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  "path": "/articles/after-the-baby-i-didnt-just-bounce-back-i-catapulted",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-08T17:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.mcsweeneys.net",
  "textContent": "In the days following my return from the hospital, I have gained agility, speed, and mass. I feel physically better postpartum than I have ever felt in my entire life. I didn’t just bounce back—I double-bounced, and then snapped all the way back around again.\n\nNow, I pirouette out of bed and flounce into rooms. Just the other day, my husband asked if I could cook him dinner, and I cartwheeled into the kitchen to make a beef bourguignon from scratch. Before giving birth, I did not know how to make beef bourguignon or even how to spell it. But these things, a mother knows.\n\nMy birthing experience didn’t hamper me at all; in fact, it fueled me. It felt like finally eating a nasty cheeseburger after nine months on tofu. I did it completely naturally, and in under five minutes. As I left the maternity ward, the nurses gave me a _Jennifer Hudson Show_ -style spirit tunnel. Cardiothoracic surgeons paused mid-incision to shake my hand. Another new mother asked me to sign her newborn.\n\nWhen it comes to breastfeeding, I know that many other moms struggle with milk supply. While I empathize with their plight, I can’t actually relate per se, as my engorged yet perfectly pert naturals turn into veritable firehoses of milk at the switch of a button—literally. I have found a piece down by my lower right armpit that acts as an on-off switch for milk.\n\nIsn’t the human body amazing? Mine in particular?\n\nAs for sleep, they say, “Sleep when the baby sleeps.” But I say, the baby sleeps when I sleep, and I sleep all the time: in the morning, on the toilet, at the wheel. We have fun! Whenever you get the two of us together in a room or car, you can be sure it’s lights out.\n\nSpeaking of my baby, she’s my twin, and I mean that in a genetic sense. The doctors ran a test, and it turns out that across all Punnett squares, my DNA triumphed 100 percent of the time. I got as close to 3D printing my clone as is currently possible.\n\nUgh, my heart. My baby and I are so in sync. Truly. The on-off switch for my breast milk also functions as a Bluetooth for the baby. When it’s on, we sync up so only one of us can talk at a time, which is awesome because she’s four weeks old and has nothing interesting to say.\n\nMy vagina actually got tighter, if you can believe it—defying the logic of my epically globular mom butt. I also only got hornier. I’ll spare you the details, but just know I’ve found that nothing gets me hot and bothered like being referred to as “Mama!” by a peer. In these instances, I excuse myself, hop in my Chevrolet Malibu, and race home to make energetic love to my husband for hours on end.\n\nNot that it’s a competition, but at my postnatal check-up, my OB-GYN said she had never seen numbers so good. She told me not to come back because, and I quote, “you’ll ruin the curve.”\n\nI also got back to work almost immediately. In a way, my matrescence has been a kind of road-mapping exercise, ripe with insights about ROI, AI-enabled customizations, and quirky icebreakers. The other day, I was sitting on the couch with my baby and had such an aha moment that I physically leaped up and exclaimed, “Now THAT’S how to reduce workflow inefficiencies!”\n\nMy baby flew through the air, landed perfectly on her feet, and began confidently walking at age .08. I’m truly blessed.\n\nI was so prepared to excel in my career that I became a bit skeptical that mothers need paid maternity leave at all. But then a friend of mine explained that, following giving birth, she was rehospitalized for hemorrhage, her uterus fell out of her vagina, and her husband decided to start training for the marathon.\n\nI’ve since come out as proudly pro–paid maternity leave. Moms are _amazing_.",
  "title": "After the Baby, I Didn’t Just Bounce Back—I Catapulted"
}