MATERNAL MENTAL HEALTH YOU ARE NOT ALONE
The Vulnerability of first time Motherhood
Nothing has ever made me feel as amazingly empowered as motherhood, and nothing has ever made me feel so brutally vulnerable too.
Parenthood undoubtedly changes you, and – regardless of your starting-point – it changes the way you need to work on and continuously care for your mental health.
The greatest lesson I have learnt since becoming a parent – and I should add the immediate caveat that this is still very much a work-in-progress for me – is that it is so important to give yourself grace.
When I was about 4-5 days into new motherhood with my firstborn, Oliver, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably in my bed, utterly sleep-deprived and with boobs like boulders, engorged and leaking with my ‘new’ milk, one bodily fluid leaking into the next (let’s not forget the major added drain of postnatal bleeding, ladies… I had been horrified when I first saw the size of a maternity pad but soon learned to embrace the simple comfort of those massive throwaway pants!). Oliver was crying and squirming next to me in the Moses basket, and I just remember feeling so overwhelmed and thinking, ‘I can’t do this.’ I felt broken. And yet, I believed that I should have been feeling elated.
As others from my NCT group gave birth to their little ones (my husband and I were the first of the gang, with an early arrival), several of the mums shared gorgeous selfies of themselves leaving hospital or newly arrived at home, cuddling their babes with looks of adoration, seemingly bright faces and freshly styled hair. What the hell?! I remember looking at a picture of myself and Oliver that I had asked Alan to take on our first night at home with him: I was absolutely mortified by the huge shadows under my eyes, the resemblance of my hair to a bird’s nest and the expression of complete bewilderment on my face. How on earth were all these other mums able to glide into motherhood so smoothly, so glamorously, even, and yet here I was, feeling like a complete mess?
The reality of a Covid birth
Arguably, it didn’t help that we had given birth at the height of the first Covid pandemic lockdown, when we were physically isolated from family and friends. Kept away from the reality of others, I would compare myself to the picture-perfect posts of new mums on social media and feel like I was drastically failing, struggling with self-doubt and anxiety. People often talk about ‘embracing the newborn bubble’; I felt like we were just about surviving it, and that this wasn’t good enough.
But that just wasn’t true!
In the midst of baby blues – which, by the way, is a very real and distressing thing for some parents, myself included – and locked-down with a newborn, I received a simple, honest message from an old friend, which somehow pierced the darkness for me. She told me just how bloody overwhelming she had also found this time – living in her pyjamas for days on end, feeling unable to communicate coherently and crying on repeat – but she also reassured me that she had made it through. It made me feel like I wasn’t alone; it was an act of solidarity, and just what I needed.
It was the start of such a valuable realisation: that a compassionate, supportive community is EVERYTHING when you enter this crazy world of parenting!
Practicing grace
Through my second pregnancy and by the time our youngest son, Alfie, was born, I was better practised in giving myself grace, and this transpired in several ways. Firstly, I graciously accepted help from others, even if I wasn’t sure I either needed or deserved it. Having been diagnosed with anxiety following my first birth, I was offered the support of the perinatal mental health team both throughout and then following my second pregnancy. Accepting that support – including therapeutic input – meant that I didn’t enable my anxiety and, at times, depression, to overwhelm me. Instead, I learned to better manage it, and to pull myself back from the dark moments, especially following a traumatic birth experience.
There is a LOT of self-sacrifice and guilt in motherhood, as you lose yourself to a wondrous but hugely demanding little person and suddenly find yourself doing everything for them and, often, barely anything for you.
Finding DLAM & my Joy again
I knew that attending DLAM classes would be something I loved. I was already an avid baby-wearer, having embraced lock-down life with my first-born doing ALL the walks because that was all that we could do (shout-out to the incredible Walking Mums’ Club here!), but I also suspected that this would be a class where I could find MY joy – something different to the baby sensory classes we were already doing; something that was primarily for me.
I also wondered whether I would need to rely on a surrounding community of mum friends as much as I had the first time around… and it turns out that I absolutely did. In fact, that need for support and solidarity never stops, and attending DLAM was an amazing way for me to achieve this. There is something truly beautiful about a group of women coming together in an authentic and vulnerable way… and it undoubtedly leads to a feeling of empowerment and joy when you become a part of it, especially if there is also dancing involved! I’m still friends with the amazing Mums I met at DLAM as an attendee and I feel so happy to be able to now lead the classes and see and know the impact it can have.
So please, give yourself the grace to do at least these two things:
Lean on others
Do something that’s for you and the good of your mental health.
You deserve it.
Love Sian xx
Me with some of the other Mums performing for We Invented the Weekend in 2023
