First Time Motherhood Quotes

As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.

I think motherhood is the noblest task of all, because you cannot do it at your convenience, or tailor it to suit your preferences. You have to be ready to give up everything when you take on this task: your time, restful nights, your hobbies, your pursuit of physical fitness, any beauty you may have had, and all of the private little pleasures you might have counted as a right, from late dinners and long soaks in the tub to weekend excursions and cycling trips…I’m not saying you can’t have any of these things, but you have to be ready to let them all go if you’re going to have children and put them first.

Babies cry at birth because it is the first time they experience separation from love.

I think that poetry is perfect for women raising children, with just bits of time and such need to connect to other women out of the isolation of motherhood.

What do you think was the first sound to become a word, a meaning?... I imagined two people without words, unable to speak to each other. I imagined the need: The color of the sky that meant 'storm.' The smell of fire taht meant 'Flee.' The sound of a tiger about to pounce. Who would worry about these things? And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. For a long time, that was the only word the baby needed. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

For the first time since giving birth so many years before, I grew weary of motherhood, and wondered how many more generations of women could be enticed to burden themselves with the solitary and thankless procreation, nourishing, and guidance of the human race.

If motherhood doesn't interest you, don't do it. It didn't interest me, so I didn't do it. Anyway, I would have made a terrible parent. The first time my child didn't do what I wanted, I'd kill him.

Little girls are the nicest things that can happen to people. They are born with a bit of angel-shine about them, and though it wears thin sometimes, there is always enough left to lasso your heart—even when they are sitting in the mud, or crying temperamental tears, or parading up the street in Mother’s best clothes. A little girl can be sweeter (and badder) oftener than anyone else in the world. She can jitter around, and stomp, and make funny noises that frazzle your nerves, yet just when you open your mouth, she stands there demure with that special look in her eyes. A girl is Innocence playing in the mud, Beauty standing on its head, and Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot. God borrows from many creatures to make a little girl. He uses the song of a bird, the squeal of a pig, the stubbornness of a mule, the antics of a monkey, the spryness of a grasshopper, the curiosity of a cat, the speed of a gazelle, the slyness of a fox, the softness of a kitten, and to top it all off He adds the mysterious mind of a woman. A little girl likes new shoes, party dresses, small animals, first grade, noisemakers, the girl next door, dolls, make-believe, dancing lessons, ice cream, kitchens, coloring books, make-up, cans of water, going visiting, tea parties, and one boy. She doesn’t care so much for visitors, boys in general, large dogs, hand-me-downs, straight chairs, vegetables, snowsuits, or staying in the front yard. She is loudest when you are thinking, the prettiest when she has provoked you, the busiest at bedtime, the quietest when you want to show her off, and the most flirtatious when she absolutely must not get the best of you again. Who else can cause you more grief, joy, irritation, satisfaction, embarrassment, and genuine delight than this combination of Eve, Salome, and Florence Nightingale. She can muss up your home, your hair, and your dignity—spend your money, your time, and your patience—and just when your temper is ready to crack, her sunshine peeks through and you’ve lost again. Yes, she is a nerve-wracking nuisance, just a noisy bundle of mischief. But when your dreams tumble down and the world is a mess—when it seems you are pretty much of a fool after all—she can make you a king when she climbs on your knee and whispers, "I love you best of all!

Mama, you are the first pillar of education. You are a vital part of the infrastructure of culture, family, and even the body of Christ.

the first time i met my mother. i knew she was not mine

The first time you see your grown-up little miss looking back at you from a sea of white chiffon or beaded satin glory, indeed your heart will skip a beat. You’ll find yourself blinking back tears. That elusive someday has suddenly become now. Your little girl—your jewel—is going to be a bride.

Part of not wanting children has always been the certainty that I didn’t have the energy for it, and so I had to make a choice, the choice between children and writing. The first time it occurred to me that I wouldn’t have both, I was still years away from being biologically capable of reproduction. History offers some examples of people who’ve done a good job with children and writing, I know that, but I wasn’t one of those people. I’ve always known my limitations. I lacked the units of energy, and the energy I had, I wanted to spend on my work. To have a child and neglect her in favor of a novel would be cruel, but to simply skip the child in favor of a novel was to avoid harm altogether.

Consider one study that estimates a mom simultaneously and often single-handedly performs as many as seventeen occupations in the course of raising a child, from child-rearing, cooking, cleaning, chauffeuring, and financial planning to resolving family emotional problems (not to mention often doing part-time paid work in addition to it all). That particular study estimated a mother’s worth at $508,700 a year, according to Ann Crittenden’s The Price of Motherhood.

The women we become after children, she typed, then stopped to adjust the angle of the paper....We change shape, she continued, we buy low-heeled shoes, we cut off our long hair, We begin to carry in our bags half-eaten rusks, a small tractor, a shred of beloved fabric, a plastic doll. We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, persoective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and-look!-they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squashed tin along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going. We learn to darn, perhaps to cook, to patch knees of dungarees. We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us. We live, We contemplate our bodies, our stretched skin, those threads of silver around our brows, our strangely enlarged feet. We learn to look less in the mirror. We put our dry-clean-only clothes to the back of the wardrobe. Eventually we throw them away. We school ourselves to stop saying 'shit' and 'damn' and learn to say 'my goodness' and 'heavens above.' We give up smoking, we color our hair, we search the vistas of parks, swimming-pools, libraries, cafes for others of our kind. We know each other by our pushchairs, our sleepless gazes, the beakers we carry. We learn how to cool a fever, ease a cough, the four indicators of meningitis, that one must sometimes push a swing for two hours. We buy biscuit cutters, washable paints, aprons, plastic bowls. We no longer tolerate delayed buses, fighting in the street, smoking in restaurants, sex after midnight, inconsistency, laziness, being cold. We contemplate younger women as they pass us in the street, with their cigarettes, their makeup, their tight-seamed dresses, their tiny handbags, their smooth washed hair, and we turn away, we put down our heads, we keep on pushing the pram up the hill.

It’s an impossible thing to explain, motherhood. What is lost, the blood and muscle and bone that are drawn from your body to feed and breathe a new life into the world. The bulldozer of exhaustion that hits in the first trimester, the nauseous clamps of the mornings, the warping and swelling and splitting open of everything previously taut or delicate, until your body is no longer yours but something you must survive. But those are only the physical. It’s what comes after that takes more. Whatever part of me flowed into you from my body, it turned us tight into two people that shared a soul. I believe that of all my children. Fathers will never understand the way you get deep in us, so deep that there’s a part of me that remains, always, a part of you, no matter where you go.

It hadn’t felt sacrificial at the time. Devoting herself to motherhood and the domesticity that came with it had made her happy, at first. And Chloe does make Blair happy. Immeasurably. It is everything else that has happened along with Chloe, the changes in herself and her worth and her marriage that happened so slowly they were imperceptible. Where she’d once felt motherhood had given her so much more than she’d had before, now she could only see it as having taken everything away. Now she cannot reconcile the love she has for her daughter with how confined she feels by the privilege of being her mother.

When it came time for me to go to bed, my mother beckoned me to her, and kissed me, and whispered, "I know I'll never have another anxious moment with my own dear laddie." I pondered these words before I went to sleep. How could I reconcile this motherliness with the screeching fury who had pursued me around the kitchen with a whip, flogging me until she was gorged with — what? Vengeance? What was it? Once, when I was in my thirties and reading Freud for the first time, I thought I knew. I am not so sure I know now. But what I knew then was that nobody— not even my mother— was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface.

If you have no arms To hold your crying child but your own arms And no legs but your own to run the stairs one more time To fetch what was forgotten I bow to you If you have no vehicle To tote your wee one but the wheels that you drive And no one else to worry, “Is my baby okay?” When you have to say goodbye on the doorsteps of daycare or on that cursed first day of school I bow to you If you have no skill but your own skill To replenish an ever-emptying bank account And no answers but your own to Satisfy the endless whys, hows, and whens your child asks and asks again I bow to you If you have no tongue to tell the truth To keep your beloved on the path without a precipice And no wisdom to impart Except the wisdom that you’ve acquired I bow to you If the second chair is empty Across the desk from a scornful, judging authority waiting For your child’s father to appear And you straighten your spine where you sit And manage to smile and say, “No one else is coming—I’m it.” Oh, I bow to you If your head aches when the spotlight finally shines on your child because your hands are the only hands there to applaud I bow to you If your heart aches because you’ve given until everything in you is gone And your kid declares, “It’s not enough.” And you feel the crack of your own soul as you whisper, “I know, baby. But it’s all mama’s got.” Oh, how I bow to you If they are your life while you are their nurse, tutor, maid Bread winner and bread baker, Coach, cheerleader and teammate… If you bleed when your child falls down I bow, I bow, I bow If you’re both punisher and hugger And your own tears are drowned out by the running of the bathroom faucet because children can’t know that mamas hurt too Oh, mother of mothers, I bow to you. —Toni Sorenson

There would be, half a million things, I could do, yet I don’t know, what would be so? When I will see you, for the first time, calm, twined in your daddy’s arm, coming towards me, I could do, half a million things- caress your skin, fondle your chin, stroke though your limbs, smoothly touch your lips, and make my silent wishes, for your health and, your intellect. Half a million things, I could do, yet I don’t know, what would be so? When I will see you, for the first time, I could say, half a million things- call you my kid, read a fine script, whisper love in your ears, sing a hymn. Half a million things, I could say, yet I don’t know, what would be so? I fear though, what if I am unable to, do any of this, and all I end up with, is, just a knot of tears, loaded with, some of the most pure prayers, I have ever chaired. Half a million things, I could do and I could say, yet when it happens, little will my practice play. Half a million things, and I wouldn't know, how and where one begins.

How far beyond your mother do you hope to get? You are not going to be a different woman entirely, so just be a slightly altered version of her, and relax. You don't have to have all of what she had. Why not live something else instead? Live the pattern which is the repeating, which was your mother and her mother before her, live it a little bit differently this time. A life is just a proposition you ask by living it "Could a life be lived like this too?" Then your life will end. So let the soul that passed down from your mothers try out this new life in you. There is no living your life forever. It's just once - a trial of a life. Then it will end. So give the soul that passed down from your mothers a chance to try out life in you. As a custodian for the soul passed down through your mothers, you might make it a little easier this time around. Treat it nicely because it's had a hard time. This is the first time in generations it can rest. Or decide with true liberty what it will do. So why not treat it with real tenderness? It has been through so much already, why not let it rest?

There are many memories. but I'll tell you the one I like to think of best of all. It's just a homely everyday thing, but to me it is the happiest of them all. It is evening time here in the old house and the supper is cooking and the table is set for the whole family. It hurts a mother, Laura, when the plates begin to be taken away one by one. First there are seven and then six and then five...and on down to a single plate. So I like to think of the table set for the whole family at supper time. The robins are singing in the cottonwoods and the late afternoon sun is shining across the floor... The children are playing out in the yard. I can hear their voices and happy laughter. There isn't much to that memory is there? Out of a lifetime of experiences you would hardly expect that to be the one I would choose as the happiest, would you? But it is.

motherhood is not a job at all. It is a full-time, all-consuming, life-subsuming career with no pay, no stock options, no social security, and lots of lip service with little actual respect (just watch the difference in people’s reactions to you when you tell them you are a project manager instead of a mother).

I’d spent so much of the past seven years living my life in a blur, trying to cram as much as humanly possible into a day. I’d missed out on so much in the process, like having dear girlfriends. It wasn’t until you knew something was about to end that you realized how fortunate you were to have had it in the first place.

That was really the question. Would I be okay without a child? Each night I sat with [my infant nephew] Connor and forced myself to go down the path of imaginary motherhood, suspicious of myself that this would be something that I would be willing to reject. Every night I expected to have a change of heart and come up with a different, more recognizable answer. But it never happened. Instead, sitting in the dark and quiet, something quite unexpected occurred. My life, precisely as it was--the product of good and bad decisions--began to come into focus for me. Sitting there, I could see it for the first time as something I'd chosen. Something I'd built intentionally, and not simply a makeshift thing I'd constructed as a for-the-time-being existence until something came along that would make me a whole person in the eyes of the world. Once I began to see it as such, it dawned on me that I had no wish to escape from it. On the contrary: I wanted it. I was choosing my life. I was willing to risk it.

Now, I do not know who I am. I have never not known with more conviction in my life. I find myself writing in my journal each morning, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know." How much of what I have lost or given up has been to the disease of my anxiety, how much to the nature of motherhood, how much to the simple fact of time? I can't begin to work through these questions until I first accept the loss of the mother I thought I was or could be. I believe, I hope, that on the other side of this loss is a love that I have found in connecting with other women. These women have, in the words of Joan Halifax, found "the gold of compassion in the dark stone of suffering." I have never loved women or needed them the way I have since becoming a mother.

But the issue of children and who looks after them has become, in my view, profoundly political, and so it would be a contradiction to write a book about motherhood without explaining to some degree how I found the time to write it. For the first six months of Albertine’s life I looked after her at home while my partner continued to work. This experience forcefully revealed to me something to which I had never given much thought: the fact that after a child is born the lives of its mother and father diverge, so that where before they were living in a state of some equality, now they exist in a sort of feudal relation to each other. A day spent at home caring for a child could not be more different from a day spent working in an office. Whatever their relative merits, they are days spent on opposite sides of the world.

What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond - to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear and our gills turn to lungs. Our maternal environment is perfectly safe - dark, warm, and wet. It is a residency inside the Feminine. When we outgrow our mother's body, our cramps become her own. We move. She labors. Our body turns upside down in hers as we journey through the birth canal. She pushes in pain. We emerge, a head. She pushes one more time, and we slide out like a fish. Slapped on the back by the doctor, we breath. The umbilical cord is cut - not at our request. Separation is immediate. A mother reclaims her body, for her own life. Not ours. Minutes old, our first death is our own birth.

It’s one thing for a rape victim to speak up, or a woman with a wanted pregnancy that has turned into a medical catastrophe. But why can’t a woman just say, This wasn’t the right time for me? Or two children (or one, or none) are enough? Why must the woman apologize for not having a baby just because she happened to get pregnant? It’s as if we think motherhood is the default setting for a woman’s life from first period to menopause,

At the core, making space for creativity traces back to permission, to the idea that feeding our souls is not a waste. Creativity is not a waste of time, or money, or resources. It’s not a waste of space in our schedules, our minds, our homes. If you view creativity as a selfish act, you will always struggle to justify making time for it. If you believe pursuing creativity is self-serving, it’s going to be the first thing you cut from your life in busy seasons.

For what is at stake is fundamentally a woman’s femininity: just as the white Victorian woman unhappy with a life of petticoats and socializing might have had her uterus injected with tea in an attempt to bring her in line with the ideal female of her time, the twenty-first-century mother who is struggling to stay steeped in ever-patient love and fun might need psychiatric internment to accept proper intensive motherhood. Thurer summed up the progression of the twentieth century nicely when she wrote, “[Experts] have invented a motherhood that excluded the experience of the mother.

What happened to me? Why does it feel like this? Why can’t I seem to get it together and be the mama I want to be? It’s not your fault. It’s ours. Society, the community we live in, has failed us. Failed to tell us that what we are feeling is real and legitimate. Failed to acknowledge our pain, our tears and the anxiety that keeps us awake at 3am, wondering how we’re ever going to manage it all. And failed to tell us that what we’re feeling is real. For success-driven, modern women, pregnancy is often the very first time we’ve had to accept that we are not totally in control of our own lives.

Lavinia has seen this happen, seen how, one day, a girl will raise her head to listen, as if for the first time, to the crying of a child, to the sound of an oar being hauled in, to a man's voice, to the screech of a saw pulling through wood, to some comment one of the women might make. Within a week, the girl will be able to tell at any minute of the day or night, precisely where every soul in the place is. Then - or so Lavinia imagines, for it has never happened to her - one morning before light, before the girl has awakened, a map, new and totally different, will be imprinted behind her closed eyelids.

I do not believe you can have it all, or at least not at the same time in life. First of all, having is a possessive word. When we focus on having a baby, having a marriage, having a great and successful job, and having lots of material stuff we have lost touch with the most important part of life: being. Having a successful career and making lots of money that allows you to buy more stuff doesn’t help you to be more present for the ones we love: children, spouses, family, and friends. Intimacy requires time; giving up your role as a primary caregiver comes with sacrificing physical and emotional intimacy with your child.

How was she meant to let go ? Sometimes, instead of having a single daughter, it felt as if she were grieving the loss of hundreds. The baby that clung to her little finger. The toddler who squealed with delight at her first steps. The small girl who said "I love you" for the first time with no ceremony and without realising it almost broke Maggie's heart with joy. The teenager who broke down when she needed Mum one last time. It was like her daughter disappeared over and over again. All those incredible people who Maggie would never meet again, some of whom were remembered only by her. And she felt colossal loneliness at the realisation.

She was my champion. She was my archive. She had taken the utmost care to preserve the evidence of my existence and growth. Capturing me in images. Saving all my documents and possessions. She had all knowledge of my being memorized. The time I was born. My unborn cravings. The first book I read. The formation of every characteristic. Every ailment and little victory. She observed me with unparalleled interest. Inexhaustible devotion. Now that she was gone, there was no one left to ask about these things. The knowledge left unrecorded died with her. What remained were documents and my memories. And now it was up to me to make sense of myself, aided by the signs she left behind. How cyclical and bittersweet, for a child to retrace the image of their mother. For a subject to turn back to document the archivist… The memories I had stored, I could not let fester. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes and I had to seize it, foster it, so it did not die in me, so that I could pass it on someday. The lessons she imparted, the proof of her life lived on in me in my every move and deed. I was what she left behind. If I could not be with my mother, I would be her.

Back in the pens, once the herd was gathered, the men gingerly and methodically guided the calves into a separate gated area. The cows mooed and their babies bawled once they realized the extent of the physical distance between them, and my bottom lip began to tremble in sympathy. Before that moment, I had no hands-on experience of the tug of motherhood and the tangible connection between the hearts of a mother and child, whether it be bovine, equine, or human. And while I knew that what I was witnessing was a rite of passage, a normal part of agriculture, I realized for the first time that this enormous thing that would be happening in a few short months--this motherhood thing--was serious business. It took a morning among cows for me to understand.

Now Kate is a senior member of the royal family and on the brink of motherhood, it is time to look at the woman behind the name. She is the first person for 350 years without aristocratic blood to marry an heir to the throne, and if it wasn't for tragedy on both sides of her family, she would probably not be in the position she is today. However, circumstances before she was born and the support her parents gave her only got her so far - the rest has been up to her. Although she was christened Catherine, she started to be called Kate at university and Kate is what William calls her. It became how she was referred to in the press, and therefore how she is known all around the world, and so that is how she will be referred to in this book. One day she will be Queen Catherine, but for now, she is known and loved as Kate.

The truth is that all humans are always seeing something, paying attention to something, learning something. Perhaps, we are learning every sort of sexual innuendo known to man by watching endless reruns of Friends. Perhaps, we are learning how to fit in socially and politically by spending hours and hours on social media. Perhaps we are paying attention, day and night, to what we don't have, wasting our time on Earth in envy, frustration, and discontent. We are paying attention to something. Maybe it isn't verb tenses, or the periodic table of elements, or the Great Books, but we are all being educated by our loves. Recognizing that maybe what we love is unworthy is the first step in being truly educated. What is worthy of this love I have? What is worthy of my time and attention? Let me tell you a secret. Education is free. It is simply a matter of opening your eyes and acknowledging the 'I don't know.

Time is always ticking for women. Whereas men, apparently, live in a timeless realm. In the dimension of men, there is no time - just space. Imagine living the realm of space, not time! You put your dick into spaces, and the bigger your dick, the cosier the space. If you have a very big dick, then space - and life - must be very cosy indeed. Imagine having a very small dick - how vast and unknowable the universe must be to the small-dicked man! But if your dick is the size of most of what you encounter, nothing could be very threatening at all. For women, the problem is different. A fourteen-year-old girl has so much time to be raped and have babies that she is like the greatest Midas. The time-span of a woman’s life is about thirty years. Apparently, during these thirty years - fourteen to fourty-four - everything must be done. She must find a man, make babies, start and accelerate her career, avoid diseases, and collect enough money in a private account so that her husband can’t gamble their life’s savings away. Thirty years is not enough time to live a whole life! It’s not enough time to do all of everything. If I have only done one thing with my time, this is surely what I’ll castigate myself for later. The day will come when I’ll think, ‘What the fuck did you waste all those years putting in commas for?’ I will have no idea how I could have been so naive about how time acts in the life of a woman; how it is the essential realm in which a woman lives. All the things I neglected to do because I refused to believe, fundamentally, that first and foremost I was female. You women who wish to live in the realm of space, not time - you will see what gifts the universe has waiting. ‘Will I?’ Yes. Just look around. ‘But some women are happy!’ But some women are not. ‘How do I know which I will be?’ You cannot know until it’s too late.

You needn't instruct me to think about my children's welfare," Phoebe said quietly. "I've always put them first, and always will. As for me being a child... I'm afraid I'm not nearly enough like one." A faint smile touched her lips. "Children are optimistic. They have a natural sense of adventure. To them, the world has no limitations, only possibilities. Henry was always a bit childlike in that way- he never became disenchanted with life. That was what I loved most about him." "If you loved Henry, you will honor his wishes. He wanted Edward to have charge of his family and estate." "Henry wanted to make sure our future would be in capable hands. But it already is." "Yes. Edward's." "No, mine. I'll learn everything I need to know about managing this estate. I'll hire people to help me if necessary. I'll have this place thriving. I don't need a husband to do it for me. If I marry again, it will be to a man of my choosing, in my own time. I can't promise it will be Edward. I've changed during the past two years, but so far, he doesn't see me for who I am, only who I was. For that matter, he doesn't see how the world has changed- he ignores the realities he doesn't like. How can I trust him with our future?" Georgiana regarded her bitterly. "Edward is not the one who is ignoring reality. How can you imagine yourself capable of running this estate?" "Why wouldn't I be?" "Women aren't capable of leadership. Our intelligence is no less than men's, but it is shaped for the purpose of motherhood. We're clever enough to operate the sewing machine, but not to have invented it. If you asked the opinions of a thousand people whether they would trust you or Edward to make decisions for the estate, whom do you think they would choose?" "I'm not going to ask a thousand people for their opinions," Phoebe said evenly. "Only one opinion is required, and it happens to be mine." She went to the doorway and paused, unable to resist adding, "That's leadership." And she left the dowager fuming in silence.

Once, a few years earlier, Jules had gone to see a play at Ash’s theater, and afterward, during the “talkback,” when the audience asked questions of the playwright and of Ash, who’d directed the production, a woman stood up and said, “This one is for Ms. Wolf. My daughter wants to be a director too. She’s applying to graduate school in directing, but I know very well that there are no jobs, and that she’s probably only going to have her dreams dashed. Shouldn’t I encourage her to do something else, to find some other field she can get into before too much time goes by?” And Ash had said to that mother, “Well, if she’s thinking about going into directing, she has to really, really want it. That’s the first thing. Because if she doesn’t, then there’s no point in putting herself through all of this, because it’s incredibly hard and dispiriting. But if she does really, really want it, and if she seems to have a talent for it, then I think you should tell her, ‘That’s wonderful.’ Because the truth is, the world will probably whittle your daughter down. But a mother never should.

In one representative study of the situation in the nation today, the sociologists Jill Yavorsky, Claire Kamp Dush, and Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan found that for male-female partners who both worked full-time (roughly forty-hour weeks), first-time parenthood increased a man’s workload at home by about ten hours per week. Meanwhile, the increased workload for women was about twenty hours. So motherhood took double the toll as fatherhood, workwise. Moreover, much of the new work that fathers did take on in these situations was the comparatively “fun” work of engagement with their children—for example, playing with the baby. Fathers did this for four hours per week, on average, while dropping their number of hours of housework by five hours per week during the same time period. Mothers decreased their hours of housework by only one hour per week—while adding about twenty-one hours of child-rearing labor, including fifteen hours of physical child care—for instance, changing diapers and bathing the baby. And mothers still did more by way of infant engagement: about six hours per week, on average.

Paula Nicholson, a psychologist who has studied women's transition to motherhood, makes the case that it is taboo to mourn in the postpartum context, though motherhood can be many women's first experience of grief. Whereas death or divorce or other life changes usually involve a culturally and socially sanctioned period of mourning, Nicholson argues that mothers are not allowed to experience loss, and if they do, they are pathologized. 'So strong is the taboo,' she writes, 'that women themselves frequently fail to admit their sense of loss in a conscious way.' Motherhood, the ultimate "happy event", Nicholson declares, seems antithetical to loss. And yet Nicholson lists a whole host of losses inherent to having a child: loss of autonomy, identity, work, time, friends, relationship patterns, sexuality, health, comfort. Each woman may experience any one or several of these. Nicholson makes the somewhat radical claim that "some degree of postpartum depression should be considered the rule rather than the exception. It is also potentially a healthy, grieving reaction to loss.' Postpartum depression might be the only ritual American mothers have to express their grief.

It seems that the first obligation mothering places upon a woman,' writes psychoanalyst Jana Malamud Smith, 'is the demand not just that she attempt to keep the child alive, but that she accept the fact of living closely with death.' American mothers tend to respond to this inherent fact by going into overdrive on the American belief that death can be fought with righteous fervor: with organics, sustainably made wooden blocks painted with non-toxic vegetable dyes, a 4-1 preschool teacher ration, bathtub spout covers. What is lost, thinking always of risk, aiming always for zero risk, is not measurable. There are no statistics, no charts, no metrics. There is a gecko in a cage with a heat lamp for a sun. There is a dog who has never been let off leash. There is no rain in the mouth. There is no solitude, no wandering to the edge of the woods at dusk. There is no unwashed fruit eaten with dirty hands. There is no mess. There is no staking of oneself, one's small life, against the hugeness of the world. There is no sharing a meal with a stranger. Jane Hirshfield wrote, 'As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty/ We become our choices.' The greatest deception of the obsessive pursuit of zero risk is that we have no choice. We choose, often under immense pressure. And when we choose imagined safety every single time, we gradually give up what makes life worth living.

How had she ended up like this, imprisoned in the role of harridan? Once upon a time, her brash manner had been a mere posture - a convenient and amusing way for an insecure teenage bride, newly arrived in America, to disguise her crippling shyness. People had actually enjoyed her vituperation back then, encouraged it and celebrated it. She had carved out a minor distinction for herself as a 'character': the cute little English girl with the chutzpah and the longshoreman's mouth. 'Get Audrey in here,' they used to cry whenever someone was being an ass. 'Audrey'll take him down a peg or two.' But somewhere along the way, when she hadn't been paying attention, her temper had ceased to be a beguiling party at that could be switched on and off at will. It had begun to express authentic resentments: boredom with motherhood, fury at her husband's philandering, despair at the pettiness of her domestic fate. She hadn't noticed the change at first. Like an old lady who persists in wearing the Jungle Red lipstick of her glory days, she had gone on for a long time, fondly believing that the stratagems of her youth were just as appealing as they had ever been. By the time she woke up and discovered that people had taken to making faces at her behind her back - that she was no longer a sexy young woman with a charmingly short fuse but a middle-aged termagant - it was too late. Her anger had become a part of her. It was a knotted thicket in her gut, too dense to be cut down and too deeply entrenched in the loamy soil of her disappointments to be uprooted.

Happy Mother's day to all mothers and fathers who are also good mothers. * Why does mother have 2 more points? * Comparison between mother and father. Why is a mother's status greater than a father's? Why is mother always given the right to more respect? Such questions are always going round on social media. The first thing is that you cannot normalize the situation. It is not the same for everyone. It can be different in every family. There are many mothers who fulfill the responsibility of both father and mother. They are good mothers as well as complete fathers. There is also such a father in this world who is also fulfilling the duty of a good mother, but that type of father also remains 2 steps behind. This is because every mother has 2 points extra that no father can achieve. 1st. Any man can't really understand the period of 9 months when the mother holds the baby in her womb. It is not just something to be in their stomach, she faces many challenges in many ways; physically, emotionally, restless sleep, uncomfortable days without rest, uncomfortable all the time, all that no man in this world has ever experienced. 2nd In this world, even today, due to pregnancy and delivery, 1 woman dies every 2 minutes. This condition is at this time when this world is fully loaded with science and technology. But till date, not a single man has died due to giving birth to a child. So the truth is that this is the only mother who directly risks her life while giving birth to a child. Was put at risk but : - It does not mean that you should not respect the father or respect him less. The father's value and respect is not less, this article is just to explain why the mother has 2 points more than father and what I think why mother's value is grater than father !!

I was told love should be unconditional. That's the rule, everyone says so. But if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge? I am supposed to love Nick despite all his shortcomings. And Nick is supposed to love me despite my quirks. But clearly, neither of us does. It makes me think that everyone is very wrong, that love should have many conditions. Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times. Unconditional love is an undisciplined love, and as we all have seen, undisciplined love is disastrous. You can read more about my thoughts on love in Amazing. Out soon! But first: motherhood. The due date is tomorrow. Tomorrow happens to be our anniversary. Year six. Iron. I thought about giving Nick a nice pair of handcuffs, but he may not find that funny yet. It's so strange to think: A year ago today, I was undoing my husband. Now I am almost done reassembling him. Nick has spent all his free time these past months slathering my belly with cocoa butter and running out for pickles and rubbing my feet, and all the things good fathers-to-be are supposed to do. Doting on me. He is learning to love me unconditionally, under all my conditions. I think we are finally on our way to happiness. I have finally figured it out. We are on the eve of becoming the world's best, brightest nuclear family. We just need to sustain it. Nick doesn't have it down perfect. This morning he was stroking my hair and asking what else he could do for me, and I said: 'My gosh, Nick, why are you so wonderful to me?' He was supposed to say: You deserve it. I love you. But he said, 'Because I feel sorry for you.' 'Why?' 'Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.' I really, truly wish he hadn't said that. I keep thinking about it. I can't stop. I don't have anything else to add. I just wanted to make sure I had the last word. I think I've earned that.

With the mistaken premise that my stay-at-home work and his accomplished career required equal emotional energy, I couldn’t understand where he got the vigor to worry about his ego being rejected or his sex drive being ignored. For me, it was all hands on deck, between our kids and our house and our work. Sex, passion, romance, I thought, could certainly wait. And maybe some part of me reasoned that when I had suffered a loss, he had been too busy to support me. So what could he possibly ask of me now? But now, in the fresh mental air of my momspringa, I start to understand the kind of neglect John must have felt when I fell asleep in one of the kids’ beds every night or stopped kissing him hello and instead threw a preschooler into his arms the minute he walked in the door. At the moment I’m walking in his shoes: my children are cared for by someone else, my days are spent in rich mental exercise, I get plenty of sleep, and I go to the gym every day. In other words, I have the emotional energy to think about desire and how good it feels to be wanted. Yes, John had clean pressed shirts without having to ask, and yes, we had family dinners together that looked perfect and tasted as good, and yes, he never had to be on call when Joe started getting bullied for the first time or when Cori’s tampon leaked at a diving tournament. Yet while I was bending over backward to meet his children’s every need, his own were going ignored. And was it the chicken or the egg that started that ball rolling? If he had, only once, driven the carpool in my place, would I have suddenly wanted to greet him at the door in Saran Wrap? Or was I so incredibly consumed with the worry-work of motherhood that no contribution from him would have made me look up from my kids? I don’t know. I only know that in this month, when I have gotten time with friends, time for myself, positive attention from men, and yep, a couple of nice new bras, parts of me that were asleep for far too long are starting to wake up. I am seeing my children with a new, longer lens and seeing how grown up they are, how capable. I am seeing John as the lonely, troubled man he was when he walked out on us and understanding, for the first time, what part I played in that. I am seeing Talia’s lifestyle choices—singlehood, careerism, passionate pursuits—as less outrageous and more reasonable than ever before. And most startling of all, I am seeing myself looking down the barrel of another six years of single parenting, martyrdom, and self-neglect and feeling very, very conflicted.

Kristen had dreamed of having children since she was herself a child and had always thought that she would love motherhood as much as she would love her babies. “I know that being a mom will be demanding,” she told me once. “But I don’t think it will change me much. I’ll still have my life, and our baby will be part of it.” She envisioned long walks through the neighborhood with Emily. She envisioned herself mastering the endlessly repeating three-hour cycle of playing, feeding, sleeping, and diaper changing. Most of all, she envisioned a full parenting partnership, in which I’d help whenever I was home—morning, nighttime, and weekends. Of course, I didn’t know any of this until she told me, which she did after Emily was born. At first, the newness of parenthood made it seem as though everything was going according to our expectations. We’ll be up all day and all night for a few weeks, but then we’ll hit our stride and our lives will go back to normal, plus one baby. Kristen took a few months off from work to focus all of her attention on Emily, knowing that it would be hard to juggle the contradicting demands of an infant and a career. She was determined to own motherhood. “We’re still in that tough transition,” Kristen would tell me, trying to console Emily at four A.M. “Pretty soon, we’ll find our routine. I hope.” But things didn’t go as we had planned. There were complications with breast-feeding. Emily wasn’t gaining weight; she wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t play. She was born in December, when it was far too cold to go for walks outdoors. While I was at work, Kristen would sit on the floor with Emily in the dark—all the lights off, all the shades closed—and cry. She’d think about her friends, all of whom had made motherhood look so easy with their own babies. “Mary had no problem breast-feeding,” she’d tell me. “Jenny said that these first few months had been her favorite. Why can’t I get the hang of this?” I didn’t have any answers, but still I offered solutions, none of which she wanted to hear: “Talk to a lactation consultant about the feeding issues.” “Establish a routine and stick to it.” Eventually, she stopped talking altogether. While Kristen struggled, I watched from the sidelines, unaware that she needed help. I excused myself from the nighttime and morning responsibilities, as the interruptions to my daily schedule became too much for me to handle. We didn’t know this was because of a developmental disorder; I just looked incredibly selfish. I contributed, but not fully. I’d return from work, and Kristen would go upstairs to sleep for a few hours while I’d carry Emily from room to room, gently bouncing her as I walked, trying to keep her from crying. But eventually eleven o’clock would roll around and I’d go to bed, and Kristen would be awake the rest of the night with her. The next morning, I would wake up and leave for work, while Kristen stared down the barrel of another day alone. To my surprise, I grew increasingly disappointed in her: She wanted to have children. Why is she miserable all the time? What’s her problem? I also resented what I had come to recognize as our failing marriage. I’d expected our marriage to be happy, fulfilling, overflowing with constant affection. My wife was supposed to be able to handle things like motherhood with aplomb. Kristen loved me, and she loved Emily, but that wasn’t enough for me. In my version of a happy marriage, my wife would also love the difficulties of being my wife and being a mom. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have to earn the happiness, the fulfillment, the affection. Nor had it occurred to me that she might have her own perspective on marriage and motherhood.

Like every other mother on the planet, from the moment my first baby entered the house, I stopped getting real sleep. Motherhood means I’m always a little bit awake, a little bit alert at all times. One eye open. So

Did her needs not matter anymore? Bea shivered at her cold heart. She hit the side of her head to rattle her humanity loose. To think of her daughter first. She didn't realize she'd kept hitting herself until Glen gripped her wrist and brought her arm firmly to her side, held her, and she felt the bitter tears on her face for the first time. She choked sobs into his shoulder. This is motherhood? she thought, furious and brokenhearted as she tried to let go of her own self so she could free her arms to hold up Agnes.

The time has come for the pendulum to find a healthy resting point between the extremes. All child-raising choices should be acceptable, but it’s up to the individuals making these choices to understand the responsibilities and ramifications of their decisions.

TEN WAYS A PARTNER CAN HELP Before the baby’s born, help stock the freezer with meals that can be eaten with one hand. Find a good phone number for help and call it as needed. (La Leche League’s website, llli.org, and U.S.-based phone line, 877–4-LA LECHE (877–452–5324), can both lead you to your closest local group, and that’s a fast route to anything else you might need.) Buy the grocery basics, and keep easy, healthy snacks on hand. Get dinner—any dinner! Nights can be tough at first. Be flexible about where and when everyone sleeps. Going to bed early helps! Do more than your share. You may be what keeps the household running for a while. Everything won’t get done. Talk about what’s most important to her—a clean kitchen? a cleared desk?—and do that first. Get home on time. You’re like a breath of fresh air for mother and baby both. Helping out means helping emotionally, too. Remind her how much you love her, how wonderful she looks, and what a great job she’s doing. There she is, holding your child. She really is beautiful, isn’t she? Remind her that this part is temporary. Most women feel it takes at least six weeks to start to have a handle on this motherhood thing. Life will settle down. But it takes a while.

...in the midst of the tumult, part ecstasy and part panic, into which all first-time mothers are thrown by sleep deprivation and headlong identity realignment.

You look as if you’ve just lost your best friend.” Eve took a place beside Jenny on this observation, which leavened Jenny’s sense of desolation with a spike of resentment. “With all my family around me, how could I possibly be in want of companionship?” Eve watched their mutual siblings stepping through a minuet while their brother Valentine held forth at the piano. “The same way I can long to dance while the minuet plays all around me.” Marriage had settled Eve, and impending motherhood had only honed her already formidable instincts. “You’re admiring your husband, Lady Deene, even when you can’t dance with him.” “He’s promised me a waltz, though Valentine will probably find one to play at the speed of a dirge.” She fell silent for a moment as the dancers one-two-three’d around the space created by the music room and an adjoining parlor. “You would make a wonderful mother, Jenny.” The worst pain was not in the words Eve offered, but the combination of pleading and pity with which she offered them. “Becoming a mother usually contemplates becoming a wife first, and I’ve no wish to wed some man for the sole purpose of bearing his babies.” Not the sole purpose… As the dancers twirled and smiled, it occurred to Jenny that Victor had made her promise not to stop painting, but he hadn’t said anything specific about eschewing motherhood. Had he? Another pause in the conversation, while the music played on. Eve, however, was notably tenacious, so Jenny waited for the next salvo, and Eve did not disappoint. “You look at Bernward the way I look at Deene, the way Maggie looks at Benjamin, the way—” “Louisa looks at Joseph, I suppose.” And Sophie at her baron too, of course. They needn’t start on how the Windham brothers regarded their respective wives. “Louisa’s gaze is a touch more voracious. I was going to say, the way Mama looks at Papa.” Ouch. Ouch, indeed. The duke and duchess turned down the room with the grace of a more elegant age, and yet, their gazes spoke volumes about the sheer pleasure of sharing a dance. Jenny stated the obvious as matter-of-factly as possible. “Their Graces dance beautifully.” Eve’s feet were propped on a hassock. She wiggled her toes in time with the music, the left and right foot partnering each other. “Bernward also dances quite well.” Elijah was dancing with Valentine’s lady, Ellen’s preferred partner being ensconced at the keyboard, as usual. “Bernward is dancing carefully, lest Valentine take exception.” Eve twitched her skirts. “Bernward is dancing with one eye on you, you ninnyhammer, and with the certain knowledge that all three of our brothers are waiting for him to come over here and get you to stand up with him. How many more times do you think you can check on the punch bowl between sets without Bernward taking insult?” Check

Instant Access “When my twins were born, I moved abruptly from being a professional career woman to a full-time, stay-at-home mom. The role shift opened a new door of commonality which surprised and delighted me. I was instantly welcomed into a special “Motherhood Club,” where before I never would have related. It felt as if I was suddenly bonded with mothers worldwide. It's important to remember—nothing stays the same, nor do we.

TEN WAYS A PARTNER CAN HELP Before the baby’s born, help stock the freezer with meals that can be eaten with one hand. Find a good phone number for help and call it as needed. (La Leche League’s website, llli.org, and U.S.-based phone line, 877-4-LA LECHE (877-452-5324), can both lead you to your closest local group, and that’s a fast route to anything else you might need.) Buy the grocery basics, and keep easy, healthy snacks on hand. Get dinner—any dinner! Nights can be tough at first. Be flexible about where and when everyone sleeps. Going to bed early helps! Do more than your share. You may be what keeps the household running for a while. Everything won’t get done. Talk about what’s most important to her—a clean kitchen? a cleared desk?—and do that first. Get home on time. You’re like a breath of fresh air for mother and baby both. Helping out means helping emotionally, too. Remind her how much you love her, how wonderful she looks, and what a great job she’s doing. There she is, holding your child. She really is beautiful, isn’t she? Remind her that this part is temporary. Most women feel it takes at least six weeks to start to have a handle on this motherhood thing. Life will settle down. But it takes a while.

This would be the first time she’d be apart from her since the birth and already she could feel the bonds of motherhood straining at the thought of Alys being out of her sight, even if it was only for half an hour. It had only taken a week for her world to shrink to the boundary walls of the house. But she’d never been happier. Her eyes grazed the pair of them, and love filled every corner. But Charlie and Alys needed this time, both of them and a few minutes alone after another interrupted night’s sleep would be like a gift from the gods. Izzy had never felt so bone-achingly weary and, while she dreaded being apart, a rest would make all the difference.

Two girls there are : within the house One sits; the other, without. Daylong a duet of shade and light Plays between these. In her dark wainscoted room The first works problems on A mathematical machine. Dry ticks mark time As she calculates each sum. At this barren enterprise Rat-shrewd go her squint eyes, Root-pale her meager frame. Bronzed as earth, the second lies, Hearing ticks blown gold Like pollen on bright air. Lulled Near a bed of poppies, She sees how their red silk flare Of petaled blood Burns open to the sun’s blade. On that green alter Freely become sun’s bride, the latter Grows quick with seed. Grass-couched in her labor’s pride, She bears a king. Turned bitter And sallow as any lemon, The other, wry virgin to the last, Goes graveward with flesh laid waste, Worm-husbanded, yet no woman.

Motherhood, however, took her by surprise. She found herself so in love with her children that she felt a need to change and restructure her life to afford time with her two bundles of joy. It led to her next phase of entrepreneurship, starting a string of baby-and-mother-related businesses. CRIB is a platform for mothers and women to network, and Trehaus provides the space for working mothers to have a career and yet be there for the baby’s first moments.

Trained Obstetrician and Gynaecologist in Dubai Dr Elsa de Menezes Fernandes is a UK trained Obstetrician and Gynaecologist. She completed her basic training in Goa, India, graduating from Goa University in 1993. After Residency, she moved to the UK, where she worked as a Senior House Officer in London at the Homerton, Southend General, Royal London and St. Bartholomew’s Hospitals in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She completed five years of Registrar and Senior Registrar training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in London at The Whittington, University College, Hammersmith, Ealing and Lister Hospitals and Gynaecological Oncology at the Hammersmith and The Royal Marsden Hospitals. During her post-graduate training in London she completed Membership from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. In 2008 Dr Elsa moved to Dubai where she worked as a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at Mediclinic City Hospital until establishing her own clinic in Dubai Healthcare City in March 2015. She has over 20 years specialist experience. Dr Elsa has focused her clinical work on maternal medicine and successfully achieved the RCOG Maternal Medicine Special Skills Module. She has acquired a vast amount of experience working with high risk obstetric patients and has worked jointly with other specialists to treat patients who have complex medical problems during pregnancy. During her training she gained experience in Gynaecological Oncology from her time working at St Bartholomew’s, Hammersmith and The Royal Marsden Hospitals in London. Dr Elsa is experienced in both open and laparoscopic surgery and has considerable clinical and operative experience in performing abdominal and vaginal hysterectomies and myomectomies. She is also proficient in the technique of hysteroscopy, both diagnostic and operative for resection of fibroids and the endometrium. The birth of your baby, whether it is your first or a happy addition to your family, is always a very personal experience and Dr Elsa has built a reputation on providing an experience that is positive and warmly remembered. She supports women’s choices surrounding birth and defines her role in the management of labour and delivery as the clinician who endeavours to achieve safe motherhood. She is a great supporter of vaginal delivery. Dr Elsa’s work has been published in medical journals and she is a member of the British Maternal and Fetal Medicine Society. She was awarded CCT (on the Specialist Register) in the UK. Dr Elsa strives to continue her professional development and has participated in a wide variety of courses in specialist areas, including renal diseases in pregnancy and medical complications in pregnancy.

A fact about motherhood that no one ever tells you. I will tell you. When you become a mother, the first thing you learn is: You never knew just how much you could love another human being. This new little creature becomes the most important being in your life. You live for it. You’d die for it. You can’t even remember how your life was before you became a mother. When you have another child, you don’t give them half the love that you gave the first one. Not at all! Your love doubles. Your heart becomes larger. And, like a balloon filling with air, the more it’s filled the more fragile it becomes. Yet, it still grows. When they hurt, you hurt for them double because two hearts are hurting. A mother’s love is exponential. No one ever tells you that. Now, introduce a grandchild to your life. Your heart grows larger still. More fragile. As your family grows, you’re holding more and more love in your heart. It expands more than you ever dreamed was possible. You literally want to wrap your heart around each of them and keep them safe—always. Because, when they hurt, you hurt with them—double. When a grandchild is hurt, you not only feel their hurt, but also their mother’s hurt— because now you know what they’re feeling. When I was little, my mother told me, “Motherhood is a heartbreaking job.” At the time, I just looked at her with a blank, uncomprehending stare. Now I know—SHE WAS RIGHT!! Now, I’m in no way trying to discourage women from hav- ing children. Not in the least. I just feel we should all know what we’re really signing up for from the start. What my mother didn’t tell me is that this job is permanent. It has no end. It doesn’t stop on your child’s 18th birthday. You can’t retire or take a vacation from it. It’s with you every day. Twenty-four hours. Seven days a week. Motherhood is a lifelong, continual, non-stop, exponentially expanding, heartbreaking and heart-filling job. It grows in your heart—and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Stop walking past our goddamn table, I’m thinking. I’m going to have sex for the first time in six years, don’t ruin this for me with your outstanding beauty.

When I fell, I instantly had my "Oh, That's Why" realization and I would have known not to rollerskate through the house again, even if I had been alone. There is a loss of dignity that a child experiences when they've just suffered the consequences of something they were warned against by the Wiser One while the Wiser One gloats for being wiser, especially when the gloating is packaged as anger. But I was too young to examine gloating or anger or wisdom and she, the mother of a timid child who rarely got hurt, had not had many opportunities to consider the vulnerable state of an injured kid. We were both green and hurt and scared in this new way, together. As an adult, it helps me to view my mom as a singular woman beyond her role in my life, but also, as a child herself who does not, in fact, possess knowledge of all things. Our mother-daughter relationship was this huge, life-altering thing that we are both experiencing for the first time, at the same rate and we don't have answers, we only have things that we're trying out. This was true for my grandmother too; she was learning to be alive for the first time.

The animal literature is filled with examples of normal behavior under unusual circumstances. Followed by a single file of goslings, Konrad Lorenz demonstrated the tendency of these birds to imprint on the first moving object they lay their eyes on. He thus permanently confused their sense of speciesbelonging. Niko Tinbergen saw stickleback fish in a row of tanks in front of his laboratory window, in Leiden, make furious territorial displays at the mail delivery van in the street below. At the time, Dutch mail vans were bright red, the same color as the male stickleback's underbelly during the breeding season, and the fish mistook the van for an intruder of their own species. Artificial situations sometimes help us see more clearly how behavior is regulated. When goslings do the normal thing, following their mom around all day, one might think that they share our exalted view of motherhood. We are quickly disabused of this notion, however, when they follow a bearded zoologist with equal devotion. And when sticklebacks defend their territory, we might think that they want to keep competitors out, whereas in reality they are only reacting to a speciestypical red flag. What animals really are after is not always evident, and tinkering with conditions is a way to find out.

When expectations are not met (as invariably happens), the search for the right solution begins; in turn, this search adds an unnecessary layer of suffering to what would otherwise be just the pain of motherhood. First we find that motherhood is far more difficult than we thought it would be, then we observe (incorrectly) that every other mother seems to be sailing along just fine, and finally we conclude (at great cost to our self-esteem) that we are doing something wrong. The sense that what we’re doing isn’t the right thing to do, or that what we’re feeling isn’t the right way to feel, leaves us feeling inadequate, or worse. Meanwhile, we’re expending precious energy attempting to pinpoint what it is we should be doing differently to make our babies fit the mold and adhere to expectations of development or internal visions of how things should be. Without the extra layers of suffering caused by unmet expectations, our misguided attempts to deny or suppress our feelings, and our self-critical interpretative frames, we would simply feel the pain. Of sleep deprivation. Of missing our old lives. Of not having enough time for ourselves. These things are all painful, but pain is far more tolerable than suffering.

Perhaps because pregnancy and birth get all the magazine covers and headlines—no surprise, as these events sell more stuff—we’ve overlooked this last part of the childbearing story. A woman’s postpartum experience might be given a brief nod at the end of a pregnancy book, or thirty seconds of footage at the end of a TV show, but a deeper look almost never occurs. Rather than get invited to take a sacred time-out after delivering her child, the new mother is more likely met with pressure to “bounce back”—back to her pre-pregnancy productivity, back to her pre-pregnancy body, and back to her pre-pregnancy spirits. But when it comes to becoming a mother, there is no back; there is only through. After birthing her child, every woman must pass through this initial adjustment phase. It is a strange and beautiful limbo zone that is both exhausting and exciting, mysterious and monotonous. When she arrives at the other side of the postpartum phase after roughly a month and a half, she will most certainly be facing forward, prepared to take her next steps into motherhood.

God Bless My Darling Child This is from your dear Mother Who expected you for months Sometimes feeling distressed and exhausted Though excited about carrying another soul Eyes watched how she gained weight Tummy bulging with time Cravings shooting sky high Conduct, a little bit unusual She had many questions in mind Said endless prayers for you Believed God for your safe arrival Hoped for your survival Wished you become a responsible human And a respectable woman like her The brightest without fear Great in this world When she saw your face for the first time She embraced her treasure Looked at you and declared ‘God bless my darling child.

Dead. He thought to himself, all dead. For me, you have been dead a long time, as long as I can remember. You, who gave a life to me and to Taro and tried to make us conform to a mold which never existed for us because we never knew of it, were never alive to us in the way that other sons and daughters know and feel and see their parents. But you made so many mistakes. It was a mistake to have ever left Japan. It was a mistake to leave Japan and to come to America and to have two sons and it was a mistake to think that you could keep us completely Japanese in a country such as America. With me, you almost succeeded, or so it seemed. Sometimes I think it would have been better had you fully succeeded. You would have been happy and so might I have known a sense of completeness. But the mistakes you made were numerous enough and big enough so that they, in turn, made inevitable my mistake. I have had much time to feel sorry for myself. Suddenly I feel sorry for you. Not sorry that you are dead, but sorry for the happiness you have not known. So, now you are free. Go back quickly. Go to the Japan that you so long remembered and loved, and be happy.

As soon as I was visibly and clearly pregnant, I felt, for the first time in my adolescent and adult life, not-guilty.

Pregnancy Skincare: Nurturing Your Glow with Expert Care – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital Pregnancy – a wondrous journey that transforms your world in every conceivable way. As you prepare to welcome a new life into the world, your body takes center stage, and so does your skincare routine. Amidst the excitement and anticipation, the canvas of your skin undergoes its own set of changes. But fret not, for the guidance of best gynecologist obstetricians in Chandigarh and the expert care at Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital can help you navigate the realm of pregnancy skincare with grace and confidence. The Glow and the Challenges Ah, the famed pregnancy glow! While it’s true that many expectant mothers experience a certain radiance, it’s also a time when your skin decides to throw a few curveballs. Hormones like estrogen and progesterone, the maestros behind many pregnancy changes, might lead to increased oil production. This could result in unexpected acne or that elusive “glow” turning into a somewhat excessive shine. And let’s not forget about the infamous melasma, often referred to as the “mask of pregnancy.” This uneven pigmentation might make an appearance on your face, especially if you’re basking in the sun’s rays without proper protection. But worry not, for the guidance of the best gynaecologist in Chandigarh, you can take steps to manage these challenges and let your true radiance shine through. Dos and Don’ts In this symphony of pregnancy skincare, it’s crucial to compose a harmonious routine that nurtures both your skin and the life growing within you. First and foremost, let’s talk hydration. Drinking water is like giving your skin a refreshing dose of vitality, ensuring that it remains supple and resilient. As you venture into the world of skincare products, remember that less is more. Opt for gentle, pregnancy-safe cleansers that cleanse without stripping away your skin’s natural moisture. Ingredients like hyaluronic acid and glycerin can be your skin’s best friends, offering hydration without clogging pores. Ah, the allure of sunscreen! Now more than ever, shielding your skin from the sun’s rays is of paramount importance. Look for a broad-spectrum SPF and ensure that it’s pregnancy-safe. A hat and sunglasses can also join the ensemble of sun protection. Now, as you scan the beauty aisles, you might come across a wide array of products promising miracles. But be cautious – not all ingredients are pregnancy-friendly. Best gynecologist in Sector44C would advise steering clear of retinoids, salicylic acid, and benzoyl peroxide. Instead, embrace the calming embrace of ingredients like chamomile and aloe vera. Treating Yourself with Care Amidst the whirlwind of preparations, don’t forget to treat yourself to moments of self-care. A gentle exfoliation once or twice a week can help slough away dead skin cells and keep your complexion radiant. Opt for exfoliants with natural granules to ensure that your skin is treated with the gentleness it deserves. Expert Support for Your Glow The journey of pregnancy is as unique as a fingerprint, and so is your skin’s response to it. That’s why seeking guidance from the best obstetricians in Chandigarh can make all the difference. As you navigate the realms of pregnancy skincare, remember that the changes your skin undergoes are a testament to the incredible journey you’re on. It’s a journey of growth, transformation, and the anticipation of new beginnings. With the guidance of experts, a touch of self-care, and the support of Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital, you can stride through this journey with confidence, letting your inner glow shine as brightly as your dreams.

First, she must unequivocally say “no” to the housewife image. This does not mean, of course, that she must divorce her husband, abandon her children, give up her home. She does not have to choose between marriage and career; that was the mistaken choice of the feminine mystique. In actual fact, it is not as difficult as the feminine mystique implies, to combine marriage and motherhood and even the kind of lifelong personal purpose that once was called “career.” It merely takes a new life plan—in terms of one’s whole life as a woman. The first step in that plan is to see housework for what it is—not a career, but something that must be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once a woman stops trying to make cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, “something more,” she can say “no, I don’t want a stove with rounded corners, I don’t want four different kinds of soap.” She can say “no” to those mass daydreams of the women’s magazines and television, “no” to the depth researchers and manipulators who are trying to run her life. Then, she can use the vacuum cleaner and the dishwasher and all the automatic appliances, and even the instant mashed potatoes for what they are truly worth—to save time that can be used in more creative ways.

There’s simply no real substitute for physical presence. . . . We delude ourselves when we say otherwise, when we invoke and venerate ‘quality time,’ a shopworn phrase with a debatable promise: that we can . . . engineer intimacy at an appointed hour. . . . But people tend not to operate on cue. The surest way to see the brightest colors or the darkest ones is to be watching and waiting and ready for them.

From the outside, looking at a woman objectively, there’s no obvious single transition point which marks the beginning of this odyssey. Menarche, the first occurrence of menstruation and a gateway to adulthood, is easily identifiable; pregnancy, a gateway to motherhood, is even more visible. But the features of menopause — that final, great biological upheaval in a woman’s life — aren’t nearly so obvious from the outside and are often deliberately concealed. To add to the complexity, the passage lasts for a much longer period of time. Usually, it starts during our “midlife” years. Perimenopause, sometimes called “menopause transition,” kicks off several years before menopause itself, and is defined as the time during which our ovaries gradually begin to make less estrogen. This usually happens in our forties, but in some instances it can begin in our thirties or, in rare cases, even earlier. During perimenopause, the ovaries are effectively winding down, and irregularities are common. Some months women continue to ovulate — sometimes even twice in the same cycle — while in other months no egg is released. Though four to six years is the average span, perimenopause can last for as little as a year or it can go on for more than ten. Menopause is usually declared after twelve months have passed without a period. In the US, the average age at which menopause is recorded is fifty-one years, though around one in a hundred women reach this point before the age of forty. Four years is the typical duration of menopause, but around one in ten women experiences physical and psychological challenges that last for up to twelve years — challenges which include depression, anxiety, insomnia, hot flashes, night sweats, and reduced libido. Sometimes, these challenges are significant; at their most severe they can present as risks to physical or mental health, and women need help to manage them.

In my dream last night, I heard the words, If you want to know what your life is, destroy everything and move away and see what builds up again. If what builds up a second time is much the same as the first, then your life is pretty much as it could be. Things couldn’t be much different from that.

These associations, between childbirth and feminine effacement, and between feminine silencing and violence, would, for the first time, become imprinted on the subconscious in relation to birth, creating, in place of passionate and proud attachment, a terror-based antipathy between mother and child, and between the feminine and its biology.

The first time I heard the term liminal, I was eighteen, sitting in an African American Studies 101 class at the University of Virginia. A tall and slender Professor Penningroth, his complexion like my mother's relatives, had written the words Middle Passage in the center of a black chalkboard. He walked us through not just the number of Black bodies taken or the number of years over which they were stolen, but what it might have been like to be yanked into a void. To live (or die) between what was and what would be. The concept felt close and easy, like something I'd always known. The idea of a space without bounds that held within its hull the power to harm or to free or to form-that idea has never completely left me. Would I have thought as an undergrad that liminality might one day describe some of my experiences as a Black woman in America? Yes. Would I have guessed liminality might describe my future experiences as a mother, wading through waters of science and faith, in search of the truest way to know my son? Not al all. And yet here we were, drifting from the shore of one unknown to the next. Caught somewhere between "no longer" and "not yet." It was getting harder to discern where the journey had begun and where, if ever, it would end.

I remember at that time I went to the hairdresser's. I did this regularly, but I remember that visit for two particular reasons. The first was that next to me was a young mother with a little girl aged about three. The child, whose hair was about to be cut for the first time, screamed with terror and clung to her mother. The hairdresser stood by gravely, comb in hand: he recognised that this was a serious moment. The mother, blushing, tried to comfort the child who had suddenly plunged into despair; all around the shop women smiled in sympathy. What impressed me, and what I particularly remember, was the child's passionate attempt to re-enter her mother, the arms locked around the woman's neck, the terrified cries of unending love. So dangerous is it to be so close! I had tears in my eyes, witnessing that bond, seeing that closeness, of which only a sorrowful memory remained in my own life. One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilised, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions - sorrow and anger - adequately.

To give birth, a woman must let go. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she will learn the lesson of what it truly means to surrender to something greater than herself. The birth process, like breathing, happens on its own. A mother-to-be must be willing to openly trust and surrender so the birth can unfold from deep within her. The

Sophie’s the first one of us to have a baby, even though Everly has a five-year-old son, Jake. Everything is happening so fast. Well, for my friends anyway. Sophie met Luke last fall during our senior year at Penn. She was pregnant and married before graduation. Everly met Sawyer last Thanksgiving and they were married over the summer. Sawyer’s son from a previous relationship lives with them full-time and Everly adapted to insta-motherhood better than anyone could have expected. She’s working on a children’s book series about blended families now. Weird, I know. I always assumed she’d write porn. And then there’s Sandra; she’s a few years older than us. Sandra works for Everly’s husband and quickly became a part of our friendship circle, or squad, as Everly prefers we call it. Sandra started dating Gabe at the beginning of the year and was living with him by summer. That leaves me. Chloe Scott. Third wheel, or seventh wheel in this case.

I think I'm going to have it,' I said, joking between pains. The midwife rolled competent sleeves over corpulent milky arms. 'Dear, you never have it, we deliver it.' A judgement the years proved true. Certainly I've never had you As you still have me. Why does a mother need a daughter? Heart's needle, hostage to fortune, freedom's end. Yet nothing's more perfect than that bleating, razor-shaped cry that delivers a mother to her baby. The bloodcord snaps that held their sphere together. The child, tiny and alone, creates the mother. A woman's life is her own until it is taken away by a first, particular cry. Then she is not alone but a part of the premises of everything there is: a time, a tribe, a war. When we belong to the world we become what we are.

In classical art this 'aura' surrounding motherhood depicts repose. The dominant culture projects pregnancy as a time of quiet waiting. We refer to the woman as 'expecting,' as though this new life were flying in from another planet and she sat in her rocking chair by the window, occasionally moving the curtain aside to see whether the ship is coming. The image of uneventful waiting associated with pregnancy reveals clearly how much the discourse of pregnancy leaves out the subjectivity of the woman. From the point of view of others pregnancy is primarily a time of waiting and watching, when nothing happens. For the pregnant subject, on the other hand, pregnancy has a temporality of movement, growth, and change. The pregnant subject is not simply a splitting which the two halves lie open and still, but a dialectic. The pregnant woman experiences herself as a source and participant in a creative process. Though she does not plan and direct it, neither does it merely wash over; rather, she is this process, this change. Time stretches out, moments and days take on a depth because she experiences more changes in herself, her body. Each day, each week, she looks at herself for signs of transformation... For others the birth of an infant may only be a beginning, but for the birthing woman it is a conclusion as well. It signals the close of a process she has been undergoing for nine months, the leaving of this unique body she has moved through, always surprising her a bit in its boundary changes and inner kicks. Especially if this is her first child she experiences the birth as a transition to a new self that she may both desire and fear. She fears a loss of identity, as though on the other side of the birth she herself became a transformed person, such that she would 'never be the same again.

if you don’t take some time for yourself during the course of a day and if your child struggles to fall asleep, you may be anxious and resentful. As the flight attendant tells us: Put on your own oxygen mask before you help your child put on hers.