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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, everybody. This is Liliana Maria Bersiris in for Mary L. Cigera.

When we talk about parenting, the conversation is often centered around what's best for our children.

And we don't spend as much time talking about what it's like to actually be a parent.

But becoming a parent is hard. Becoming a mother is hard. In some cultures, we say a woman has

given birth, but here we say a child is born. And with that, the emphasis gets shifted on the child and away from the mother.

Grace Bastidas knows this firsthand. As a mom of two, I know that those maternal instincts don't kick in

the second you hold your infant. She's the editor-in-chief of parents and former host of their

podcast, That New Mom Life, which was created to remind moms that they're not alone as they navigate those first bleary-eyed months with a newborn.

I was exhausted all the time.

I think we all have those fantasies of just being able to, like, keep the same lives we had.

So it was a lot of change and things that I wasn't prepared

for because I just assumed I would feel like myself. It takes a toll on you, you know, it's like the

things that people never tell you about. Needless to say, becoming a mother is a huge, complicated

life transition that can rock every fiber of a person's being.

The process even has its own name, matrescence, pronounced like adolescence.

Even though motherhood is not all sunshine and rainbows, not a lot of people talk about it.

This can lead many new moms to think there's a problem with them if they feel

anything but excitement or joy. So in this episode of Life Kit, Grace talks to a reproductive

...