What I Remember From the First Full Day of My Baby’s Life — And the Moment I Finally Looked in the Mirror

I gave birth close to 10pm, the kind of hour where the world outside feels blurry and distant. By the time we were moved into the mom-and-baby room, it was almost 3am. I should’ve been exhausted — and I was — but sleep didn’t come easily. Instead, I just lay there, staring at this tiny human who didn’t even have a name yet. It felt impossible to look away.

There’s something strange about those hours right after birth. You’re supposed to be resting, recovering, adjusting. But I was wide awake, buzzed on adrenaline and shock, watching my whole life breathe beside me.

The First Morning

When I finally closed my eyes and reopened them, it felt like minutes rather than hours had passed. And the very first thing I remember thinking was:

“When am I ever going to sleep again?”

The room was quiet in a way that felt surreal. My baby had existed for less than twelve hours, and suddenly he was next to me instead of inside me. That shift — that emptiness in my body — hit me in a way I didn’t expect.

I tried breastfeeding again around 8am. It was difficult, painful, confusing… and yet, I felt proud. Proud that I tried. Proud that my body was even attempting something new after everything it had just been through.

Physically, I felt okay enough sitting in the bed, but the combination of soreness, the hospital diaper, and that awful gown made me so uncomfortable. Looking back, I wish I had gotten into real clothes sooner. There’s something about a hospital gown that makes you feel like a patient instead of a new mother.

The Day of Visitors

Most of that first full day revolved around people meeting our baby — grandparents, an aunt and uncle, people we loved deeply. And while I’m grateful they were excited, I wish I had been more focused on me and my baby and less on checking boxes.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was doing what so many new moms do:

Trying to make everyone else’s moment special.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to figure out how to sit comfortably.

There were pockets of quiet, though. Little moments that stand out more than the excitement. Like watching my husband and our baby sleeping at the same time — something about that image still sits in my chest.

The Mirror Moment

Sometime in the early afternoon, I finally stood up and went to the bathroom. I decided — almost without thinking — to look at myself in the mirror. It was the first time I had really looked at my body since giving birth.

And I smiled. Not because I looked “good,” but because I couldn’t believe how much my body had changed in less than 24 hours. My stomach looked… deflated. Soft. Foreign. And somehow, still strong.

I stared at myself feeling proud, shocked, confused, amazed — all at once.It didn’t look like me, but it also didn’t look like someone I wanted to hide.

It looked like a body that had done something extraordinary.

And meanwhile, my hair was still in the bun I had thrown it into sometime during labor — tangled, matted, a full-blown rats’ nest I regretted immediately when I tried to detangle it later. It was chaotic, just like the day.

Trying to Find My Place in the Moment

Emotionally, nothing shocked me. I expected the hormones, the tears, the confusion. But I wasn’t prepared for the quiet grief — the feeling of sharing my baby with the world after months of keeping him safe inside me.

There’s a loss there that no one warns you about.

A shift from privacy to publicness, from internal to external.It’s beautiful, but it’s also heavy.

And I wish I had slowed down enough to process that on the actual day.

That evening, the nurses taught my husband how to do a bottle feeding. My milk wasn’t in yet — waiting for it felt like its own battle — so we used formula from the hospital. It was practical. It was necessary. And it was nothing to be ashamed of.

I remember watching him feed our baby and thinking, He looks so happy.That memory feels warmer than anything else from that day.

What I Would Tell That Version of Me

If I could go back and talk to the woman standing in front of that mirror — still swollen, still bleeding, still in shock — I would tell her:

You did it.

It’s okay to feel everything all at once.

It’s okay to slow down.

You don’t need to make the day special for anyone but yourself and your baby.

These moments matter — let yourself have them.

Because the truth is, the first full day of my baby’s life wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t peaceful. It wasn’t curated.

But it was real.

It was raw.

And it belonged to us — even the parts I didn’t realize were important at the time.