With my first two pregnancies I felt brittle and defensive, highly conscious of the fact that there were people who didn't see me as "the mothering type". I was too feminist, too idealistic, not to mention too unmarried. I was the kind of woman who would end up falling flat on her face, wailing "but why didn't anyone tell me how hard it would be?"
I resolved not to be that woman, first, by insisting to myself that the early days of motherhood would be the worst days EVER, and second, by deciding to adopt a serene, Kate Middleton-esque public face whenever people asked me how things were going. Ha! That would show them. You all expect me to fail, and indeed I might, but you won’t know a thing about it.
My sons are now six and seven. Over the years, what the writer Susan Maushart has called "the mask of motherhood" has occasionally slipped. Well, more than occasionally. I'm really not the mother I thought I would be. I am neither one of those reformed characters, whose whole life changed the moment she realised that her babies were all that mattered, nor am I one of those devil-may-care modern mummies, perfecting the art of not giving a toss about what anyone else thinks. I am genuinely ashamed of my poor housekeeping. I find playdates a source of immense, ill-defined social embarrassment. I still have moments when I sense my children are looking at me, seeing through the whole "mummy" act. But I am confident – or foolish – enough to be facing pregnancy and those early days of motherhood yet again.
Having got my sons this far – through breastfeeding , walking, talking, potty training, nursery, infant school – part of me cannot believe I am going back to square one. The idea that my third child will, for several months, be unable to so much as sit up seems utterly absurd to me. The thought that I might once again have to enthuse over that miserable cog-in-the-capitalist-machine Thomas the Tank Engine seems like a cruel joke. I am pretending that nursery fees – and bills in general – do not exist.
I fear I will be disappointed should my newborn baby prove to be less loquacious, witty and independent than his older brothers. Frankly, given that I've done this baby thing twice before, it seems unfair that I don't get the option of skipping the bits I didn't like. One could argue that you cannot appreciate the joys of motherhood without the heartache, but that's a risk I'd be willing to take.
Yet overall I feel more excited and positive as the due date creeps closer. I kind of know what I'm doing – kind of – but I'm also more relaxed about those parts where I'll just muddle through. I used to think of motherhood as deeply political, a performance of sorts, and in many ways it is. Women are judged on whether or not they have children, when they have children, how they give birth, whether they breast- or bottlefeed, whether they do paid work or not – the list continues. In labour with my second son, I remember feeling anxious about the pain not in and of itself, but because "people might think less of me" were I to have more pain relief than with my first son. I always had one eye on the audience. I'd entered a world in which everything I did had an additional meaning, defining me as good or bad, and I desperately wanted to know the secret to being good.
Of course, there isn't one. Instead, as a new mother you are expected to pick sides. I picked Team Saving Face. Show no vulnerabilities, crack lots of jokes. Don't be one of those women who complains about sleepless nights, boredom, exhaustion – hell, what did they expect? And don't be one of those women who gets all Mother Earth-y, preaching the virtues of female wisdom and natural birth – do they know how ridiculous they sound? For a feminist, I spent a lot of time adding other women to an imaginary list of "mothers who aren't anything like me." By the end of it I was on my own and none the wiser for it. In a society which finds endless ways to write off mothers – they are always too young or too old, too privileged or too poor, too conservative or too reckless – there is no point in trying to be the perfect exception. Our very diversity is used against us.
What I have gained this time around is trust, both in myself and in other women. What's more, I'm aware of how unfashionable that sounds and don't really care. At a time when work and family structures divide mothers more than ever, we do not need the ideological divides which make them feel unable to reveal their vulnerabilities.
It may be that starting my forties by having a third child is a terrible idea. I might need more support than ever. I hope that this time I'll have the nerve to ask for it, even if I'm flat on my face.
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Guest post: "I'm pregnant again after a long gap - this time, I'm ready to ask for help"
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