Motherhood isn’t what I thought it would be: A reflection on “The Motherload”

My daughter recently turned six months old, and as I reflected on this beautiful milestone, I was able to admit that motherhood isn’t what I thought it would be.

Now, with half a year of mothering under my belt, I can say that I'm getting the hang of it. I’m absolutely obsessed and in love with my dream girl and could not be happier to live each day with her and for her.

But the path to getting here wasn’t easy. 

It isn’t for many women, but seldom do mothers admit this painful truth out loud. 

It’s one of many truths mothers learn to swallow and hide for the sake of those around them–their first act of selflessness being stifling the conflicting reality of these painful feelings alongside the beautiful gift that is their new baby.

I recently read ‘The Motherload,’ a memoir by Sarah Hoover, which acted as an invitation to be more honest about the experience of becoming a mother.

Hoover’s brutally honest account of motherhood and her challenges with postpartum depression shone a light into the complex, often contradictory experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum. 

One excerpt towards the end of the book stayed with me.

“I thought about what the word [motherload], in any of its spellings, meant to me–how the load of being a mother can be almost unbearable, how I’d barely made it through. How searingly painful it had been to shoulder all the burdens of birthing a child in even the best of circumstances. How much the experience had diverted my life–how there’d been so much to learn from it.”

How often do you hear mothers admit out loud how brutalizing the experience can be?

We focus so much on the amazing, adorable, incredible babies (deservedly so), but moms, still bleeding, still in excruciating pain and still trying to mentally come to terms with the weight of their new role, fade into the background.

Meanwhile, motherhood is often portrayed as full of sunshine and rainbows–especially online. 

You see women describing how their pregnancies and childbirth were beautiful experiences and how their children have given their life new purpose, which may very well be true.

But as I thought about my experience, in pregnancy and in the early days after a traumatic birth, I thought there was something wrong with me for not automatically feeling that way.

“In my defense, birth and motherhood did not match up to the narrative I'd been fed, and it felt like a nasty trick. And while my mental breakdown was embarrassing at times, [it also showed] how pernicious it is to sell tales of motherhood being so distinctly wonderful and feminine: the very essence of womanhood,” Hoover writes.

I knew nothing about being a mom and I was scared I wouldn’t measure up to the test.

I hated being pregnant. I was eternally exhausted, emotional, uncomfortable and scared the entire time. 

I hated the feeling of being unable to do so many of my favourite things. 

My anxiety made me obsess every day about every movement or lack thereof, agonizing over the time between appointments when I’d get to hear my girl’s heartbeat again and feel a temporary sense of relief.

This certainly didn’t make me think I’d love my child any less.

But I did feel like there must be something wrong with me for not constantly thinking about the miracle of carrying a child in my body, of the safe haven I created for her before she even arrived in the real world. 

Hoover points out in her book that when babies are born, “a fetus will leach calcium from the mother’s bones if it isn't fed enough via the umbilical cord. We are parasites to our mothers to begin with, dependent on them for existence and for connection.”

This doesn’t change as they grow.

How can you disappear yourself, your own wants, needs and desires in order to ensure that this child has all that they could ever need?

How can you give all that you have with a smile on your face and no word of your own suffering, yet somehow still feeling inadequate as a mother?

These were things I pondered while pregnant.

In the book, Hoover talks about how a traumatic birthing experience dredged up trauma of her own, acting as a catalyst for the way she viewed the early days and months of her motherhood experience. 

I too was absolutely petrified of childbirth. 

I read the books, watched the TikToks and tried to focus on positive affirmations for a safe and positive birthing experience. 

Unfortunately, my plans also didn’t go as I wished. 

My contractions started at 1AM on a Monday morning, growing in intensity for a few hours until they were unbearable. 

I felt them in my lower back, a spasm every time I contracted. Surely, after the 3 hours of this, I thought I was well on my way to meeting my sweet daughter. 

We arrived at the hospital, met by a nurse who was unlike the others I had met in the ward before—she was cold and seemed indifferent to my anxieties.

She gave me some pain medication and told me I was barely dilated and that I should go home and come back once I was further along. 

This went on for hours, we went home and returned to the hospital a few more times to receive more pain meds which failed to work while I agonized at home, barely dilating.

When we returned to the hospital for the third time, I was finally dilated enough to receive an epidural, only the anesthetist in the hospital was in surgery and we would have to wait. 

We waited hours as I rolled around in pain, the contractions in my back worsening by the minute before he arrived. Finally, once my epidural was administered, I felt some relief.

However, it was short lived. The epidural stopped working as the pain worsened. Every painful contraction was like a knife to my back. 

My water needed to be manually broken by the doctor, another thing that made me feel like I was doing something wrong–my body once again failing me.

I writhed on the table in agony for hours, until finally by midnight I was fully dilated–nearly 24 hours after I went into labour. 

I pushed for an hour and a half, with no success, one of my legs completely numb from the failed epidural. 

I was making zero progress and the doctor told me the baby wasn’t progressing forward. Finally, she told me she thought my pelvis was too narrow for the baby’s head, which would explain the lack of movement.

She then told me, “I could keep trying if I wanted to.”

If I wanted to?! 

I was in excruciating pain on the table, contracting with no pain medicine and physically unable to push my child out, feeling like a complete failure even though she told me it wasn’t possible. 

I was then told I needed to have an emergency C-section. It was going to take some time to get prepped, and while I waited, I genuinely thought I was going to go unconscious.

I thrashed in pain, convulsing on the table with each contraction. They checked in and told me the baby’s heartbeat was okay, but I couldn’t focus on anything. I just begged the staff to help take me out of my pain. 

25 hours after going into labour, I finally met my daughter at 3:23 the next morning. She was perfect and I was in love.

In the days following, I had to come to terms with the traumatic experience while healing both physically and emotionally.

I felt like a shell of my former self.

I could barely move as I recovered from surgery, unable to respond to my daughter's cries because I was too in pain to lift her out of her bedside bassinet.

Starting off mothering feeling helpless certainly contributed to my anxiety. 

“No one even told me–and certainly no doctor told me–that even the most normal, standard, and easy pregnancy, birth or parenthood situation could be traumatic and churn up past trauma, that fear and derailment after such a transformative experience could actually be considered a rational response,” Hoover writes. 

In the early days and months, I struggled immensely. 

I was sleep deprived and felt like I was failing at getting my baby to do something so basic.

I also felt like I was failing in all of my relationships, barely able to show up for myself, all of my energy going towards healing, and towards my baby.

The missed text messages and emails piled up, along with the laundry and dishes, my to-do list, and my ‘self care activities’ I told myself I’d eventually get to.

I didn’t know who I was, I felt like I’d never feel like myself again, I felt guilty for any time away from my baby, and most importantly, I felt like a failure for not feeling the sunshine and rainbows I’d heard about. 

How could I have the most incredible gift in the world and still be sad? How could I let the fog consume me when the light in my daughter’s eyes shone so bright?

I felt helpless most days. My anxiety consumed me. 

I had no choice but to push it all down and carry on.

In the first few months of motherhood I now realize I was emotionally depleted and mentally absent. 

I thought I’d do more with my baby while on maternity leave, but each day I was crippled by anxiety, fear and sadness–too scared to go on the solo adventures I’d dreamed of while pregnant, feeling like it looked so much easier for everyone else.

I loved my daughter more than words could describe but each night when my head hit the pillow, I felt defeated. I felt anxious and I felt scared.

The cycle was repetitive and it was exhausting.

Would I ever find my way back to myself? 

As I have started to emerge from the fog, I know now that there is light on the other side, but it doesn’t erase the storm it took to get here. 

I’ve never been happier. I’ve never laughed and smiled more, I’m more present, I find joy in small things, and I love watching the world through her eyes. 

I feel so lucky to be a mom. I feel blessed to have a daughter who genuinely lights up every day and reminds me to stop and smell the roses. 

But if I’m honest, motherhood wasn’t what I thought it would be. 

I wish as moms we would give ourselves permission to say the quiet part out loud and admit that while our child’s existence quite literally is sunshine and rainbows, the experience of motherhood is a lot more complex than that. 

It’s complicated. It’s scary. It’s beautiful. It’s life changing. 

I love who I’m becoming as a mom, but I still grieve for myself for what it took to get here.