It is a different category — one that can’t compare to your life before you had the child because no point of reference is the same after you’ve had the child.

Soon after my daughter was born, we went on holiday to my parents’ home in upstate New York. There, in the hills, surrounded by trees, away from the general banter about motherhood, I discovered that I was enjoying myself. Sure, taking care of a baby even while on vacation was difficult, but it was simply my new normal. Quietly I confessed to myself late one night while listening to the silence outside that I was enjoying this greatly.

I would make the deadlines for my next novel, I decided that night. After all, there’s always an excuse to not write, and a new baby was simply one more excuse. If anything, my time is better spent now because it’s easier to wake up and work after a sleepless night with a baby than a sleepless night out partying and drinking, and I certainly no longer have the time or inclination for the latter.

Still, when a friend announced her pregnancy, immediately after congratulating her, I reached for one of the warnings I had heard myself. I started to tell her about sleeplessness and the unsexiness of nursing bras but then I stopped myself.

“It’s great fun,” I said.

“You’re the first person to say that,” she said.

Maybe we need to say that to each other a bit more. Maybe more of us would have children if it weren’t seen as such an exercise in sacrifice. If we weren’t told that we were going to lose every bit of the self we had finally grown to love.

I want to enjoy this without caveats, without all the talk of selflessness and without seeing this change my identity. I want to be a mother and a writer, and a whole slew of other things, with no thought given to the order of those identities.

If anything, so far being a mother feels quite delightfully self-indulgent. I have a daughter in whom I can constantly look for and find little bits of myself or, better yet, improved bits of myself. Recently a construction worker called out to me on the street in Lower Manhattan and I got my angry anti-catcalling face ready to respond but he very respectfully said, “You have a beautiful daughter, ma’am.” My vanity now has two bodies within which to reside — the sacrifice looks more like narcissism from certain angles.