The Cold, Hard, Beautiful Truth about Motherhood…(An Ode to The Mother)
Three years ago I had my son, Asa. To say that becoming a mother, rocked my world is an understatement.
Before getting pregnant I identified as a strong, capable, confident, and ambitious woman. After a 10 year career in television production, I started my own business as a Female Empowerment Coach helping women achieve their greatest desires.
I worked hard to connect to the truth of who I was so I could walk the talk. I meditated, went to sound baths, became a Reiki master, and I worked on myself and my emotions daily. If you’d have asked anyone who knew me, I knew myself well and I was strong of character.
When I got pregnant, I was so excited for this next chapter of my life. I was positive about birth, I did my Hypnobirthing practices, I meditated and I tuned into my body and my baby daily. I was ready.
I could never have imagined what was about to happen could happen.
It all began the day I went into labour.
It started well, my waters had broken a few hours before my surges began and I was feeling into my body and knew exactly what was happening. Each surge came and went without any real problem. I was excited. He was coming.
My labour ebbed and flowed, stopping and starting, which is totally normal, but because my waters had broken I’d been asked to go to the hospital for risk of infection.
In my heart I knew it wasn’t what I needed to do. I went against my better judgment and subscribed to the fear that had been planted in me by the incessant worry and lack of trust in my ability from my medical care professionals.
Once I was at the hospital, I went from being confident and able to manage my surges, to scared, anxious and in excruciating pain, all within the space of a short conversation.
“Unless you have an induction, you are putting your child in grave danger.” said the bullish, female obstetrician.
“Well what does that mean? Give me specifics. What are the pros and cons of me having an induction?” I said, scared.
“He could have lung problems, organ failure and potentially die.” She said sternly whilst checking boxes off on her clipboard.
My stomach churned. Those are the words no mother wants to hear. EVER.
In that moment, everything changed for me. Everything.
“OK, I’ll do it”, I said, going against everything in my body telling me I didn’t need to do this.
I expected to go into induction right there and then, considering I was already past the critical 24 hour point, and as she said, my baby was in grave danger. But no, I was left waiting in that curtained off bed area in an open ward for 12 hours.
TWELVE HOURS.
I wasn’t allowed to go home. I was alone, with just my partner asleep in the chair and no midwife to support me.
Because I was a ball of fear and anxiety, and all I could think was that my baby was going to die because the induction wasn’t happening yet, my body reacted by clenching shut out of fear which made my surges excruciatingly painful. Needless to say all my calming techniques had gone out the window.
This was a matter of life and death.
12 hours later when the day shift midwife had come back on her shift and realised I was still there she was mortified and immediately got me into an induction room.
She was my angel.
Now in the room, an epidural was administered, the induction began, and a cascade of intervention followed. Throughout, my voice was never heard, so I just left my body. I let them do what they needed to do and I checked out.
My sense of self had fractured. I was traumatised and left abandoned.
I managed to birth a healthy baby, everyone was happy, even me for a brief moment, and then we were sent home.
That’s where the all unravelling began.
For the next 12 months, every day, I sank deeper and deeper into a depression. The constant narrative in my mind reminded me of how useless I was.
How I hadn’t even managed to listen to myself and go home when I knew it’d all be ok.
How I’d let myself down by letting that female doctor talk to me in that way.
How I’d let them treat me like a piece of meat pulling my baby from my motionless body.
I hated myself. I was worthless. Who was I to mother this baby? He deserved so much better.
I couldn’t bare to be with myself. I wanted to pull my hair out, scratch my face off, smash my head against a brick wall repeatedly. I was scum.
I developed postpartum anxiety, I was constantly on high alert, worrying about people dying and bad things happening. I was snappy and vicious and at times if Asa wouldn’t stop crying, I’d scream and shout at him to stop, in floods of tears.
I struggled with breastfeeding and that just added fuel to the fire.
“What kind of woman can’t even manage to feed her child? That’s my one job here sat in this godforsaken house all day with just my miserable thoughts and I can’t even do that.”
I was in the darkest place I have ever found myself in.
This of course impacted my relationship. Every time we spoke we ended up screaming at each other. I hated him almost as much as I hated myself. I resented him. I couldn’t bare to look at him or have him around. I always wanted to be by myself. I never asked for or accepted help. I was punishing myself.
That’s when the suicidal thoughts started to creep in.
“Everyone would be better off without me. I’m worthless. I’m a drain. My child deserves more. My partner hates me. I hate myself.”
I’d dig my nails in so hard into my wrists that I’d start to bleed. I’d cry and cry and cry and cry. I couldn’t look at myself. I didn’t recognise myself. Who the fuck had I become?
All of this was happening in secret. No one knew. Except for my partner, but even he didn’t know the full extent of it.
Out of the house I’d put a fake smile on and I’d drag my heavy self to a baby class and go slowly mad, singing “Wheels on the Bus” and “If You’re Happy & You Know It” before dragging myself back home again and shutting myself down.
After a year of this sick game, I started to realise that this wasn’t right. That what had happened to me wasn’t right, and that how I was being and what I was modelling to my son could potentially be fucking him up for life, so I began my healing process.
At the very start, I didn’t consciously realise that this was what was happening.
I started following birth trauma specialists and other mothers who had gone through similar things on social media and I started to learn more and more about this process of birth and becoming a mother.
I trained as a hypnobirthing practitioner and I created my own course that combined all my coaching, NLP and mindset work along with the hypnobirthing in the hope that I could stop other women from suffering the way I did. I empowered women to trust their instincts and educated them on birth trauma and the best ways to avoid it.
I trained as a postnatal doula and supported women at home after birth but my focus was heavily on their mental and emotional wellbeing. They knew how to change a bloody nappy for fucks sake what they didn’t know was what was happening to them as a human being.
To think now that in the midst of having PND, anxiety, and birth & breastfeeding trauma, that I was able to show up, start a business and support women, is mind blowing. Especially when I think about who I was in private. I was a woman possessed. I still hated myself so much, it’s a miracle I could wake up everyday and live.
All I can say is that now, looking back, something bigger than me was carrying me through. Somewhere deep inside, my light kept shining and it kept me on the straight and narrow. Thank fuck for that. That’s all I can say.
18 months down the line and I was struggling to be a woman, mother, and now I’d added entrepreneur to the list. I don’t know why I chose to add more pain and stress to my life by trying to keep a business afloat but I was being driven by something.
I was so good at what I did, and I supported so many women and changed their experiences for the better, but I now had the added narrative that I wasn’t good enough to be a business owner in mind so I self sabotaged it all by not selling myself, not believing in myself, not backing myself and in short stopping it all dead in its tracks just as it was about to take off.
It was then that I realised I needed help. I committed to months and months of therapy in various forms; conventional, NLP, CBT, energy healing, kinesiology, homeopathy, I started using supplements, plant medicine, read every book about birth and maternal mental health under the sun …you name it, I tried it and slowly I started to build myself back up.
I started to hear my inner voice again. That soft sweet voice that always had my back, and She guided me back to me.
Since having that realisation that I needed to get help, I have realised so many things.
Firstly I’ve been able to make peace with what happened to me.
I’ve accepted that through what happened I’ve learned some big lessons and those lessons serve me now greatly not only as a woman and mother but as a coach supporting women going through what I went through.
It opened my eyes to the injustices happening in the birthing world. It’s shocking but true to say that women are being disempowered in birth every minute of the day and it’s a travesty. What women are going through is nothing short of abuse and it shocks me that as a society we still allow it. Even as we witness the correlation between heavily medicalised birth and women suffering with maternal mental health disorders, we turn a blind eye to the truth. Because the truth hurts, and no one is responsible enough to say enough is enough.
Then on top of that, we add fuel to the fire by having little to no understanding of the transition to motherhood. We’ve lost sight of its intricacies and its true nature, so we are giving women literally no support in how to navigate through such a monumental time in their lives.
Transformation, by its very nature can be hard, but when we are taught to shame our feelings, hide from our truth, and follow the crowd in turning a blind eye, we’ve got no hope in hell of coming out the other side unscathed.
Add to that the pressure of getting your body back/going back to work/juggling life, work and motherhood/being everything to everyone and nothing to yourself, you have a recipe for disaster.
Women are suppressed in society, they are suppressed in birth and they are suppressed in motherhood. How we expect them to come out of it all singing and dancing and thanking their lucky stars that they have a beautiful, healthy baby is beyond me.
No wonder suicide is the leading cause of death in mothers in the first 12 months of motherhood.
I’ve held myself back for far too long about all of this. Mainly because I feared I’d be judged and the shame was too great, but also because I’d seen evidence of people shutting down and running as soon as anything with any negative connotations were implied about birth or motherhood. We’ve done the very British thing of putting a brave face on it all, and that is that.
What we can’t hear won’t affect us right?
Wrong.
What our society is failing to realise, is that these women who are becoming mothers under these circumstances, which is ALL mothers by the way, (and don’t get me started on the even bigger struggle of women of colour in these circumstances), are the guardians and nurturers of the next generation. The role models to the people who will be leading the world as we grow old. Is it not our responsibility that these children, this next generation, have strong and empowered mothers as an example of how to move through the world? Is that not a basic responsibility of our society?
The amount of shame that’s draped around birth and motherhood is immense and it’s that shame that keeps many women silenced.
I want you to know, that there is NO shame whatsoever attached to what you have gone through or what you are going through concerning your birth and transition to motherhood. It’s not your fault. You’re a victim of a misguided society and things are going to change. Things are changing.
There is a different way.
For me, opening up and sharing my story and my insights into the birth and motherhood world, aren’t about being sensationalist, and they are definitely not a knee jerk reaction to how I was treated.
I’m not being hysterical, a victim or a drama queen.
I am doing it because it’s time to change how women are being treated every single day, and we can only make changes when we see the truth of what is happening.
Yes, the truth hurts, but we still have to have courage and hear it.
I have had people tell me that what I say is damaging because its so negative, and what I say to that is that they are obviously coming from the wrong perspective.
There is nothing but positivity and expansiveness coming from my perspective on all of this. I can see how this can all be different, and it doesn’t take much.
So when I tell you about my story, it’s to say, don’t let this happen to you. There is another way. That way is by trusting yourself, your instincts, your immense ability as a woman to birth and care for your baby. It’s to say, there is support on navigating motherhood, there is no shame in seeking it. We’re supposed to reach out and ask for help. The call will be answered. We’re allowed to feel dark and down. We’re shedding a complete identity and creating a new one for fucks sake, all whilst keeping a tiny human alive.
I’m done with being silenced and I’m not afraid or ashamed anymore. There is another way, and that is one where women are seen and respected for who we truly are. Where our grace and strength is honoured every day.
We are warriors. Our resilience is second to none.
Imagine how we could feel and move through the world if we were supported to tap into our fullest potential as women, as mothers, and as leaders of the new generation?
We’d be unstoppable.
(And maybe that’s the problem 😉…but that’s a feminist story for another day.)
