The birth of my second child brought me into the unknown – and in that darkness, I find wonder

‘With patience, the liminal bears fruit. We wake to the astonishing wonder of our changing lives,’ Nadine Levy writes. Composite: Nenov/Getty Images

I’ve had a second baby, seven years after my first. My body remembered the wonder, the repetition, the slog. Yet I was shocked, once again, by the jarring instability of this phase: ecstatic one day, unbearable the next.

I imagined someone from my old life seeing me on the street, stained, ragged and muttering non-linear thoughts about my immediate needs. I was too tired to be embarrassed so I laughed, a kind of unhinged, maniacal laugh. After all, I had been there once before.