Myhood to Motherhood Frances Allan

Day after day my eyes burned with confusion and sleep deprivation, fear and vulnerability and LOVE, which for me turned into desperation to ensure safety and control. I wondered how I had fallen so hard from the baby Bunting ad? Why didn’t anyone tell me about these feelings of loneliness and fear? With the pressure I felt, I couldn’t even think rationally when I tried. Once all the visitors and relatives have come and gone, and when all the partners go back to work, mothers are left alone to find their way, a new way. 

Hormonal, sleep tortured and 100% responsible for the most fragile, absorbent, demanding, precious jewel and keeper of the future of the whole universe, I have no choice but to carry on. As it is only the love that I felt in my heart that could even hint at the possibility that I might get through the morning, the day, the night, the week, the month, the term, the semester, this year, these years! 

That enormous feeling that weighed on my heart was and still is love, it is not fear or anxiety it is just the most enormously intense unconditional love that will ever exist, and that new love was so unknown that it was only natural to be scared of it sometimes. With the ability to reproduce as a female mammal, I can only guess that it is perfectly normal to feel the feice instinct of a lioness with her cub. The feelings of protection for my offspring were truly feice. But in moments of quiet we can allow this little person to blinds us with their perfection completely taking control of our life, always and forever demanding their will over yours. Nothing forces you to be as present as a small child, at any moment they may wake, or express their dislike, as soon as you stop rocking, jiggling, swaying they will let you know, ripping you from your thoughts of past or future (usually what you should cook them for tea?) and ensuring our presence in their game, or the flower, the wind in the trees or the teeny steps of a ladybug. When you have nothing else to do getting caught in their wonder can be superbly glorious like basking in the sun, but sadly this natural mindfulness of a child is not looked upon so kindly in our productivity based and outcome expecting day to day of society. And when we compare the presence of our children with the expectations of our role as a player in this game of 2019 it can feel completely unachievable to allow the two mesh into your life. But even though your concerns are sincere, your sorrow has no cause. “The wise grieve not for the living or the dead” and neither should you. 

Be wise, do not grieve for the old life that appears gone for now, nor what seems like an enormous task ahead of you. Just be present with this new-found immense love, instead of being scared of this new feeling and this new life, try, just try to embrace it. Breathe deeply into to it and as you exhale, try to loosen it a little and with each breath your heart will grow bigger absorbing that love instead of trying to hold it up. Be kind to yourself, it’s a lot of feeling to endure, and carve out some quiet time for yourself to sit and breathe make it a non-negotiable part of your day. That intense feeling of love will eventually blend into your heart and it will carry you in to the next day and the next until you can look back and say I did it!  Because you have already done so much to arrive here now, and you know in your heart you can do it, you are already doing it . Push a side the fear of the unknown and step into the faith of realising this feeling is love.

This day is your part of your story, your fate. It may not be the climax of your adventure, but maybe it is? It all depends on how you view your story and how closely you look at it?!

This motherhood is part of your journey, dharma- your fate; this house, this partner, this job and these children are all perfectly scripted into your life,  right now you are exactly where you are supposed to be, but what now? Well that is up to you.

You are the Hero in your story and some days it may feel as though you are the hero walking out on the battlefield, and even though you refuse to take any part in the madness, that is your life. On Those days you must dig deep and muster up all strength you have to take on this day this mission.

Even though these ideas hope to take the battle out of everyday mothering, sometimes it feels like a war. It's never a war against our children, not ever! They are irreplaceably precious and perfect in every-way exactly the way they are, but its motherhood in 2019 that is our battle. Nowadays, motherhood is literally and medically too much, postnatal depression rates and anxiety are at an all-time high and expectations seem to suck the joy out of the most amazing times in our life as a mother.

As our story’s Hero dauntingly looks over the armies that have come to fight him, I am reminded of my own fragile state that was the day 4 baby blues after my first child. My limbs grew weak, my mouth dry, my body shook, and my hair stood on end, as the love hormones wore off, the sleep deprivation sets in and I was left feeling as though I was being swallowed up, but I could not drown, no, that would be too easy. I was now solely responsible for this perfect, tiny, helpless life that I had birthed. There are no "how to's' or rather too many "how to's  "and all these emotions flood in and it felt as though I was up against the biggest battle of my life.  And even though my battle is trying to cope with the emotions that want to drown me, my the natural instinct was and is to ensure my child survives and thrives.

But it is not only my emotions, it's also a lack of sleep, my own traumas, expectations, the what I thought it would be likes, and the comments people make. It's the attempted helpful advice from others, all of the books I have read, the FB posts I've seen, the fluffy duck commercials, and a big part of it is the life I have lost, my solo life, my old identity that I thought made me ME, I was drowning in the uncertainty and the fear of the future.

Even though mothering its the most natural thing in the world it seems impossible the raising of a child, to feed, nourish, educate, walk, encourage, discipline, excite, engage, direct, re-direct all against the worlds "evils" and wrong paths or choices and just like our hero I think "I can't do this, I don't want to do this, its too hard ". Where is my old life? Is mothering all worth this? The venerability! The overexposure! Someone once likened having a child to removing your heart from your chest and giving it two legs to walk around the world, without the protection of your rib cage or your sensible brain. In these first few weeks that is exactly how I felt. If anyone bumped my heart-baby, I would surely bleed out and die.

But they say easy things aren't worth doing and maybe that's one of the reasons you love your children so much even before you have met them, you have already invested so much into this little being. I couldn't imagine not having that connection (like so many mothers said they had to build and that it wasn't love at first sight and the guilt that followed them for it). I guess I was lucky I fell l so dangerously in love with both my children the second I saw them because it was that loving bond that dragged me out of bed for the 20th time in the past 40 minutes, for the 5th night in a row at 2.20 am.