Motherhood brings wonder and beauty to your life, it’s true, but there’s also a darkness that comes, that no one warns mothers about. Like a smudge on your glasses, that stops you from ever really seeing the splendour in full colour.
It’s called guilt and worry: the dark cloud duo, casting a shadow on your heart from hereon in. There’s nothing you can do but accept them, because they’re side effects of love.
The guilt comes from your desperate desire to be the best mother you can be for your beloved child. You’ll want to be a ‘super mum’ and you’ll be bombarded with advice and the arbitrary standards society expects you to achieve and you’ll fall short, over and over again, because you’re human, and perfection is impossible.
But you’ll still try. Because your baby deserves it. Because you love her so wildly, you’ll feel angry at yourself for not being better at it. Never in your life have you wanted to be so good at something. And it will feel like everyone is watching and waiting for you to stuff it all up.
The trick here is to accept that perfection isn’t just impossible; it’s unnecessary. Martyrdom isn’t a requirement of motherhood, even if Janet from that ‘Slow Home Schooling’ blog wrote a whole article about it. What you need to know is that kids are awfully forgiving as long as you’re ‘pretty good’, most of the time.
But then there’s the worry. When you have something this precious, you have so much more to lose.
It might have started in pregnancy when you began to imagine every dark and twisted thing that could go wrong. Then your baby arrived and you’ve suddenly become aware of how dangerous and filthy the whole world is. Every single living thing is out to damage you and your child. You’ll whip yourself into a state every time your baby wheezes or sneezes or poops in a weird colour. You’ll open Google and you won’t close it again until your kids move out of home.
I once showed a paediatrician a video of my son, fretting and pacing while he watched it. As it finished, I asked what was wrong with my child.
‘And, um … what is it exactly that I should be noticing?’ he asked cautiously.
‘That weird way he’s talking!’ I cried. ‘You see the way he’s trying to make babbling noises but he’s doing it with his mouth shut? That’s not normal, is it?’
He gave me that look doctors give first-time mums. You know the one where they’re trying to decide if you’re an overanxious mother or simply a bit slow?
‘He’s just fine,’ he said, in a careful tone that told me he’d decided I was one of the slow ones.
It wasn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last time I’ve worried over something ridiculous when it comes to my children. I’ve worried I worry too much and I’ve worried that I don’t worry enough. I’ve also worried that my worries are not quite sane.
I’ve Googled things like:
• ‘Does my child hate the flavour of my milk?’
• ‘What shape should baby poo be?’
• ‘Will my baby be stunted if he doesn’t sleep enough?’
• ‘Can you die from sleep deprivation?’
• ‘Is my baby a psychopath?’
Motherhood has a way of supercharging the imagination. You can see the worst possible outcome of every situation. Your mind will take you to some dark places, my friend. A simple climb up the stairs could suddenly turn into a life-or-death scenario. See that garbage truck on the street outside your home? What if your child was outside and ran in front of it? I mean, sure, your child is two weeks old, can’t even find her own hand and the front door is securely locked, but WHAT IF?
Walking down the footpath with your toddler, for example, leaves you thinking, ‘He could trip and fall into oncoming traffic and end up flattened and I’ll have to throw myself in front of the next car in grief and then we’ll both be on tonight’s news and my husband will be a tragic widower until he finds someone really beautiful who never nags and always makes lovely dinners for him and they start a new family and forget all about us and he even takes our photo out of his wallet so he doesn’t upset his new wife and only my mother and father will continue to mourn us until they die and then our memory will be gone forever.’ For example.
It might just be a flash in the back of your mind, like a quick glimpse into an alternate universe, but there’s a constant nagging that your child is incredibly impermanent.