Reflection

20 June 2020

Rarely does life present such a halt to the daily rush as maternity leave – those first “six months” after delivering your newborn. While the body is busy breastfeeding, dipering and hushing, the mind finds itself alone in an echo chamber of lonely housewifery, baby monologues, and nightly feeds when the world is asleep.

I am sure there is an online motherhood subculture – endless maternity forums where new mothers lose themselves on moonless nights, scrolling through poorly grammared posts about regurgitated topics, because it feels so good to dwell on the one topic that occupies your mind to the exclusion of all others: your newborn.

The first six months are beautiful. Romantic. Waking up next to a perfectly formed new creature, cupping his perfectly round head with the silky furry tufts of hair, smelling the milk on his cheeks, brushing past his wriggling clenched wrists, meeting his huge dark blue puppy eyes that stare into your soul, and bringing his tiny lips to the desperately needed nipple… every day falling in love more and more. Waking up next to him is so nice, in fact, that you’re glad to do it seven times in the night.

Well, not quite. Nothing can prepare you for motherhood, and you’re never “truly ready” to have a child because you cannot underestimate how difficult and different it is going to be to change your lifestyle. But change it you do. Are the first six months hard? Oh yes. Now, best we get that out of our system and list the ways in which it is hard with a word map.

[Word map]

There, now that we have that out of the way, we can focus entirely on all the good stuff. Much has been said about the tribulations and triumphs of mothers, losing yourself and rediscovering the nurturing, strong mama inside, the superhero mum, the imperfect mum who keeps trying, and whose entire world has been shaken to the core, #earthmother! However, I think that there is a different element to this that often gets overlooked. This site focuses on the beautiful moments of early parenthood – the beauty of pregnancy, delivery, and the first six months of baby rearing.

At 18, I had just started university and looked forward blissfully to a glamorous, self-actualising career. I spent a weekend with a close school friend; a lebanese girl who won prizes in debating, had a talent for business and commerce, and who was the most social and loved girl in our class – our school captain, in fact.

She was my inspiration for a career in business, and I thought she would go on to be a great career woman. Instead, she got married, became a devoute Muslim, gave everything up, covered up, and got knocked up. That weekend she recounted her birthing experience.

It was not a gruesome story.

It was a detailed account of how her body had grown all 18 years for this one moment, how during the painful labour and delivery she focused on the miracle that her muscles all contracted and laboured to push out the baby. It was the most beautifully told story that I had ever heard.

I lost contact with this friend not long after we parted, but her story remained on my mind. It would be another 18 years before I, myself, became pregnant. Because of the impression her story had made on my mind, I had expected pregnancy to be miraculously pleasant, like something for which I had trained my entire life, despite the fact that I had previously seen myself as a career-driven woman obsessed about management consulting and investment banking. I expected pregnancy to be the answer to everything. And it was.

It was the best experience of my life, and my body showed it.