I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

Once upon a time, I was a new mother with a baby girl in my arms, and I was her whole world.

It was 17 years ago, but sometimes I swear I can transport myself back there just by closing my eyes and taking a deep breath.

I remember reading that a baby's first three months of life are called the fourth trimester.

Three trimesters are spent in the mother's body, bobbing around like a little fish. But the fourth trimester

is when everyone is adapting to life in the outside world. The babies seem bewildered, trying to adjust

to nursing and sleeping. But I think parents are just as bewildered.

The physical and emotional recovery from labor is intense,

on top of caring for another human being around the clock.

The first three months,

the first six months, if I'm honest, were really difficult.

I was exhausted, depleted, emotional.

I loved my daughter, and I missed my solitude.

I loved her father, and I resented his freedom.

I loved my life, and I didn't know how to live it.

Mercifully, we all forget much of the fourth trimester.

We forget the missed naps and 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. cluster feedings.

We forget the creature-like newborn cry and the bad latches and the desperate calls to the lactation specialist.

We forget so much. But if I close my eyes and take a deep breath, I can remember

the smell of the top of my daughter's head and the feeling of it cupped in the palm of my hand,

and those two things alone are enough to make me weep.

She is turning 17, and she is taller than me,

...