Sarah Levine finds this only partially convincing. There are moments, she says, when you feel an impulse and must follow it—an ability to sense hunger, sleepiness, over-stimulation with surprising accuracy. And then there are plenty of others when, as a first-time mother, you are “totally bewildered,” with no internal instruction manual in sight.

Her son, Albert—Albie, or affectionately Bunny—is nine months old. He wakes early, standing in his crib, absorbed in his own babbling, delighted by the sound of himself. At some point, he notices her. “He knows I’m there, and the jig is up.” The day begins.

Shortly after he was born, Albie was diagnosed with craniosynostosis and required neurosurgery at seven weeks. He has worn a helmet since. It is not the version of motherhood she had anticipated. “Selfishly, I wanted a normal experience,” she admits. What followed was a relinquishing—of control, of expectation, of the idea that things could be managed into alignment.

And yet, there is a steadiness in how she speaks about it now. Not resolution, exactly, but a willingness to accommodate what is. Motherhood, she suggests, has been a lesson in letting go—of perfection, of certainty, of the ambition to be everywhere and do everything at once.

The helmet is now her son's calling card. "He's a little celebrity in their neighborhood," she says, admitting sheepishly that she's comes to love it.

If there is a prevailing atmosphere to early motherhood, it is not softness so much as intensity. “It’s really fucking tough,” she says, without hesitation, a statement she feels new mothers should hear—not as a warning, but as a form of preparation. There are moments of closeness she describes as unforgettable: a baby sleeping against your chest, the small, rhythmic sounds of breathing. But these sit alongside a more high-pitched reality: the tracking of feeds, naps, diapers; the sense of being perpetually on the clock; the gradual erosion of one’s own time.

The phrase “bouncing back,” particularly in its emotional dimension, she dismisses outright. Nine months on, she feels more like herself again, though she admits there was a period when she wondered if that version would return at all. Fatigue accumulates. Hormones continue their work long after the moment of birth has passed. “Your emotional self is at the mercy of a raging rollercoaster,” she says, with a clarity that feels earned.