Three weeks in, I can say with some certainty that being a second-time mom is a major upgrade from the first time around. You get to harness the wealth of your experiences, all the lessons you learned from the mistakes you made, the vast registry of intuitions you evolved that sit inside your body in the shape of maternal wisdom. This ‘do-over’ feels like an opportunity to right past wrongs and to tune into your arsenal of maternal remedies. When I returned home from hospital with our first, I felt like I had to be a caregiver without a manual, like I had missed an initiation ritual. This time around I felt like I had this repository of mental postpartum notes I could refer to, a whole vocabulary of intuitive responses, ‘gut feelings’ that had been validated and approved.

This doesn’t mean I haven’t fallen apart in the last 21 days. Near-constant breastfeeding coupled with adjusting to a new sleep routine can cripple the most emotionally tensile of us. But in the moments when the brief feels colossal, I know that the overburdened feeling is temporary, ephemeral, fleeting. That every perceived challenge is in fact a ladder towards the next milestone. Like when our infant cluster feeds, it’s a sure sign he’s going through a growth spurt.