The 6 things mums are not allowed to say
And the price we pay for our silence
When you hear something again and again, it can make you wonder whether you might be on to something important. I am a Psychologist who works with mothers and while everyone’s story is different and the complexities of people’s lives are truly boundless, when it comes to mothers, especially new mothers, the narratives that come out in the consulting room are, maybe unsurprisingly, often very similar. There are stories of unprecedented anxiety about baby’s wellbeing; tales of resentment towards partners or other family members whose lives have not transformed as dramatically as that of a mum on maternity leave; and the eternal guilt about needing something, anything, that does not include the baby, even if it’s just a cup of tea on your own.
These are the stories mothers will tell, readily, although often with many caveats and a disclaimer of “I know I should feel grateful, but…”. They are socially acceptable, in this culture. We have accepted that mothers carry a larger load, especially in the beginning and we have normalised “mum guilt” and “mum rage” to the point that the phrases have lost any real meaning. But, when I see women for longer and we start to dig deeper into what they are struggling with, there are realities that emerge that are much more difficult to verbalise because they stand directly opposed to some of the cultural myths we still uphold around pregnancy and motherhood. They are often preceded by mums telling me that everyone else seems to feel differently. They feel alone, abnormal and shamed because what they experience seems to have no room in the mum coffee chats and walk and talks. I think it’s time we give these feelings some air to breathe:
“Pregnancy is really hard and I am not enjoying it”
I am honestly not sure where this idea of a serene and magical pregnancy has come from. It might have something to do with the notions we have about motherhood having to be almost forcefully positive. We, as an ultimately patriarchal culture cannot fathom the idea that mothers might not always enjoy motherhood. A lot of writers have taken on this subject within the last few years and I often encourage mothers to read “Matrescence” and “Mother Brain” by Lucy Jones and Chelsea Conaboy respectively, to understand our own cultural constraints and belief systems as well as the neuroscience around motherhood a bit better because this is what we are carrying around with us, whether we know about it or not.
When we look at pregnancy objectively, it is magical, yes, in the sense that women can create life and I am not sure humans really have the cognitive capacity to truly comprehend how incredible that is. But, it is also objectively terrifying, especially when, as so many women do, we go into pregnancy with the lived knowledge that not all pregnancies end with a healthy baby we get to bring home and love. Both my pregnancy experiences were frightening for me and I remember listening with envy to women who enjoyed the bond with their unborn baby, felt the joy of being pregnant. I felt neither. I was terrified because, for many reasons, I was convinced something would go terribly wrong and I would lose my baby. I didn’t allow myself to think too far into the future because I knew about the many ways in which pregnancy could end in tragedy and it wasn’t until many months after my sons were born that I allowed myself to relax.
It is understandable and very common that women do not experience pregnancy as positive. And yet we chastise ourselves when we don’t feel the “glow”, when we can’t feel the bond, when we’re instead tired, frustrated and overwhelmed because of all the things that could go wrong and all the demands on ourselves that don’t usually stop when we feel sick or in pain.
“My birth was really scary and I wish someone had told me about all the things that can go wrong”
30-45% of women in the UK experience birth as traumatic. In the UK, a lot of that has to do with difficulties and bonafide scandals in how women are treated in maternity care (despite the best efforts of a majority of incredibly caring and dedicated maternity staff). We don’t prepare women enough. I went through two rounds of antenatal classes and birth trauma was never mentioned. And I do understand why - what is the point in scaring women when they most likely won’t be able to do anything about it? Because not being prepared is half the reason women are traumatised. A lack of control, feeling not heard, powerless, dismissed - these are all experiences that can traumatise women and they are very often a common occurrence in emergency birth situations. They traumatise in many cases because women will have felt this way before and the trauma at birth solidifies beliefs women may have held already about themselves, other people or the world. And there is a lot that needs to be done to improve trauma-informed care in maternity settings. But we also don’t talk about this enough. We don’t prepare couples for the possibility of things going wrong when the reality is that women would feel a lot more agentic and empowered if they had a plan A, B, C and D, in case they have to concede to an emergency C-section rather than the water birth they were envisioning.
“I didn’t feel that rush of love when my baby was born”
Please hear me when I say this, not everyone does. Did you know that the brain pathways we need to love and take care of our babies develop over time? Yes, there are women who feel overwhelmed with joy and fall in love with their newborns instantly. But this is a new person who just entered your world. And while you might have had a chance to get to know them a little bit during pregnancy, that instantaneous bonding is not in fact what the brain is set up to do. Maybe unsurprisingly, this is a construct that is difficult to measure but what the research does tell us is that it is the act of caring for the baby that builds attachment and love. It is a developmental brain process that involves reward, attachment and threat systems, as well as many different neurotransmitters and leads to a remodelling of the brain of mother and father. It’s not something that just happens, we have to learn about our babies, their cues, their needs, who they are - and that takes time.
“The first few months of motherhood were the hardest thing I’ve ever done”
If the love and care we feel for our babies is not necessarily there from the beginning, is it any wonder that the first months of motherhood are the most stressful time some mums have ever experienced? If we really think about the experience of early motherhood from an outsiders’ perspective, if we had to explain this to an alien race, how can we possibly justify that we judge mothers who do not enjoy being screamed at daily, on no sleep, with little support, on a severe hormone crash and possibly in tremendous pain from birth or feeding issues. I did not enjoy the “newborn bubble”. I wanted to get out of it, I wished time away and I hated myself for not being grateful for my new baby. No one told me how hard this was going to be. In all fairness, I do believe we are improving as a collective in our understanding of this time period. But there is still stigma attached to the notion that you cannot cope when you are not happy about life with a newborn. Again, plenty of mothers will love this period. And plenty will not. Both are okay, both can exist at the same time. We are improving in showing empathy to new mothers, we are more understanding of the fact that sleep deprivation which is tantamount to torture and the incredible hormone shifts that come with the postpartum period can have a real and severe impact on a woman’s mood, even if she does not fall into the 4-6 % of women who are diagnosed with PTSD from birth trauma, 10-20% of women who have postpartum depression, or 10% of women who have postpartum anxiety. But we also still have a long way to go in making it okay for women to say that they are not always loving motherhood.
“I feel so angry and abandoned, where is my village?”
I recently read an article about the evolutionary purpose of menopause - creating grandmothers who can help in child-rearing. Which is to say, a lot of us are not raising our children the way nature intended us to raise them. Doing it all on your own is not the way it should be. There are voices that acknowledge this but it does not always filter through. This is not true for everyone of course, but it’s also something we don’t think about enough before having children. I know my husband and I never considered how the lack of family support would mean we wouldn’t be able to take a night off ever, that our kids were completely dependent on us to put them to bed and get them up in the morning, because we had never had the opportunity to get them used to anyone else. And the villages we can build often include other parents who are in similar situations. None of us get much time off.
“I don’t know how to work and take care of my child. No matter what I do, I always end up feeling like I’m failing.”
My son had three chest infections in the past year - which apparently is completely normal. It didn’t feel normal when I had to cancel a week’s worth of work again and again. And it felt intensely shameful to feel frustrated about this. My son needed me and I needed to be with him and I never would have wanted to be anywhere else. If I had still been employed at this point, I would have had to take several weeks of sick or carer’s leave, cancel meetings, sessions, obligations. My inability to make my family and work life work was the reason I chose to be self-employed in the end and it has simplified things for us as a family, but it means if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. No matter what I do, I’m failing at this idea of “having it all”. And I suspect I’m not alone because these are conversations I have with every client and every mum friend who has been sold the idea that it is somehow possible to have a full-time job when school finishes at 3pm, kids have 13 weeks of school holidays and younger children suffer from between 8 and 12 infections a year.
The point of this is not to complain. Or to take away from the fact that I love my family more than I thought possible. I wouldn’t do anything differently, ever. But, the point is that for many women, the realities of motherhood are stark and harsh and made immeasurably more difficult by the fact that they often feel they cannot be honest about certain aspects of their experience because there is still widespread stigma around admitting that a mother’s love doesn’t cover up all the practical and ugly realities of life. And what is ultimately the cost of all our self-censoring? Self-shaming and loneliness. Everyone’s experience is different and not everyone will agree with these six statements and that’s just as valid as someone who agrees with all of them. The point is that we need to make it okay for motherhood to be as multifaceted as any other life experience. And we need to allow the mothers around us to say what they need to say without fear of judgment. It takes a lot of strength and courage to speak our truth but we can only lead by example.
Further reading & sources
If you’d like to explore some of the research and writing behind the ideas in this piece, these are good places to start:
Matrescence by Lucy Jones
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/455728/matrescence-by-jones-lucy/9780241529710Mother Brain by Chelsea Conaboy
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/647372/mother-brain-by-chelsea-conaboy/Birth Trauma Association
https://www.birthtraumaassociation.org.uk
Ockenden Review (2022)
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-of-the-ockenden-reviewRoyal College of Psychiatrists – Perinatal mental health
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/problems-disorders/postnatal-depression