TRIGGER WARNING: This post is an unfiltered outpouring of feelings. Feelings which rarely are rational or make sense, but are real none the less. Some, I’m sure, may find this a difficult read – if you have struggled with fertility or child loss, please be kind to yourself and consider whether you want to read what follows – an honest account of motherhood, the emotions around choosing whether or not to expand your family and coping with the end of that phase of life. If you choose to continue, please do so knowing that I am more than conscious of how fortunate I have been in life, and love my children more than I could ever describe, but that doesn’t free me from experiencing pain or sadness. I am not comparing my experience with yours, merely documenting it and trying to make sense of it in the hopes it might help someone – or maybe just me – feel less alone. I wish you nothing but compassion. If you can’t feel that for me I understand, but please don’t feel the need to tell me.
It’s a Wednesday afternoon. I have some time to kill before a doctors appointment so I’ve dipped into a coffee shop to catch up on some emails. Lowering my weary bones into the comfiest seat I could find, I try to shake myself back into work mode – not the easiest of tasks for me right now when my mental capacity seems so stunted – and find myself absent mindedly surveying the room. It’s busier than I expected, and bustling with all the usual suspects. The elderly couple sharing a pot of tea and a scone. The group of what I assume by their sporty outfits are students from the local University, all full of animated chatter and carrying complicated looking iced beverages. Shoppers taking breaks and those seeking a quick moment of solace with a book or a newspaper to accompany their flat white. My focus zeros in on her. A woman who could have been me in the not so distant past. Casually dressed in leggings and an oversized jumper, her hair hurriedly thrown into a messy top knot. She is fresh faced, but looks tired, and very distracted despite trying valiantly to focus on the conversation with her companion. That distraction comes from the very wriggly child at her breast.
At first I smile. Because they’re very cute. Because I love the little bears on their dungarees and their teeny tiny socked feet. Because I know only too well what a challenge it is trying to maintain what is probably the only adult conversation you’ve had all day while breastfeeding a 6 month old in public. And I breathe a little sigh of relief that it’s no longer me tackling that challenge. It feels like only yesterday it was me wrestling with a small child on my lap, desperately trying to cling onto the small shred of social life I had, wondering when I was going to start feeling like myself again and whether the momentous effort of leaving the house was worth it. More often than not, it wasn’t really. But the sense of suffocation I got from being stuck in my house, in my little village, for days on end was so intense at times – particularly after the twins came along – that I probably would have boarded a plane for a 10 minute catch up with friends. It felt back then like I would never be alone again. Yet here I am now, sat with a hot coffee all by myself, with no-one to answer to but the senders of those emails. Life did get back to some sense of normal. It’s not the same as pre-children, of course. But I do get to be alone sometimes. Or with friends, family, my husband, without the constant demand of attention from a small person. Motherhood still takes up the majority of my time, but I’m not needed quite so much these days.
And that’s when it hits me. An incredible wave of grief.
It feels uncomfortable using the word grief. I am more than aware of how fortunate I am to have been able to experience motherhood, to have birthed three healthy boys with limited complications or trauma. But still, it’s the only way I can describe it. A sadness so intense I have to look away. Tears that come without warning, the feeling I can’t breathe for a moment. The sense that something has been ripped away from me. I know it isn’t rational, because nothing has been taken from me. My boys are living and thriving and filling my days with endless joy. But I can’t help but also feel the loss of who they – and I – once were. They aren’t babies anymore, never will be again, and without even really noticing a whole era of my life has passed me by. I spent so many years waiting, yearning for the day I felt the weight of my own child in my arms and in the blink of an eye, those days are gone and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
“I struggled a lot with feeling as though I’d disappeared when I first became a mum. Now there are days when I’d do anything to hide from the world under that cloak of invisibility once again…”
Perhaps it isn’t helped by the fact I never really had the classic maternity experience. Just as I was starting to feel confident with Bailey, Covid swallowed up the majority of my time off with him where we might have explored the world together. And then twins with a toddler is a whole experience in itself and I just wasn’t able to do most of the things I dreamed I would. Taylor & Jesse joining our family was such a blessing and a unique and special time, but the reality is a lot of it was pure survival and I still have a huge amount of pent up emotions about that period. I feel overwhelming guilt about the impact on all three of them – Bailey seemed to age overnight the moment we brought the twins home and I still hurt a lot over the time I missed with him. I feel as though I can barely remember him at the age of three and I think I’ll struggle with that for a long time. And my now not so tiny little twinnies – while the early days of Bailey consisted mainly of lazy days in bed or on the sofa just soaking each other up, I felt as though I was always having to find ways of putting them down, needing to be productive the moment they showed signs of sleep. I didn’t have the courage to venture out much on my own with them, so we never had the baby classes, the coffee dates, the swimming lessons… I will forever mourn the time I didn’t spend just cuddling them and enjoying them – particularly one on one.
And then, of course, there is the faceless baby that never came to be. The third pregnancy I thought I might have had, the last throw of the dice that, had things been different, may have been sat wriggling on my lap right now as I tried to chat to a friend. The irony is not lost on me that I felt rushed into deciding to have a second child, being only too aware of my age bearing down on me with each passing day. We were in the midst of the Winter lockdown, had just cancelled our second lot of wedding plans and trying to decide which order to tackle these big life events. I didn’t quite feel ready to shake up the happy little family of three dynamic we’d settled into, but we both felt there was a fairly good chance we wouldn’t feel ‘done’ after two children, so wanted to leave time just in case we wanted to give it one last go. Then, of course, the universe threw us a curveball by giving us two at once! I got what I was pretty sure I wanted – that third child. But I didn’t get the extension to the baby days I thought that would bring, and for some reason my heart is still struggling to let go of that last pregnancy, last newborn stage, last maternity leave that never came to be. This time in my life was abruptly cut short, and if I’m honest, almost exactly three years to the day since we found out we were expecting two new arrivals instead of one, I’m still reeling from the shock of it all.
Or perhaps it isn’t really to do with with any of that at all. Maybe it’s actually the adjustment of trying to go back to some semblance of ‘normal’ life. Working, commuting, juggling childcare and trying to keep track of the momentous amount of life admin that comes with it all. Being out here in the big, wide world, the world I thought I was longing to get back to, is actually quite scary. Being at home with three small children was hard work, but it felt safe in my little bubble, with only my babies and the occasional Instagram troll to judge my abilities. We fell into a rhythm that felt comforting and familiar, if a little monotonous. But now I feel as though I have to prove myself, to show that I am a competent human being when I feel anything but, and it’s uncomfortable. I feel as though I’m in constant fight or flight mode, desperate to retreat to the anonymity and safety of my stay at home role, once again yearning for the slow days of nursery rhymes and pureed carrots and washing tiny socks. I struggled a lot with feeling as though I’d disappeared when I first became a mum. Now there are days when I’d do anything to hide from the world under that cloak of invisibility once again.
My brain knows how lucky I am. That another child isn’t really an option unless our personal circumstances suddenly and dramatically change. That we still have so much joy and love to discover together as our children grow. But my heart really hasn’t caught up and I’m not sure how to come to terms with it all. And the hardest thing of all is that it isn’t often I meet anyone who understands how I feel. My peers all seem so confident in their readiness to move on, to rejoin the land of the living and leave behind that loss of autonomy, freedom and personal space. I want so desperately to get there too, to just enjoy where this journey is taking us, and every now and then I catch a glimpse of a life I know will make me very happy – one where my husband and I, newly reconnected, sit happily in the presence of other adults, drink in hand with the sound of our children happily playing somewhere in the background. But when I try to picture a life where the hallway is cluttered with school bags instead of a pushchair and the bedroom drawers are filled with PE kits and underwear instead of nappies and muslins, the tears come again. Can it really be true that I will never again know they joy of seeing a heartbeat flicker on a screen? Or feel that wriggling deep in my belly? Feel the sense of calm that only comes with the rhythm of a tiny sleeping body on my chest, breathing with me in perfect time? Or tiny hands reaching for me, tiny fingers encircling mine? I’m not even sure that it’s more children I want – I’m older, more tired, less patient and constantly overwhelmed. I know only too well that those early newborn days can take you to some dark places emotionally, and I can barely cope with the average 6 hours sleep a night I get now, never mind the noise, the mess, being switched on and touched out 24/7… I think maybe what I want the most is to be able to go back and do it all again. To just exist in those moments one more time, safe in the knowledge that everything is going to turn out ok. Either way, when people ask me if I’m ‘done’ I just can’t bring myself to say yes. Because physically, rationally, financially, logistically – it’s obvious. But emotionally, I’m just not there. My heart still seems to firmly believe that it has more love to give, and I’m not sure how to get these parts of me to realign.
Will there ever be a time that I feel ‘done’? When the heartache dissipates and the sight of a new mother and her brood brings a knowing smile rather than a pang of jealousy? Will I ever feel at home in my new existence? Why do I hurt so much when I have everything I wanted? Why can’t I move on from this? Is it hormones? My age? A ‘twin’ thing? Questions I ask myself daily, and I suppose only time will tell. Unless of course you know, in which case answers on a post card would be gratefully received! Until then, I feel a little lost, like I don’t quite belong. A woman with so much privilege, who could never understand the pain of wanting but never having. Yet not at all at peace with where I am, haunted by the ghosts of children who never existed, with no one who quite understands where I’m coming from.
One day I hope it will all make sense. One day I hope I’ll feel ‘done’.
Love,
Picking the Day 