The transition to Motherhood

Right I'm just going to come out and say it right at the start...motherhood is hard. Don't get me wrong its amazing and beautiful but it is also lonely and challenging. This is what I wish someone had told me when I was having my first child. But its like a big secret that no one wants to talk about. We spend our whole pregnancy taking care of ourselves and preparing for labour but we are woefully unprepared for life after the birth.

And when it happens, even our bodies have turned against us, I've heard many a mother (only since having a baby myself) complain of not being able to make it to the bathroom in time or being unable to feel their core after having their abdomen cut open and internal organs taken out. I'm now in the mothers club so privy to this boggling info, never before did I even consider what birth might do to the pelvic floor. Who knew all these women were walking around being afraid to jump on a trampoline or walk too far from a toilet...I'd never even heard of prolapse. Not one nurse mentioned this in their antenatal talks. And its hardly ever mentioned afterward. Go forth and kegal away. I'll tell you a secret you need a whole body approach to heal rather than spot treatment, but that's for another post.

The transition into motherhood is like the phoenix; your 'Past Life' and 'Previous You' burn away in a blink of an eye. All the ideas you had of what kind of mother you would be, what you would and wouldn't do disappear along with it. For some the transition is harder than for others, a bigger change and loss of the old life, the cocktail if hormones and shock or trauma of birth and this new life ...overwhelming. But then like the phoenix we raise from the ashes into new beautiful strong beings, the Mother.

As mothers we feel the pain of the world more, the news, songs, stories are a totally different experience (!), anything to do with children and pain for families is just too much! One minute you are passively listening and the next tears are falling down your face for the poor child/mother/other family member.

Overnight life changes, suddenly you have a tiny human that you are somehow expected to know how to look after and keep alive. See you later and good luck! Life is different now, there's no going back!