I’m now a decade into motherhood. Phew. I made it and while there was one incident which involved my baby falling out of the pram, no-one was harmed. While those blurry days of newborn life might be a distant memory and I now mostly sleep through the night, I still remember those first few months after I became a mother for the very first time. Mostly, I still remember how unprepared I felt.
You see, as I quickly realised, there is nothing that can prepare you for new motherhood. It’s the hardest competition of your life, where no one wins and everyone feels they have the right to mark you on your performance.
You can’t go to university to become a good mother. It doesn’t matter what grades you got at school. How smart you were. Or sporty. We’re all in the club, left feeling rather perplexed by our firstborn.
I should add that there’s also no good or bad way to mother. The only thing that helps is laughing at yourself, and others, constantly. Humour will be your most wonderful tonic, closely followed by gin.
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I was the kind of person who had yearned for a baby her entire life. Because of this, I’d imagined I’d be quite good at it, simply because I’d wanted it so much.
I was the kind of woman who loved holding other people’s babies. Who screamed with excitement when someone told me they were pregnant.
When my firstborn Arabella arrived and my eyes were opened to the shocking reality of sore nipples, sodden nappies and puffy eyes, I was left with the realisation that all of it was so much more complicated than I’d imagined.
Well-meaning women on the street would stop and tell me to enjoy every moment, because it goes so fast. But I felt stuck in time, unable to move. Nothing was going fast. I just wanted to sleep.
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Often, we spend so much time organising the first, second and third trimesters, that we forget about the fourth trimester – the one between birth and 12 weeks – which is perhaps the most important of all. It’s the one where you meet the person you’ve been carrying around for nine months (seven in my case – both my girls were premature).
As British writer Pandora Sykes once said, ‘The “baby bubble” is not just a term; it is a physical and biological necessity.’ It’s the trimester where we’re introduced to our new life and co-worker (the baby), without any training or guidance, and left to get on with it.
I began to fear going to bed, knowing what was ahead of me. I’d often be so close to drifting off, so close to the utopia of sleep, only to hear a little stirring in the bassinet.
Georgie Abay
In those early days, because my baby had shocking reflux and didn’t sleep, I began to fear going to bed, knowing what was ahead of me. I’d often be so close to drifting off, so close to the utopia of sleep, only to hear a little stirring in the bassinet.
I’d ignore it, pleading with her to just sleep. The murmur would get louder and louder, until there was no choice but to get up and settle her.
Sometimes, it had only been 20 minutes since we’d last repeated this routine. It was easier just not to go to sleep. To stay awake until 6am. It was only then we’d both crash and finally sleep for a couple of hours.
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Looking back, the post-partum period was like one big blurry hangover, only there was no party and I’d been sober for months.
I don’t think I ever thrived during the first year of motherhood. I just tried to survive. I felt constantly jetlagged and like I was losing my mind, all the while pretending I was okay.
The old me wanted to dress up in nice clothes without fear of avocado being catapulted across the room at me – how had the kitchen turned into a war zone where I was the unarmed target and the assassin was a pint-sized baby?
Georgie Abay
We don’t like to talk about how hard it is becoming a mother for the first time. Or the second. Or the third.
This lack of awareness around not only the fourth trimester, but also the first year of motherhood, was one of the reasons the old me and the new me struggled to get along. It was like a long, bad first date. They had nothing in common. The chat was awkward. The old me couldn’t believe the underwear the new me was wearing. The old me wanted to dress up in nice clothes without fear of avocado being catapulted across the room at me – how had the kitchen turned into a war zone where I was the unarmed target and the assassin was a pint-sized baby? The new me was grappling with an identity crisis. The enormous skin-coloured underwear didn’t help.
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What I wasn’t prepared for, as I hopped aboard the mothership armed with a fail-proof plan of my new life, was just how raw and open motherhood leaves you.
As clichéd as it may sound, motherhood irreversibly changes you – and it changed me more than I can ever possibly describe.
Sykes pointed out to me that yes, it’s a cliché, but ‘clichés are clichés for a reason. I didn’t realise how much motherhood would change not just my life, but my own self, at a completely fundamental level. It colours absolutely everything – from logistics to love.’
It does colour every aspect of your life, like permanent markers that never come out in the wash, no matter how hard you scrub.
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What did I learn? Ultimately, we cannot plan what becoming a mother for the first time looks like, and some paths feel deeply unfair, while others appear annoyingly effortless (the babies who sleep through the night from week one, I’m talking to you).
When social media feels overwhelming, turn off the noise. When you feel you’re at breaking point, get help. When you feel lonely, call a friend. I know to imply it is all this simple is naive, and privilege makes motherhood a very different narrative, but just knowing that being a parent has a plan of its own that we can’t control and that nothing lasts forever, for me, has always been hugely comforting.
I did make it through my first year of motherhood. And second. And third. I’m still climbing up and down Everest most days. All I know is that motherhood has been the making of me. It has gifted me the greatest two loves of my life. And the best bit? It keeps getting better.
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