Our realities of motherhood

Motherhood Musings: Collection 1, Volume 2

Welcome to the second piece in the first collection of Motherhood Musings series. To read volume one, click here.

This piece will explore our realities of motherhood compared to our expectations of motherhood.

If you are new to Being in Motherhood, I explore mothering, healing, breaking cycles, and learning what it means to be ourselves in motherhood. I also invite other mothers to share their words and experiences, you can learn more here.

As

Lauren Barber

so beautifully said about the first piece in this series, reading our collective words feels like sitting in circle with other mothers. I invite you to pause and take a deep breath after reading each women’s experience. There is a lot of energy moving through the experiences being shared, move as slowly as you need to metabolize it all.

Thank you Lauren for sharing the photo for this piece. Let’s start with her words about her reality of motherhood, Lauren wrote…

Even though I didn’t think I had expectations… I also simultaneously didn’t expect the cataclysmic emotional experience that Motherhood has given me. I didn’t understand the word initiation until Motherhood met me. She pulled me through a portal, chewed me up and spat me out a whole new person.  

Particularly in the early days, I was floored by the brutality of it all. Birth. Postpartum. The pain. The blood. Breastfeeding brought me to my knees and was further removed than anything I could have ever prepared for. The intensity of being needed constantly. The healing and recovery. The lostness. The crushing weight of responsibility. The grief. The mirror that my babies would hold to me. The rage that would sweep through me like a burning inferno… I didn’t understand rage until I became a Mother. 

Instead of my intuition kicking in, I felt more unsure than ever in my inner knowing. It was overruled by fear and anxiety and overthinking… googling to get answers instead of going inward like I was told would come naturally. 

And then there was the love… the way it grew each day as I got to know this little being. Not the sweet kind of love of fairy tales, but a deep, raw and earth shattering almost suffocating kind of love. The truest love.

While she needed me to care for her, I needed her to feel whole and to feel settled. I didn’t expect that. Our nervous systems intertwined and as one… in a way that made me feel magnetised to her for my own survival. 

I always question WHY people don’t tell you what is it is really like before you have a baby, but truly… I don’t think I would ever have believed, or been able to fully comprehend the vastness of it all until I was in the very depths of it.  It was all just so shocking to me. 

I completely resonate with every aspect of early motherhood feeling shocking.

I thought had been prepared for birth I ended up in an emergency c-section and it was traumatic, you can read about it here. I remember coming home and feeling frustrated. I had this little being to care for, who needed me, and I could barely move. The hospital was no help in guiding me how to heal. I felt lost and confused.

My son and I did not have that initial bonding moment right after his birth, because things went in an entirely different direction. It took months for it all to feel real, for him to feel real, to understand how much my life had changed.

I had no one to turn to for support. My family came down soon after my son was born and that added layers to the pain. My partner’s family wasn’t invested and I had no friends near by. I found, like Lauren, google and Instagram to be my friend because I had no idea what I was feeling and even if I did, I am not sure I felt safe enough to trust myself.

I think about those first few months mothering my son and it is a fog.

And I needed him the way Lauren described being needed by her daughter. I did not feel right unless I was with him. Anyone who came around told me to put him down, go take a break, etc. but I genuinely did not want to, I felt more calm and grounded when I was with him. Even in the hard moments with all different emotions moving through me, there was still a tiny bit of me that felt better being with him than away from him.

Ellie Nova

shared her experience of entering motherhood, she wrote…

My expectations did not align with my reality AT ALL.

I feel like, when I stepped up to the portal, there was a pink poster that had been cellotaped over the front with pictures of smiling babies in cute outfits and beaming mothers with I LOVE BEING A MUM emblazoned on their t shirts. And that is what I stepped through but as I did the poster ripped away and revealed that what I was actually stepping into was a huge, howling, swirling vortex into the underworld. Where I would quest - just like a hero from a myth - and meet monsters and climb sharp mountains and swim through icy rivers, all while carrying my baby. And that through this initiation, after years - not weeks or months, as I had been told - I would finally emerge, battle-scarred, blinking in the sun, carrying my now toddler in my arms, finally starting to make sense of what had happened. The poster blew away on the wind; a piece of propaganda I had so willingly believed.

I had no idea that I would be woken 1 - 2 hours a night, every night, until we finally night weaned my son when he was 2.5. I had no idea what that level of sustained broken sleep would do to my mental health and my capabilities. That it would make it IMPOSSIBLE to work or even do tasks that previously were easy - like planning and cooking dinner. That it would fill me with endless rage and fury at the injustice of it - how unseen it was. Would leave me incredulous. In shock.

I had no idea that babies who are exclusively breastfed generally do not 'self-wean' at a year, or two years, or three years, with no trouble. I am still breastfeeding my 3.5 year old and he is showing absolutely no signs of wanting to stop.

I want to pause here because those nights of being woken up every 1-2 hours are still my normal. I tried to night-wean a month ago, and two weeks in I was so fried from my child crying and screaming every time he woke, I had to stop.

We tend to overlook other’s journey’s when they are different than ours, I find sometimes I feel the most unseen by other’s mothers who journeys are different than mine. I have had people tell me to just stop, I have had people judge me, I have heard all sorts of things about choice to breastfeed and continue to breastfeed my son. And regardless of the input, I had to listen to what I felt, it was not time.

I find with babies, toddlers who have trouble sleeping, it is dismissed by others whose children sleep more regularly. I had multiple people tell me he’s a bad sleeper. What does that even mean and where does that leave me?

He is a kid who needs a lot of comfort to sleep, it is exhausting, but as my therapist tells me often, he is not going to be nurse when he is 8 years old. This is going to end at some point, preferably without the exhausting resistance to the change.

Sleep was not only hard for me and Ellie,

Sarina Zoe

also mentioned sleep in her reality of motherhood.

The first year was utterly brutal. My daughter barely slept in the day let alone at night. My nervous system was wrecked and I felt so disconnected from nature, my intuition, the subtle realms, of course there was slowness, but without the gentleness that slowness often brings. So I faced some intense resistance in myself and resentment about it being so tough.

My poor nervous system, and probably ever mother’s nervous system in the early days, was completely out of whack. I remember thinking I would be relaxed after having a baby. I was wrong, but never in my life had I felt so anxious, which is saying a lot for someone with a history of trauma and anxiety. I had no idea how to begin to calm down or talk care of myself. Probably because motherhood was like nothing I had ever experienced. Like Ellie beautifully wrote…

Motherhood was not, in ANY WAY, like having 'my life plus a child'. As if I'd just acquired a new coat or a low maintenance pet. That, actually, our whole lives completely and utterly changed beyond all recognition. That our identities, the way we related to ourselves, to each other, to the world, would change. That the intensity of caring for a child requires endurance like nothing I had every experienced before.

That the first few years would mean meeting the shadows and edges of myself. Realising that the system is fucked. That mothers aren't valued. That I had internalised the beliefs that motherhood isn't valuable, not 'proper' work. That it's mostly easy and often boring and certainly doesn't need to affect your life that much. That capitalist patriarchy has created an individualistic money and productivity driven society where slow, nurturing, motherhood cannot exist without suffering and sacrifice.

That I would fall utterly in love with my son and feel I lost my husband. And feel so much grief and shame for that. That I would look at our wedding photos, smiling, so in love and think: 'who are those people? They are from another world that I have long forgotten.'

That there would be - and are SO many wonderful beautiful sweet moments I am so utterly grateful for AND ALSO I still feel utter exhaustion. And that the cute smile or words don't make me feel like 'it's all worth it'. It doesn't feel like that. What it feels like is: Oh, this is such a lovely time, walking through the woods with my son. AND I am utterly exhausted and I long for a break and I want to scream and I want to cry and I want to laugh and fall apart and throw myself on the ground and grieve and feel and be held and - I can't. I must keep going.

Samuel Beckett wrote: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.' That, for me, sums up much of what I've experienced of early motherhood.

It hurts to admit my son’s smile does not make it all worth it. I feel a bit like I fail as a mother when I say that. I should be able to revel in the joy of his sheer being, but I don’t have those moments often because right next to any joy is grief, pain, hurt, etc. There is this idea that our children’s presence should make the hard go away and it simply does not. Ellie put it perfectly, I am enjoying my experience with him and hold a host of other feelings at the same time.

When I think about my early days of motherhood is quite painful for me. I was lost, I was disassociated, I did not feel much of anything but when I did, I felt afraid. Anxiety was my main state of being. I couldn’t take care of myself, I couldn’t rest, all I could do was think about keeping my son alive.

I badly wanted a different reality. I thought I prepared to have a calm recovery, but then I had an emergency c-section. I thought the family coming to visit would relieve a burden, but it added to my stresses. I thought becoming a mother would feel natural and easy, I thought I would be calm, intuitive, and wise. I did not know I had to learn to be those things in my own body, for myself, before I could share them with my son.

I resonate with

Eva Lydon

’s reality of motherhood, because the practical aspects did feel easy and manageable. Eva wrote…

I was very organised and found the practical stuff easy... like bathing, changing, dressing, routines, bottles, packing a bag to go out, getting out and about to playgroups etc... meeting other mums/nannies. I already had a support network of nannies/mums that I'd built from my nanny job, so that part was easy.

I didn't stop to think that it was maybe too much and just kept going on this weird adrenaline rush... then it hit me! It was too overwhelming, I was exhausted, in pain, questioning my every move, beating myself up if I didn't keep on top of the practical things for one day... or even one morning!! The pressure I put on myself was immense!! My inner-critic grew and became louder and louder and I became more and more depressed and angry with myself. I felt like a total failure, I was broken.

I also put immense pressure on myself, everything was heightened for the first 16 months of my son’s life. Everything felt like the end of the world. My son missing a nap would send me into a full on PTSD episode. I would shut down, I would rage, I would push my family away. I would become scary and my husband would have to move everyone away from me for their protection.

I hold a lot of shame about the mother I was at the beginning. Before I could become the mother my son needed, I had to grieve the loss of what I never had.

There are a few reasons I think those PTSD episodes became so frequent but one I am only now considering is how much my inner child(ren) needed to rage about the lack of mothering they had. Raising my son, at each stage, I have found new layers of myself and inner children who have their own stories to tell.

I thought I had done enough work before my son was born. But when I was pregnant, I started having these dreams about a small infant, always a girl, when I knew he was a boy. The infant was me. The amount of healing my infant self needed was immense, I had to grieve her pain. I also triggered her pain by forming a wildly different, loving bond with my son than I ever had with my mother.

This was the work and healing being asked of me every day as I started my motherhood journey but I dismissed it. Because my anxiety about keeping him alive was so great, I thought if I could get better at the practical aspects of mothering, the emotional aspects would disappear.

I had stories about a good mother who could do it all and tend to every need of her child. It took a long time for me to see how important tending to myself and my own hurting parts would be, for me, for my son, and my whole family.

I love what

Kaitlyn Elizabeth

shared about her reality, she wrote…

The humbling nature that I’m not better no worse at it than anyone else. I learned that wherever I go, my critic and other parts of myself are not far behind. Also, how undervalued the role is in general was/is incredibly difficult to navigate.

My inner critic was never far behind me either, nor were my inner children. Because all these parts of ourselves are seeing opportunities for healing. They see us doing things different, and I find my parts saying, “hey can you share some of that with me…the love you are giving your son that your mother withheld from us, could you please turn some of that inwards?”

I find the inner work of motherhood to be one of the most under-talked about pieces of the journey. I did not understand it before I became a mom, but then it all came rushing in and I did not know how to cope with tending to a small being AND myself. I never tended to myself before.

It was lonely, tending to this small human, feeling all these strange feelings, trying to be the best mother I could be.

I am not alone in feeling lonely, Lauren shared with us…

The hardest part was the loneliness. The bone deep loneliness that I felt even when I was surrounded by people sometimes. 

Kaitlyn also identified loneliness as a part of her reality of motherhood. She wrote…

It was lonely, I didn’t love it all the time, nor did I feel “good” at it. I felt trapped and alone and resentful. I loved my son so much and part of me wanted to throw everything into “it” whatever “it” means, but then another part was screaming to be let free.

I felt those different and sometimes warring parts. I still feel them sometimes, the part that ones to be in it, be the best mother, do all the crafts, tend to every need. And then, there is a part of me who wants to be free from the incessant needs of my small human and the constant responsibility of raising someone. The part of me that longs to be free is also the part of me that prefers a lot time alone.

Sarina shared the hardest part of her reality was…

Feeling the loss of space and time alone. I’m a 5/2 Projector in Human Design, I need A LOT of solo time to recalibrate and connect with who I am. I often found myself fantasising about going on lush retreats alone, but then of course the panic of not being with my child!

If I am honest, I often fantasize about lush retreats alone. I think about what would it be like to be alone, just me, no human needing me or my body constantly. I barely remember what life was like before I became a mother.

There is no simple way to conclude this honest sharing of our experiences. I ask you to take time to tend to yourself if this is moving anything through you. This piece took me a while to bring together because it brought up many feelings to think about those early days.

What was your reality of becoming a mother? What was the most expected part of your reality? What did you learn in time about yourself as a mother?

I am excited to share in the next post in this series about how we coped with our realities of motherhood.

Please, I invite you share your realities of motherhood or any reflections that arose while reading in the comments or by replying to this email.

Thank you to the women who contribute to this series, I am in awe of you and grateful for your vulnerability in sharing your experiences.

I invite you to share this post with other mothers who are in your community.