Motherhood.

It’s hard to overstate the impact of motherhood. People can tell you of course, friends who have had children talk of sleepless nights and are unable to commit to plans for a while, making excuses and leaving early. But you can never really know until it happens to you. You can never really comprehend how your entire sense of self becomes refracted through the lens of someone else’s needs, how at times that shift is so great, so completely fracturing, so world-shattering that you feel yourself breaking apart entirely. I can only liken it to the feeling you get when as a child, having wandered too far, are hit with the terrifying realisation that you are lost, entirely unmoored. It was this realisation that hit me like a freight train in the dead of night, in a hospital bed after 60 hours without sleep, a heady mix of hormones and a cocktail of drugs still sloshing around my system following emergency surgery after my son’s birth. The feeling that I’d done something that could never be undone. That the person of three days ago was dead and gone, and my life would never, ever be the same again. And in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind, that small voice: “What if I’ve made a terrible mistake?”

Almost every mother I know has some variation of a traumatic birth story. There are some who describe their own experience as “blissful”. I’m happy for them, but I cannot relate. My own pregnancy and the birth of my son was beset by complications, some anticipated (following a previous health condition) and others arriving completely out of the blue. We knew there was a high likelihood of a premature birth, and while we mitigated the risks, we were very lucky that our son was born relatively healthy, eight weeks early. That mean that he was taken away to intensive care as soon as he was born, and the first five weeks of his life were spent in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) while he gained strength.

Giving birth was the most excruciating feat of endurance I have ever experienced. After any comparable experience, the normal bodily response would be to take some time off to rest and recover. This is not an option afforded to new mothers. Imagine running a marathon and then being yanked immediately back onto the treadmill. As early as an hour following the birth my first job as a new mum was to attempt to express vital milk from my body that was woefully unprepared for the task, for a baby that was not by my side where he should have been, and then continue doing the same every three hours (day and night) to prevent my milk supply from drying up. I cannot tell you what a failure I felt like in those first few days, firstly for not being able to keep my son safe where he should have been, then for being unable to make my body do what it needed to do to keep him alive.

Finally bringing him home was a shock of another kind, bringing with it the endless cycle of feeding, cleaning, changing nappies and interminable nursery rhymes. Spending an hour getting ready to leave the house, then waiting at the bus stop for 20 minutes before deciding it was all too much and heading back home. Suffering through baby groups wondering why my son couldn’t enjoy them like the others, why he screamed all the way through mother-and-baby yoga when all the other babies were happily occupying themselves while the zen mums smiled beatifically. And then going back to work, functioning on a few hours of broken sleep, feeling like I was failing at this aspect of my life too, even while my rational brain knew I was just trying my best.

To be a mother is to live with constant guilt. Guilt for never doing enough, for not being the perfect mother or anticipating their every need. Guilt for not “having it all”, for not performing as well as you feel is expected of you at work, for putting your family first. And guilt for neglecting other relationships: friends, partners, family members. For letting text messages go unanswered, through sheer exhaustion or simply because there is just so much in your head all the time and something has to give. Guilt for not living up to society’s expectation of motherhood, for losing your sense of self, and for feeling guilty, so guilty, all the time.

For a long time I tried to compartmentalise my role as a mother, to not let it affect my work, to excel despite my responsibilities. But a gradual shift happened over the years. Now I understand that it’s part of me, it’s who I am, and I like the person I have become because of it. I’ve learned to let go of the guilt and embrace motherhood, making room for that part of myself without losing the rest. Not to wait for opportunities to claim back my sense of identity, but to proactively take them. Not because of some big revelation or discovery, but just time passing. I look at my son, this little person who it a part of me and yet is not me, and feel nothing but awe. To watch someone grow and change before you and form their own sense of identity, with their own thoughts, opinions and personality is nothing short of magical.

Now my 10-year-old son stands on the cusp of adolescence, bringing with it a whole new set of daunting challenges. I hope I can help him navigate this strange new world. And I hope that when missteps inevitably happen, I can accept it as just part of life, and keep from letting the guilt back in.