“Welcome to motherhood: a five-letter word spelled ‘G-U-I-L-T’.” It wasn’t what I’d expected my mother to say to me a few weeks after giving birth. But more than eight years later, I know how right she was. I feel guilty juggling work and motherhood, sometimes feeling like I’m not succeeding at either. Others often unintentionally reinforce this.
In her new book, Maternity Service, so named because those postnatal months are anything but “leave”, the BBC presenter Emma Barnett tackles this. Do not, she implores, tell new mothers to “make the most of every second”. This is, Barnett writes, “the most maddening and unhelpful piece of advice” because it is not true: it isn’t possible to enjoy every second of anything, let alone while also experiencing sleep deprivation, a loss of selfhood, overwhelming responsibility and the most intense love you’ve ever felt.
Instead, Maternity Service seeks to acknowledge maternity leave as it really is: “A period of leave from all you know: taking leave of one’s mind, body, job and relationships.” This short book, written during Barnett’s second round of maternity service, reassures mothers that it’s OK to feel shit sometimes. To be bored. To feel angry. These are normal. And, above all, it doesn’t mean you don’t love your child more than you ever thought possible. Just as women need to be told about the realities of pregnancy and giving birth, so too we should be honest about this next stage.
Like Barnett, I wrote a book during my second maternity leave. I wouldn’t recommend it. But I’d signed the contract while eight and a half months pregnant and fooled myself that maternity leave wasn’t all that difficult. I put off the actual writing for as long as possible, but conducted interviews during nap times. Six weeks after I’d given birth, an employment tribunal took place involving the now-closed Tavistock gender identity clinic for children – the subject of my book. I had to watch. And not just that: I decided to live tweet the whole thing. I did this while my baby was strapped to me in a sling, mostly sleeping. At one point during the testimony of a crucial witness, my daughter vomited all over me. I took off my T-shirt and kept going with a pen and paper, holding her in the other arm. It was, looking back, completely mad.
One of the most difficult things about pregnancy and maternity leave is that people forget you are a person, too. I remember a midwife visit during my second pregnancy when I was feeling particularly rough. I was exhausted, and my iron levels needed to be checked. “Babies are parasites,” I said – with humour, I thought – “taking all the goodness out of you.” The midwife was not amused. She made me feel awful: as if I really despised, rather than longed for, the creature growing inside of me.
Not everyone is like this. A few weeks into first-time motherhood, a health visitor asked how I was finding breastfeeding. I thought for a moment: should I be honest? Breastfeeding was not only uncomfortable, painful even, because of injuries I had sustained during birth, but unbelievably slow. Feeds would take well over an hour. “Umm,” I hesitated. “It’s a bit boring.” Silence. Oh God, I thought. I should haven’t said that. But then, laughter. “Ha! That is so refreshing,” she said. “You’re the first woman who’s ever said that to me.” Reflecting on it later, I found that extraordinary. Breastfeeding can be beautiful and intimate, but it can also be excruciating. I know of no mother who has managed to get through it without getting mastitis or an infection, and it can be mind-numbingly dull. I cried when I had to stop, feeling like a failure, that my baby was still hungry and needed more than I could give.
I, like Barnett, love my children “with every fibre of my being”. But she is right that women would feel better if saying anything negative about maternity leave was not frowned upon. Any hint of frustration can make “people rush to tell you that you might be depressed”, or “that you just ‘miss work’”. But often it’s none of these things. What we miss, is being “me”: “a sense of self; a faster brain; a balance to my life”.
Despite the fact you are never alone, maternity leave can feel exceptionally lonely. The conversations you have with other adults are constantly interrupted by your own baby, or theirs, or are solely about babies. It is boring. I longed for adult conversation, to discuss what was going on in the world. When I finally put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) on the first draft of my book, I felt stressed, but also like a part of me had returned. I was using my mind again. I set myself word counts that had to be hit each week, each month. Guilt constantly crept in. The time I spent writing, I wasn’t with my daughter. Yet, I knew she was fine. More than fine – she was happy. She still is.
Does it get easier? I once asked a former colleague, whose children were older than mine. “No,” she replied. “They need you more.” When does it stop? “Well, does your mum still worry about you?” I had my answer. Motherhood is a five-letter word spelled G-U-I-L-T, yes. But so, so, so much more. The difficult is outweighed, by far, by the magic of a beautiful baby. We need to be kinder to and more forgiving of ourselves, and each other. At the end of Maternity Service, Barnett reflects on two handbags sitting on the armchair in her hallway – one for work, the other for when she’s home being a mum. “Which one is me?” she asks. “Both. And then some.”
[See also: Motherhood is full of agony, but its songs are deemed “nice”]
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This article appears in the 26 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Britain in Trump’s World