What is motherhood?

Before I had Maya, I had an image of motherhood that involved a lot of cuddling, co-dependence, good conversations, and love.  I believed that it would be love that is irreplaceable and indescribable.  I imagined that I would birth my child, feel a rush of goosebumps because I’m so overwhelmed by the emotions, then I would be changed.  Suddenly I would become a mother, and motherhood would properly begin, and it would all be new and fresh.

Maya is 10 weeks tomorrow, and I’m still waiting on those goosebumps.

Motherhood has started – that’s undeniable.  It started with that positive pregnancy test.  It started with the previous pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage.  Motherhood is a concept, a thought, and an uncontrollable bubble filled with imagined images.  Motherhood, in a way, isn’t real.  Or so that’s how I feel.  I feel like everything I had been feeling about motherhood before I gave birth to Maya isn’t real, because I haven’t been able to put any colour in those imagined images.

Ever since Maya was born, I’ve been trying to give her the best care.  The best in terms of feeding, sleeping, pooping, peeing, cleaning.  That’s what motherhood has proven to be so far – seeing pediatricians, seeing lactation consultants, crying over breastfeeding issues, struggling to get her to sleep, getting nervous about not wiping her bum and vagina well enough, worrying that she has diarrhea, freaking out about rashes, hitting maximum stress level when filing her nails…In other words, I have spent hours and hours and hours and hours feeling not good about physiological issues.  It’s difficult to admit this, but when I look back on the past 10 weeks, I can’t find the good memories.  It’s hard to go straight to that warm wave of happiness I thought I would feel as a mother thinking about her child.  Instead, my mind is filled with inadequacies and failures.

But when I pull up a photo of Maya on my phone, I just want to hold her.

So what is motherhood?

I’ve come to understand that motherhood isn’t about me.  To be more precise, motherhood is only about me to the extent that I need to learn to be the best version of myself for my child.  So much in childcare talk is reflective of parents, and I think in the midst of it all I lost touch with what I’m doing.  Breastfeeding especially is a convoluted topic.  There’s just too much out there about breastfeeding, and too much that makes mothers feel inadequate if she is not able to provide her child with all the breastmilk her child needs.  All that pressure is phrased as doing what’s best for the child, but so much of it has turned into ‘successful’ breastfeeding and ‘unsuccessful’ breastfeeding.  Somehow, motherhood can be successful, or not successful.  Of course there are good parents and bad parents, anchored in good parenting or bad parenting – but I think that’s different, because good and bad parenting are generally made up of choices, rather than physiological things.  Infant childcare is so heavily physiological that ‘good’ or ‘bad’ just shouldn’t apply.  If your baby can’t transfer milk, is it your fault?  Did you choose to give your child a diaper rash, or diarrhea?  If your baby is crying uncontrollably because of gas, is that something you brought into existence?  I’ve blamed myself for everything, but I am realising that I have not actually been the reason for the difficulties and issues in caring for Maya over the past 10 weeks.  I did not cause breastfeeding issues, that’s for sure.  It’s not about me.

So what I’m saying is I have learnt (and am still learning) that motherhood is not about my success or failure.  Those terms just aren’t relevant.  I’ve been trying so hard to ‘do well’ for Maya that I have more often than not forgotten about Maya, and have filled my mind with my own issues.  Motherhood isn’t a feeling, it’s effort – it’s learning how to best deal with your issues, so that you can be there for your child.

To me this does not mean shutting yourself out and filling your entire existence with your child’s needs – instead it means becoming wiser so that you are not drowning yourself in your own baggage, leaving your child with a mess.  If that means taking an afternoon off guilt-free to write this, leaving your child at home with your parents, then that’s wisdom and growth that’ll make you a better mother than you were yesterday.

I hope all this will one day be part of the good conversations I’m sure I will have with Maya.