Musing submission: On expectation

I have always been into books. Not the ‘I just love a good murder mystery/whimsical romance/coming of age/my life’s story’ kind of book, but books about ideas. I don’t get caught up in characters in the way that an avid fiction reader might, I get enthralled and whisked away by reading about the psychology of people. Of relationships, behaviour and thinking. Of thinking about thinking. I have a stack of folders with papers, articles and clippings collected over the years that I form references and reflections that I can dip into when I want to revisit an idea or finding. As I am so inclined, I had done a lot of reading, collecting, researching and thinking about ‘having a baby’ and ‘raising a child’ whilst I was pregnant. Okay, it was actually well before then. With a background in education, I was always reading current literature into aspects of the psychological; the psycho-social; the socio-cultural and any other double barrelled variations on the like. Equipped then, with this philosophical, ideological literary arsenal, I had honed fairly specific thoughts and ideas on how I wanted to ‘do’ being a mother and fairly specific expectations on how I would ‘be’ as a mother.

In his engaging series of musings on the psychology of travel, modern philosopher Alain de Botton reflects on the glittering allure of the holiday brochure to would-be holiday-makers. Of gently swaying palm trees on impossibly white sand and candy-coloured cocktails served in bars in pools and the like. The carefree awaits. Yes, you think. You can envisage yourself right there, effortlessly perched on a warm deck chair by the pool, your wet hair, casually, yet elegantly pinned back behind your Bulgari sunglasses. This escape from your current daily grind a mere plane flight away. The decision is made, the holiday booked. A new bikini and a bottle of St Tropez are all that stand between you, and the you about to land in that brochure itself.

de Botton reflects that it doesn’t occur to the holiday-maker that you would have to take you with you. That you have indeed taken you with you, becomes apparent fairly soon into your holiday. The you whose hair never manages to look effortlessly chic when wet. The you who finds too much sun quite irritating. The you who gets anxious at the thought of paying for overpriced food when abroad. The you who left your bikini at home. The ‘you’ with your usual aversions, tendencies, shortcomings and challenges.

Having found myself at destination ‘mum’ this past year, my biggest challenge has been me. That is, reconciling what I thought I ‘would be like’ as a mum with the reality of who I am as a mum. As de Botton would put it, I forgot that I would have to bring me with me. I had intended to be calm, relaxed and even keeled. A real mother earth. Softly spoken and smelling of roses. Serene. Recently I shared these thoughts with a friend. I was glad that I had. In the early days of being a new mum, she described through tears to her husband her disappointment with her expectations of how she would ‘be’ as a mother, with how she actually was as a mother. He laughed. She shared with me that he had gently reminded her that she had never in fact been serene. And that after broken sleep and experiencing both the highs of joy and the depths of self-doubt at this new stage of life, she was probably less likely then ever to be serene. He wasn’t being rude or unsupportive, and she hadn’t take it that way either. The comment came from knowing his wife’s character. Her make-up. Her tendencies and ways of being. Her strengths and her vulnerabilities.

I have never been calm, relaxed and even keeled. I aspire to be and work towards arriving at that place through intentional and practical ways. But I am more analytical, pedantic and intense than calm, relaxed and even keel. What I am learning is that how I ‘do’ being a mother stems from who I am as a person, from my distinctiveness and my character. From how I understand and view people and relationships. The archetypal images of motherhood, and the philosophical, psychological and ideological frameworks I developed before and during the time I carried my child have helped to form preferences, but they do not form the ‘me’ that I actually am. As a mother, there is still the ‘me’ that needed refining (okay, read ‘sanding back with a robust grade of sandpaper’) before I met my little person and therefore continues to need refining. But there is also the me that I want to take with me.

Amanda Kelshaw.

Musing submission: On beginning

It was fathers’ day. We were at my parents’ for a family lunch and my aunt was there with her baby niece who was in her care. My aunt is with babies the way most women are with handbags: so naturally drawn to them she tends to tuck them under her arm without another thought. I was with babies the way most men are with handbags: disinterested and slightly uncomfortable holding one. The niece was a genial little thing and was passed around to pretty much everyone except myself and my grandfather (who I appeared to have inherited my attitude toward babies from). When my husband held her the usual jokes about how good he looked with a baby went around. But I didn’t laugh, instead finding myself distracted and slightly disturbed by the way a sour feeling in my stomach was putting me off dessert. I never refuse dessert.

The next day I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor in tears, holding a pregnancy test: a little white stick with more pink lines on it than I was prepared for. The moment I discovered I was pregnant I was not filled with joy, I was filled with fear.

I was having what my father commonly refers to as an ‘Oh Sh*t’ moment. He coined the term during his career as a university academic, when he would commonly come across students cowering in the realisation that a semester of beer drinking at the student bar didn’t equate with a pass. Similarly, as I was sitting on the bathroom floor I was realising that saying ‘but a baby might come’ whilst removing my husband’s clothing didn’t equate to contraception. I was not prepared for a baby.

But how do you prepare?

Do you ‘borrow a baby’ as one baby manual I read suggested?

Do you attend the babes-in-arms sessions at the local cinema and observe mums whilst they simultaneously wrangle their maternity bra, deal with a baby who is not shy about making their displeasure with the situation known and attempt to follow a complex narrative as it unfolds on screen?

Do you ask a friend with a baby for an honest assessment?

I didn’t. I didn’t want to know.

Surely there are people out there who are far more prepared for dealing with the chaos and unpredictability a baby brings than I was. People with younger siblings, or lots of cousins, or degrees in early childhood. I had held a baby twice before my son was born. But would my experience of first-time motherhood be any different if I was the eldest of eight? Would it make a difference if I had a clearer picture of what life with a baby is like before I jumped in? (Okay, maybe jumped isn’t the right word.) Would it have helped when I stood paralysed with uncertainty and anxiety over the change table while my baby screamed? Maybe. Maybe the screaming wouldn’t have bothered me so much.

I spent most of the first six months of my son’s life with a baby manual in hand, reading and re-reading in the hope that I would find some clear instruction on what to do with the baby. People kept saying I should follow my instincts. My instinct was to run.

The time that I wasn’t spending reading the baby manual I spent mourning the life that I had lost. I don’t mean things like late nights out with friends or doing with my weekends whatever I wanted. I mean taking a shower regularly or brushing my teeth at least once a day. Then I felt horribly guilty and ungrateful; I had a healthy baby, I hadn’t had a single miscarriage before his conception. So I kept quiet.

Of all the advice, information and instruction that I sought, the most useful came from a social worker at the acute mental-health crisis team after it was well and truly confirmed that I had postnatal depression. ‘This is the hardest thing you will ever do,’ she said to me. ‘It’s going to get better.’

She was right.

Claire Zorn.