The unravelling!
Into (m)other-‘hood’
I already knew I was pregnant about a week before testing and seeing those two pink lines. Call it spider senses, call it embodiment, call it womb wisdom, regardless my life was about to change, and in ways I did not anticipate. Women are sold these dreamy expectations of pregnancy, fueled by societies desire to reproduce (que the handmaids’ tale) and the hierarchy of women through the gaze of patriarchy and white feminism; pregnant and glowing = exceptionally worthy, postpartum = hide away until you can be useful again, breastfeeding = over sexualised or disgusting, child free by choice = damaged and need fixing, working mama = selfish, stay at home mama = lazy, the list goes on. Anyway, my body didn’t get the pregnant = glowing memo and I was constantly waiting for that 2nd trimester glow everyone kept promising me. Turns out, growing a human is actually just exhausting for most of us.
I spent the next 9 months obsessing over the baby growing in my womb. Excited to meet them, but utterly consumed. It was like I couldn’t think of anything else. I expected the wave of morning sickness, which actually lasted all day and evening, WTF is that all about? Drink water…sick, smell cucumber…sick, brush your teeth…sick. But what I did not expect was the tsunami of anxiety that accompanied it. The constant fear of miscarrying, a term that sounds like I carried a fragile vase incorrectly. Or the fear of having a still birth after all the hard work my body had done to create life - anticipating what stillness would feel like in such a moment. The fear of failing at the one thing society had been telling me I was supposed to do, since the tender age of 12 (as well as the over sexualisation, but lets park that for another episode).
Second to the anxiety, was the sheer exhaustion. After a 36 hour home birth, with no sleep except the 2 second micro nap I took in the birth pool, rudely interrupted by face planting the water, whilst stating high on gas and air… “oh shit I’m supposed to be doing something important”. I was then breastfeeding on demand, and ‘free the nipple’ took on a whole new meaning. Naturally a night owl, I was used to feeling good on 5 hours of sleep, so I thought that the lack of sleep would be a breeze. But the sleep deprivation felt like a torture camp ran by the smallest and cutest human that I had just MADE! My mental wellbeing went spiraling, and whilst there were times those 3am feeds felt peaceful. When the world feels still and those little eyes are looking up at you, I was mostly terrified about feeling so alone and swallowed by a darkness that I couldn’t explain, which for the most part vanished in the day. Leaving me second guessing and gas-lighting myself. One minute I was experiencing suicidal thoughts, post-natal depression, with a side of extreme anxiety and the next I was floating around in a new born bliss bubble, in a field of flowers with dreamy music in the background. I had never experienced such extremes.
The unravelling of my being continued as the landscape of my friendships changed and my whole identity shifted. Some of my child-free friends have journeyed with me in the most supportive and beautiful ways, happily taking on the roles of aunties and playing with my babies like they are full humans and not an inconvenience to us hanging out. A beautiful reminder that as well as this new identity that had been born, there used to be someone else there before with a whole life, and she was still worthy of acknowledging and tending to. Other friendships grew complicated for various reasons related to one of us being a mother and the other not, and either abruptly ended or slowly dwindled away. I met many mum acquaintances, but everything was always surface level, or at least that’s how it felt at the time. Reflecting back, it was just women trying to connect, to build some kind of community, whilst their previous lives carried on around (and often without) them. Through all the sleep deprivation and the tears we shown up, even if all we spoke about was sick, poop, milestones and how much sleep we didn’t get. The solidarity nod from one mother to another in coffee shops and supermarkets became a constant reminder that I wasn’t alone. I also met a group of mums who became my 'friends’ for me and not just for the sake of the children having play dates, parenting alongside them makes the invisible load feel lighter.
And then there’s my career as an academic…after 12 months of maternity leave and looking for different nursery options, it was clear my daughter was not ready to be with strangers and I was not ready to leave her, so I decided to take more unpaid time off! This came at a financial cost and you could say a cost for my career progression. But, that’s when I realised my career as I knew it actually meant nothing to me. I clung onto it for so long as it was the main aspect of my identity. I had been at university for 7 years doing my undergrad degree and PhD, I had worked loads of temporary contracts waiting for a full-time permanent post in academia, how could I throw it all away? But becoming a mother highlighted how unimportant I found that career and any goals I once had were thrown out with the bath water. I wanted to be at home with my baby, watching her do things for the first time, kissing her when she fell, having slow mornings and going out in nature. So no, I was not a fan of the increased free nursery hours, without also giving women better maternity conditions and options to stay home with their children.
Thanks to capitalism, there’s a large portion of society that believe mothering is not valuable or worthy labour. You only need to look at the lack of care women experience and the rush to get new mothers back into the work force to notice this. I remember feeling like an unruly teenager that had gone and ‘got herself pregnant’ (I missed the sex ed class on how we do that!) whenever someone asked me if I was ‘just a mum’ - the shame, the guilt, the disregard for the labour that is mothering. Yes a joy, yes a blessing, but also hard fucking work! I wasn’t shocked by societies perception of this- it was my own internalised beliefs that punched me in the face! Three years on, I’m glad my motherhood now feels like a sacred act of rebellion 90% of the time. Holding my babies is part of my revolution, part of my middle finger up to the system.
Welcome to the unravelling - the grey space where it all co-exists,
With Paris
