Motherhood is complicated

With thanks to our member, Katie Blackwell, for this article.

A year after becoming a mother, I found myself thinking about a question I had been asked countless times:

“Are you loving being a mother?”

It sounds like such a simple question. Almost a question with only one acceptable answer.

“Yes. It’s amazing.”

But whenever I was asked, I found myself hesitating.

Because the honest answer was: it’s complicated.

And when I said that, I noticed the pause. The silence. The sense that perhaps I was supposed to correct myself, to reassure the person asking that of course I was happy, of course I loved it, of course becoming a mother was everything I had imagined it would be.

So, a year into motherhood, I wanted to answer the question honestly.

The moment my daughter was placed on my chest, I was completely in love.

I was also exhausted beyond anything I had experienced before. I had been in labour for 36 hours. I couldn't feel below my waist. I spent five days in hospital. I was in pain, vulnerable and completely dependent on other people. I had maternal sepsis and my baby and I were both being given antibiotics for the infection. I couldn't walk properly. I couldn't sit up or lift my own baby in and out of the cot beside my bed. I couldn't get clothes out of my bag. I couldn't wash without help. I remember feeling as though I had lost all my dignity. My body no longer felt like it belonged to me.

And yet, alongside all of that, I was so completely in love with my baby.

There we were: this tiny, perfect person and me, both vulnerable in different ways. She depended entirely on me, while I depended on other people just to get through the most basic parts of the day.

And somehow, in the middle of all of that, we had become a family.

That was my introduction to motherhood.

Not the polished version.

Not the version where you look beautiful holding your newborn, everything feels magical and you instinctively know what you're doing.

The real version.

Raw. Messy. Painful. Beautiful.

Motherhood is a wild ride. It is unforgiving in ways you don't expect. You become a new person, whether you are ready for that transformation or not. Your life is no longer entirely your own. Your time is no longer entirely your own. Even your thoughts can stop feeling like they belong entirely to you.

Being postpartum hurts.

Being so exhausted that you feel it deep in your bones hurts.

Not having time to yourself hurts.

Questioning whether you're doing a good enough job hurts.

Carrying the mental load of another human being every minute of every day hurts.

Hearing your baby cry and not knowing how to help them hurts.

There are so many small losses that nobody necessarily warns you about.

The freedom to leave the house without thinking about everything you need to take with you.

The freedom to sleep when you're tired.

The freedom to sit quietly and finish a thought.

The freedom to make a decision based entirely on what you want.

The feeling that your body belongs entirely to you.

And perhaps one of the strangest parts is that you can miss those things without wishing your baby wasn't there.

Because that is the contradiction nobody really talks about.

You can love motherhood and struggle with motherhood.

You can be incredibly grateful and completely exhausted.

You can feel more fulfilled than ever while simultaneously grieving parts of the person you used to be.

You can love your baby more fiercely than you knew was possible and still desperately need an hour alone.

You can feel like you've lost yourself and, at the same time, feel as though you have finally become yourself.

That is what makes motherhood so complicated.

Because, despite everything, I have also been the happiest and best version of myself since having a child.

I've never felt so close to my partner.

I've never loved so fiercely.

I've never felt more complete.

I've never smiled so much.

I've discovered a belief in myself that I didn't know I had.

And I look forward to every day.

All of these things are true.

The difficult things are true.

The beautiful things are true.

Perhaps that is what becoming a mother really is: entering a completely new life stage where everything can be true at once.

You haven't simply added a baby to the life you already had.

Your identity changes.

Your relationships change.

Your priorities change.

Your relationship with your body changes.

Your relationship with time changes.

Your understanding of love changes.

And even though you may have wanted this new life more than anything, there can still be grief for the life that came before it.

I think we sometimes struggle to acknowledge that.

We treat happiness as though it means there can be no sadness. Gratitude as though it means you aren't allowed to complain. Love as though it means everything should suddenly feel easy.

But that's not how human experience works.

A new life stage doesn't erase the person you were before.

You carry her with you.

Sometimes you miss her.

Sometimes you are relieved to have left parts of her behind.

Sometimes you discover that becoming a mother has brought out a version of yourself you didn't know existed.

And sometimes, all of those things happen in the same day.

So, when someone asks me now, “Are you loving being a mother?”, I think I understand why I struggled to answer.

Because “yes” is true.

But it isn't the whole truth.

Motherhood has been the most extraordinary, exhausting, painful, joyful, consuming and transformative experience of my life.

It has taken things from me.

It has given me things I could never have imagined.

It has changed me.

And perhaps that is what life stages are supposed to do.

They don't simply move us forward.

They ask us to let go of one version of ourselves and make space for another.

So yes, I love being a mother.

And yes, it's complicated.

I think we should be allowed to say both.

And to every mother sitting alone in the dark, rocking her baby, wondering whether everyone else is finding this easier than she is:

I see you.
I was you.
It gets better.