible test. That grief stayed with me, reshaping how I saw myself as a mother – a pattern emerging – seeing myself as someone who could never be enough. For this sweet child, for any more, for my husband, my extended family or my workplace. Time and effort to unwind the anxiety and release the depression changed my views, helped me come to terms with the huge waves of emotion rocking my life since the moment I’d become pregnant. My matrescence. Becoming a Mama. It was far from easy, but I became so much more in this new phase of my life, and I am grateful for all the lessons learned, however hard won.

My second unwanted but necessary caesarean — the one that saved both our lives after a placental abruption left me haemorrhaging on my bedroom floor — brought a different kind of complexity. Gratitude and trauma can coexist, and they did. They still do. Seventeen months on, the processing continues. But even that changes. The sharp edges soften. The flares of grief, anger, and betrayal become shorter, less consuming. Healing isn’t linear, but it is alive. It shifts.

And then there’s the body you’re left with after birth — a body that can feel both foreign and fiercely powerful. There’s the dismay of looking in the mirror and not recognising yourself, mingled with the quiet pride of knowing you’ve crossed the threshold from maiden to mother. Sore, leaking breasts. A pelvic floor that feels like it might just let everything fall out. Stretch marks mapping the story of growth. A soft mum‑tum that wasn’t there before. Bags under your eyes from nights that blur into mornings. Coming to terms with all of this takes time and practice — a lot of patience and self-compassion - but even this season shifts. Rebuilding and reconnecting, healing a diastasis, fixing a leaking pelvic floor…it’s all doable, in time.

Then there are the babies — those tiny, fleeting seasons of newborn life. They are only newborn for a moment. They change daily. One day they only know how to cry and feed, and the next they’re smiling, rolling, crawling, walking, talking. Then suddenly they’re ten and so proud of being ‘double digits’ - and you realise this child you once held in one arm (while cooking, cleaning, washing, folding, chasing the horse around the paddock) now couldn’t be picked up if you tried. Their bodies stretch, their faces lengthen, their voices shift, and you realise you’ve been changing right alongside them.

Funnily enough, even with the hyperemesis pregnancies and those endless marathon weeks, I still wanted to pause time and memorise those cute baby kicks and that beautiful rounding of my amazing, life-carrying belly. Even in the midst of painful caesarean recoveries and dismay at my newly ‘flabby’ and ‘empty’ belly, or the breastfeeding difficulties that made me feel so inadequate, I wanted to freeze the tender midnight moments of warm snuggles with this noisy little bundle of soft skin and perfect fingers and toes who fit across my chest and only wanted me out of everyone in this whole wide world.

Motherhood is a constant evolution – ready or not, there you go. Matrescence may be the best term I ever learned, because it encompasses it all. The days can feel impossibly long, but the years slip through your fingers like water. You grow, they grow, your identity grows. You shed old versions of yourself and step into new ones, sometimes willingly, sometimes dragged by circumstance. You learn to hold joy and grief in the same breath. You learn that nothing stays the same — not your body, not your babies, not your heart.

And maybe that’s the quiet gift hidden inside all the chaos and exhaustion and transformation. Change means nothing is permanent — not the nausea, not the sleepless nights, not the fear, not the trauma, not the self‑doubt. But also not the newborn smell, the tiny fingers curled around yours, the way they once fit perfectly on your chest and laughed every time you made a funny face.

Everything shifts. Everything moves. Everything becomes something else. The only constant is change — and somehow, that makes the whole journey feel a little more bearable, a little more precious, a little more miraculous. We learn to treasure what we have while we have it, and we learn to trust that the hard times too will pass.

If you’re navigating your own matrescence, you’re warmly invited to explore the Becoming Mama Yoga online courses — gentle, practical, self-paced support for those trying to conceive, pregnant and recovering after birth. See the store page for more info, or email me and I'll answer any questions you have.