“My word of the week is tend,” the woman on the mat next to mine said with a smile. “Tend to my baby, of course,” She stopped to take a breath, as if gaining some resolve before continuing. “But also tend to myself.” I briefly wondered what kind of tending to this woman thought she needed. I pictured a manicure, maybe brunch out with her friends. My thoughts were cut short by everyone’s eyes on me; it was my turn to tell the group of postpartum moms—moms that I had been trying desperately to befriend—what my one-word intention was for the week.

“Sleep?” I blurted out, eliciting a round of chuckles. But I was serious. I needed sleep. My daughter was 11 weeks old and I had just five days until I returned to work full-time. I could hardly get myself out the door to Bring Your Own Baby yoga at 10 that morning, so I truly had no idea how I would leave the house at 7 a.m. for the 40 minute commute. And then once I got to work, I would be expected to stay there all day, analyzing data and writing, when the most intense calculation I had done in months was counting the hours in between my baby’s bowel movements. I was not sure I would be able to do it.

The yoga instructor pressed me for more information. “Why did you choose sleep as your word of intention this week, Caitie?” I filled everyone in that it was my last week of maternity leave. A collective, “aww” passed through the group, and I felt slightly resentful. How many of these mothers had to return to work at all? My daughter was one of the youngest in the group and it was mid-morning on a Wednesday. These mothers either had better maternity leave policies or they had the option to stay home, an option that up until the few days prior to that I had not even cared for. Just the week before I would have rolled my eyes at the thought of giving up my career to stay home with my baby. But then, as my time with my daughter came to a close, I was envious of the parents in the circle of mats around me who had that extra time.

By that point, I had been going to Bring Your Own Baby yoga for six weeks. My midwife suggested it at my postpartum checkup, offering it as a way to get out of the house and meet some other moms. I had never been that into yoga and the classes were a bit outside of my budget so I hesitated. But I was lonely. I had hardly any friends in the area, as we had moved to Nashville when I was pregnant, and I definitely didn’t have any mom friends. So I bought a ten-class pass and gave it a try.

The structure of every class was the same. We came in and circled up our mats. We unloaded our infants from their car seats and laid them on their backs in between our legs. We started each class with a prompt from the instructor that was typically meant to check in on us or give us a positive focus for the upcoming week. We were then led through a baby massage, and then we did some yoga ourselves. I left each class with my body feeling stretched and more relaxed. And my daughter seemed to like the outings too. So we committed to the weekly trek across town to the yoga studio.

As for the making friends part, it was less obvious to me how to actually engage with the other yogi moms outside of class. Several of them seemed to already be friends; they would often load up their car seats into strollers and head to lunch next door after the class ended. But I felt awkward trying to insert myself— and my daughter—into plans that had already been made. So after each class I put her quickly into her car seat, lugged her out to the car, and headed home. 

This is why then, after six weeks of sitting in a circle with the same group of mothers, their audible sounds of concern about my returning to work felt disingenuous. I was resentful that I had never been invited to lunch with them. I was resentful that their babies were months older than mine and they were still home with them during the day. My resentment distracted me well into the class, as I was listening to the rest of the one word responses, as I was massaging my sweet baby, and as the yoga portion began.

After our typical warm-up, the instructor led us into a table-top position over our babies. My daughter was laying quietly underneath me staring straight up at me. My mixed feelings aside, she unambiguously loved our yoga classes. Her eyes followed me intently through every move, a serious expression on her face, and she hardly ever cried. Unlike the other, older babies in the class, she did not seem entertained by my motions. She did not smile or coo. Rather she studied me closely as though she was trying to make sense of all of it.

From our table-top position, the instructor guided us to lift our right arm and left leg off the mat and extend them straight out. We then tucked both limbs in, looked at our babies, and then extended them out again, our heads extending out too. We were on the second tuck and suddenly, my serious little baby’s expression shifted. She was no longer serious. She was smiling at me with a big toothless grin. One more tuck and she was laughing! Long, hard belly laughs that were shaking her whole body. In the hundreds of hours I had spent holding and rocking and studying this baby, it was a sound she had never made before. It was the sound of her first laugh, watching her mama tuck her limbs in and out above her, the week before I returned to work.

That sound was too much for me. I lowered myself onto the mat with her, laid my head in the crook of her little arm, and I sobbed. I closed my eyes, buried my nose in her little belly, and soaked in each little laugh. As she quieted down I felt hands on my back. And my legs. And my head. I looked up to find that the moms had all crawled over from their own mats to lay a hand on me. I caught some of their eyes and they were filled with tears too. I laid there with my daughter, a tiny army of mamas at my back, until I composed myself. I sheepishly announced that it was her first laugh, as if there had been some question in their minds, and we all returned to our table-top poses.

It was in this moment that I understood the importance of having other mothers in your life. I had, before then, been searching for the qualities I had desired in my friends before my daughter was born. Do you care about social justice? Do you answer the phone when your friends call? Do you like to hike? Do you watch Bob’s Burgers? But I realized the friends I had who satisfied those criteria would not—could not—understand how I felt in this moment, hearing my daughter laugh for the first time right before I went back to work. It was an experience that only a parent could understand.

In the two years since this experience, I have slowly cultivated my circle of mom friends. I have several people who I can count on to answer my calls, to empathize with my feelings about balancing family and work, to dispense advice. But before I had these friendships, I had my weekly trip to Bring Your Own Baby yoga class, where my daughter would have her first laugh. The complex emotions that this experience brought forth is something that is hard to explain. But in that setting—a yoga class full of mothers—the entire room wordlessly understood.

Guest essay written by Caitie Hilverman. Caitie is a data scientist by day and lives in Hudson, NY with her partner, two-year-old, and dog. She is passionate about working with data to help improve people’s lives, especially the lives of mothers. When she’s not playing with data, she’s usually writing, hiking, or making baby and toddler clothes. You can find her on Instagram.

Photo by Lottie Caiella