I don't love my husband the same way as I once did.
Hear me out.
The way motherhood changes your entire internal make-up is incomprehensible and impossible to voice. And every single mother will go through the changes with some mum's never acknowledging it or ever wanting to talk about it. The way we view ourselves is entirely different along with the idea of everything that surrounds us. Our priorities completely shift as well as our values, boundaries, beliefs, desires and even how we manage our time is flipped on it's head. That's why so many of us change jobs after becoming a mum. So many of us go part time or decide to come out of work entirely so that we can spend more quality time with our babies and families. When I say it all changes, I mean it - the language we use, what we eat, how we choose to take care of ourselves, the music we listen to, what we do in our free time, our motivation, our will and tolerance for driving, the idea and understanding of finality and mortality, our friendship circles, how we emotionally respond to art and poetry and entertainment.
And let's be honest, this is usually only ever spoken about in secret. In small chats to our gal pals and sisters, maybe our own mum's. And maybe not. Maybe we just keep it to ourselves because we feel like a failure for admitting that we are struggling with the changes. Well, fuck being the silent mother anymore. I'm spilling all because we need to talk about it and we need to hear it.
You see, not only have we physically changed with growing a tiny human being, but we have psychologically changed and emotionally changed too. The maiden within you has passed and the mother has been born. You are a brand new you and you are figuring it all out again. Just like you did in puberty. Yep. You heard me right.
We can now make sense of this feeling and this upheaval, and this confusion and this absolute storm of a brain we now have. A term that we can finally call Matrescence is the transition of becoming a mother: from pre pregnancy to pregnancy, birth and the after. This term was actually coined in 1973 by medical anthropologist, Dana Raphael, but we are only starting to become aware of it more generally now because more mum's are opening up about how we are commonly feeling during this super silent time. More studies are being done into how motherhood changes women. Matrescence is like the turning point of adolescence in that our body's hormones and chemical balances are shaken up to a cocktail of unsteadiness, uneasiness and confusion. We question our existence and how we fit into the world as new mother's just like we did as teenagers. We give grace for teens going through this expected huge shift, so why aren't we giving becoming a mother the same credit?!
And - another big question - if who we are as a person is affected so heavily by this chemical riot, why wouldn't our external relationships be impacted by this too?
Before my daughter was born, my husband and I did everything together. We were best friends and no other would come before him. We decided what events we attended, impromptu date nights were pretty regular, we were impulsive about our free time, completely connected physically and emotionally and were always each other's light after a hard day at work. We knew exactly what would make the other laugh, we were self assured and confident in our future desires which would overlap with one another's. We were just so in sync.
Then we had our Violet. And everything changed. The way we learned about ourselves after having her was and still is fucking mega, and it hits you like a tonne of bricks. Trying to navigate sleepless nights and being sleep deprived, not talking about so much of what we needed to, but making sure our first priority was keeping our tiny girl alive, who changed the last nappy? Are my nipples too sore to feed? What do my scars look like? Can you take the bin out? What's for tea? In between sobbing, irritations and aversions, snappiness and feeling so disconnected to myself, it would be a wonder how I would even find time to eat some days. And if I didn't feel connected to myself, how could I ever connect to Danny or Violet?
Each day would greet us the same and I was becoming more and more lost in who I was and what I wanted in life. Having a baby was meant to fix everything wasn't it?? I mean, it was all I wanted for so long. So why was I so sad? Why wasn't I able to reach out to my gals as easily? My husband, albeit being in the same room as him, I still found it crippling not being able to feel that connection that was so strong in the very beginning. Now, we would talk about how I was feeling but what was coming out was anger and frustration mostly because I was so uneducated about my new mother identity and instead thought it was abnormal and I was failing as a mother. Because I didn't understand my emotions, I was actually ignoring and rejecting them, making them appear more often and more extreme and overwhelming, making it impossible to voice them intelligently.
Cut to 2 years later and I have done the research and reading and I've talked and talked to so many mum's who have felt the exact same thing as me during this time. I know now that so much of what I was feeling was completely normal and healthy. As we have already established, becoming a mother is huge.
Disclosure: I don't know at what point the feelings around matrescence turned into postnatal depression for me and I know PND was one of the hardest experiences of my life, but, I hold space for my own story and I am proud of it. However, every mum that ever has been, will have experienced matrescence in their own way when they have transitioned from maiden to mother. Some maybe without knowing it. Some of us will have felt that all too heavily. All experiences are valid and held here.
'Time is a healer' they say. I would wager it's not time that heals, but talking. We think time helps, but all time does is allow us to forget how it affected us. We eventually don't hurt anymore, so we think we have healed, but instead we have buried that feeling, which we know all too well what that does to us. All I know is, when I started to talk more, and I mean really talk, finding the right vocabulary and becoming more able to vocalise how I was feeling, the uncomfortable and tough stuff, becoming vulnerable with myself and holding space for my feelings and not rejecting them, I started to feel more able and proud of who I was. I was now more content and confident in myself and so I then had the capacity to read around parenting, motherhood, how women have evolved and ultimately put in the work for loving my new self. Plus, I know that version of me can always change, and that's okay. Danny was now able to see me as the evolving mum and he fell in love with who I was becoming. And I was too.
By accepting and loving myself and doing this self work, I was then able to start seeing my husband for the dad he was. The man he had become whilst I had been wrapped up in becoming mum, was one that cared more for me and our daughter than I could ever have imagined, he was the protector of us and our home, the organiser, the lover to me and the first man my girl would ever love, the ever playful, the shoulder to always lean on, the giver and the kindest person I have ever known. He had once again became the light at the end of my day. We started to laugh again and we found easy conversation where once there was silence. One thing stayed consistent: we never stopped holding eachother.
Violet kept evolving and we kept loving her more with each day. With that, I showed more love, patience and acceptance to myself and in turn, I don't love my husband the same way as I once did. I love Danny so much more than I ever did, in a completely different way to before. And there's a big reason for that.
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