Dear Motherhood

When I first became a mum I was a few months shy of 29. I lived in Brighton, a city that I thought was a temporary sojourn from my Toronto home. Working as a primary school teacher in West Sussex, the headteacher sends me home to rest after I’m sick in the staff toilets. In those very early days of pregnancy, my aunt calls while I’m still in bed. “Just be mindful”, she tells me in Punjabi, “of everything you’re listening to and watching. Try to listen to spiritual mantras. Everything you do impacts the baby now.” And while I loved hip hop and r&b, I start listening to Kirtan from time to time. My friends back at home are still clubbing. 

I make new friends in Brighton through my prenatal yoga classes. One day sitting on picnic blankets with our babies at the park, a new friend suggests having everyone over to watch a film. The idea of doing something as enjoyable as watching a movie seems too good to be true. Being a full time mum was exhausting, but did I deserve a break? In the end, I decide to go to a baby massage class instead. 

I meet other mums at different baby classes designed to help with learning and development. One morning a mum from baby gym texts me: Mocha? We ditch class and meet for coffee and a walk with our babies in tow. Later on, I tell my husband what I have been up to. “Lucky for you one of us is working all day”, he answers. 

My daughter arrives three years after my son and my exhaustion eclipses. I still persevere on perfection, organic food and limited screen time. I wear the baby in a sling while I try to clean the house and make dinner. I only fit into leggings. My mother in law visits, looks around and asks how often I hoover. 

I fly back to Canada that summer hoping to get some respite at my parents. Instead, I get woken most evenings by the clamour of my brothers coming home from fashionable events in downtown Toronto. I feel like a stranger. 

My son starts school that September. I fit back into my jeans but my body feels unfamiliar. My weekends become packed with kids parties. I rarely finish a conversation before my younger one starts to cry or toddle off. And when I do, I find myself replaying conversations for days cringing.  I’m often offered Prosecco but always decline. I don’t feel like myself. My husband suggests I do sit ups. 

I start going out in the evenings to exercise and I find a yoga studio to join. Flowing through familiar sequences, I’m taken back to Toronto. In downward dog with the sun on my back, I feel a sense of retrieving something I didn’t realise I’d lost. I cry the whole way through savasana. My husband agrees to hiring a cleaner. 

My daughter starts nursery at three and I think it’s time to go back to work. Emailing my old employer, I ask if she knows of any schools in the area that are hiring. She sends me a link to a position she thinks I’d be brilliant for. After completing my CV, I ask if I can put her down as a reference. I’m sorry Mona, it’s been too long. I wouldn’t accept a reference myself from anyone if it was this out of date. I read the email again and again thinking what to reply. I haven’t worked for anyone else since. I feel panic rising in my chest. Later that evening I google: therapist near me.

I finally manage to sign back on to a supply teaching agency I had worked with before having children. I get references from a mum I volunteered with at the Christmas fair at the nursery, and another from a mum on the PTFA. It feels humiliating to ask. 

On my first day of teaching, I start cleaning up the classroom after marking when the cleaner pops into the classroom. “Leave it to me, love. You go ahead and finish up and go home,” she says and I want to hug her.

"Do you think you’re trying too hard to be perfect now?” my therapist asks at our regular appointment. “ You don’t seem to allow yourself to let your hair down” I think about this during my walk home. When was the last time I let myself have fun? 

I start to feel like I’m becoming part of a community. One day after nursery drop off, another mum asks if I have time to grab a coffee. She tells me about juggling work, her research project and being a mum. I vent about all the ways in which my life seemed to have taken a course of its own. She tells me about her own mother and how she was in the final year of medical school when she became pregnant with her first child. “She thought she would take a year out and come back to it,” she tells me. “She never did,” she continues. “But, she told me that in the end your children grow up and you have to sit in a room with all of your unfulfilled dreams.” I feel something shifting inside me. Later my therapist tells me, “It’s like you’ve finally got your head above the water and you’re noticing what’s not working.” 

In April of the following year the same friend hosts a party at her place. This time when I’m offered a glass of wine, I say “Yes, please”. Standing in the garden with the other guests and our glasses of Chardonnay, the spring sunshine edges into the evening and the children run back and forth from the garden to the back room. 

My friend lights a cigarette. “Do you want one?”, she offers. I decline but share a story about smoking outside of a nightclub in a snowstorm. We laugh and I feel a sense of lightness. When I arrive back home later that evening, I go into the bathroom and turn on the shower. Opening up Spotify, I select ‘Another day in Paradise’ and press play. The lyrics, “All those things we tried forgetting, I remember” blares through my iPhone speaker.