For the longest time after I had a baby I was really, truly not comfortable with the word “mother”. Well, not so much the word itself, more that it now applied to me.
Mother.
It just seemed to come with a lot of gravitas. Far too much for this flibbertygibbet.
Obviously I’d thought about becoming a mother throughout my pregnancy but even then I was trying to fudge it, coming up with a modified version of it, declaring I would be entering “muthahood” instead.
But eventually the mist clears, you get a bit more sleep, and you stop fighting it. You are the mother of a strange, adorable, infuriating creature. You accept this responsibility and on good days you think you might even be passable good at it. And then they fall off a piece of furniture onto the floor and you immediately regret your hubris.
But one of the best things about being a mother is the connection you suddenly have to other mothers.
Someone tried to explain this to me before I had a baby, and like so many things “before baby” I just didn’t really get it. But there is this truly heartwarming club that you enter when you become a mother that is an unexpected pleasure.
Sure, other parents can also be a massive pain in your arse. There’s a certain kind of competition that can happen among mothers regarding whose parenting style, technique or habits are “the best”. Not to mention whose child speaks, walks and hoovers the house on his own first. But if you just give yourself permission not to give a crap about any of that stuff, not to try to outdo with birthday parties, to accept other people’s versions of parenting as just one of a kaleidoscope of options, then you can kind of just enjoy the comradery.
I imagine it’s not unlike soldiers who go to war together. Sure, mothering may be relatively short on trenchfoot and light ammunitions (if done correctly) but it is still bloody gruelling in places. Similarly I still feel fondly towards the people I did my Masters study alongside though I haven’t seen most of them for ages, just because of what a bloody hard slog that was. When you go through something really hard with another person you forge a bond of sorts, and the first year of motherhood or even muthahood, as I said, is not unlike war in a lot of ways.
I now also understand all those warm and knowing smiles I got from women of all ages in the later stages of pregnancy. There’s a wistfulness you feel for that time before you were “mother” and everything changed, but also just, I think, a gentle desire to welcome you into the fold. There is a long line of mothers that preceded you, after all.
And so I’d like to thank all the mothers. The ones who sent me gifts. The ones who share their stories of their own ill-behaved, tantrumming children to make me feel less like mine is an actual demon from the firey pits of hell. The ones who offer their seat on the bus. The ones who hold the door open so I can get through with the stroller. The ones who babysit so that I can have a break or write a blog post. The ones who admire my little chap and praise his cheeky, gappy smile. The ones who stop at pedestrian crossings for us. The ones who never say anything but just smile fondly as we go by.
It’s not only mothers who extend us these courtesies of course, but mostly it is and I thank you all. And I’ll thank you further by paying it forward for the rest of my life, welcoming other freaked out, frazzled, none too sure of themselves mothers into the club.
Because once you’re in the club, you’re in for life.
Do you feel like there is a mothers’ club and if so, where are our clubrooms and do they have wine there? How have other mothers supported you?
Originally published on Stuff, 20/03/2015
(Artwork: Frances Hodgkins, Mother and child, no known copyright restrictions, Auckland Art Gallery. Featured image: Baby bassinet, public domain image from Pixabay)