Picture the scene. You slept maybe three or four hours (non-sequentially) last night. The night before that was no better, and…the nights before that are beyond the reach of your memory. Somehow, you manage to get the cause of your lack of shuteye (otherwise known as your child) into a clean nappy and an outfit that more or less seems to match the demands of the season – and then into the buggy.
Despite the fact your brain isn’t really functioning, your two feet and some muscle memory deliver you safely to a park where you buy a hot flat white; the highlight of your day. Sitting on a bench at the edge of the sandpit, staring into the distance and enjoying a moment of silence, someone walks by.
They look first at your baby and then at you, before giving you a knowing smile and a gentle wink. ‘Enjoy every minute!’ they beam, gliding into the distance and out of your life forever.
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Fury pulses through your veins as postnatal adrenaline and sleep deprivation swirl together. Your eyes begin to sting as tears pool at the corners. You feel ignored – as though your own needs no longer matter to anyone, not even yourself. At the same time, another familiar feeling hits. Guilt. Because, well, isn’t she right, this well-meaning passerby? Aren’t you so lucky to be where you are right now?
It’s true you love your child beyond any measure you had previously understood, you think. At the same time, though, you resent them, too. You want this new, tiny dependent to leave you alone, just for a bit, so you can rest.
So you can wash your hair and call a friend. Sometimes you fantasise about walking out the front door and never looking back (although you’re careful never to confess this out loud). But at the same time, your love for them is so fierce that you know you would throw your body in the way of a bullet for them without a nanosecond of hesitation.
If this all sounds incongruous that’s because it is. Never in your life have you contained so many contradictory emotions all at the same time. It’s new and strange and you don’t have the language to explain the feeling to anyone else. How can you be both the happiest you’ve ever been while deeply grieving the loss of something you can’t quite explain all at the same time?
The Matrescence
I first came across the concept of ‘maternal ambivalence’ when reading the brilliant book Matrescence by writer Lucy Jones. Immediately, I felt an affinity with the term. I had heard of the word ‘ambivalence’ in relation to psychology — a phrase used to explain the state of experiencing a lot of different conflicting emotions about the same event. But I hadn’t heard it discussed as a specific experience that is common among mothers and parents.
‘I was suddenly hit with a healthy dose of every single positive and negative feeling under the sun’
In hindsight, it makes total sense that many of those entering motherhood — an experience that demands so much from you — might not always feel entirely congruent about the shift. But as a child of the Internet and then a young adult of the social media generation, most of what I’d heard about mothering until this point came from two very different types of people.
First: those who were absolutely elated and found total happiness and — as I once read — ‘celestial bliss’ in becoming a mother. And then came those who found it really very hard and challenging, moaned about it a lot and probably — as I arrogantly assumed — were suffering with some sort of postnatal mental health issue.
And yet, as soon as I became a mother myself, I was suddenly hit with a healthy dose of every single positive and negative feeling under the sun — often all at once. How confusing!
Out of sync
According to Dr Martha Deiros Collado, clinical psychologist and author of How to Be The Grown-Up, my experience is not rare. ‘Ambivalence is a common and normal experience in motherhood,’ she reassures, ‘because the reality of parenting is often a mismatch with societal narratives’.
For example, she says, you may not feel like ‘treasuring every moment’ when your child is in the midst of a tantrum, kicking, screaming and throwing anything they can grab in sight. ‘Mothering is a big responsibility that is often laden with worry, stress, and fear — all whilst striving to care for a baby’s wellbeing as much as possible.’
But, she explains, motherhood also brings other feelings such as anger, boredom, resentment, guilt, grief, and rage. ‘All of [these] are contradictory to the societal story of what being “a good mother” looks like,’ she says.
‘You may not feel like ‘treasuring every moment’
This certainly resonates with me. Although I know those around me would never expect or wish me to perform for them, I felt under pressure, especially in the early days, to seem like I knew what I was doing — and to be demonstrably enjoying ‘every moment’ of it.
All of this, while trying to get my head round breastfeeding, a whole new skill that really wasn’t working, and to recover from birth and nine months of pregnancy, which — although a pretty positive experience for me — had taken a huge physical toll on my body.
Lose control
In my particular circumstances, I think this need to appear competent at mothering from day zero was the product of a few competing factors. First, the intense pressure I felt to be visibly explicitly grateful at all times for the good fortune of being able to conceive, carry and birth my son safely, and which I never wanted to even appear to take for granted for even a second. Or for anyone to doubt my love for my child.
Second, having generally been able to accomplish most things I set my mind to in my life to date, I felt a pressure to continue to do so even in this brand new context. Surely I could just study my way out of any uncertainty I was feeling, as I always had before? And third, as discussed before, I felt an intense pressure to display the credentials of the so-called ‘natural mother’ I had always aspired to be (who, spoiler alert, doesn’t actually exist).
Dr Martha is quick to remind me that ambivalence doesn’t come from a lack of love for a child, something I’ve come to accept over the past two years. ‘It comes with the love a parent has for a child, and the experience of losing themselves in parenting,’ she says, ‘mothers are likely to have had conflicting feelings for as long as mothers have been around’.
‘Ambivalence is saying ‘I feel both,’ not picking one or the other’
When you notice you are having incongruous feelings towards mothering your child, she says, remind yourself that ambivalence is actually saying ‘I feel both,’ rather than choosing between one of the conflicting feelings or thoughts. ‘Integrate them both as part of your experience.’ This, Dr Martha explains, might sound like ‘I love my child and at this moment I can’t stand them,’ or ‘I feel blessed to be a parent and I miss my old life’.
Remembering to be compassionate with yourself is crucial to navigating this often wobbly (and confusing) emotional experience, says Dr Martha. ‘Parenting is tough and everyone is muddling through,’ she says. ‘You accept that sometimes you will be angry with a partner, find them boring or even want to do things apart — this is healthy and important.’ The relationship you have with your child should really be no different.
Off-script
I firmly believe that a huge contributor to any negative feelings some mothers might experience about themselves, especially in the beginning, is the expectations we inherit from a wider social narrative that paints mothers as effortlessly selfless beings. Within this very narrow fantasy, there is no space for any feelings other than bliss and ‘completeness’.
This can mean that when our experiences veer off-script, we tumble into the realm of emotional self-flagellation with ease. There’s simply no blueprint for us to follow.
‘So many mothers feel shame and guilt about having these mixed feelings’
‘So many mothers feel shame and guilt about having these mixed feelings,’ says Dr Martha, ‘but remembering that this is normal, that it doesn’t make you a bad parent, and that it isn’t connected to the love you have for your children may open up space for you’.
As Dr Martha puts it, embracing the full range of feelings that show up without shame, and being able to find safe and compassionate spaces to talk about this is so important in life, but especially in motherhood. ‘Knowing that you are not alone is a big comfort and when it comes to ambivalence, most mothers feel like this too,’ she says.
In my case, I am using it as a reminder to embody the wisdom that I want my children to inherit: that no feelings are bad or wrong, and that to be human is not to always be happy, but to experience the full spectrum of emotion — sometimes all at once.
That way we can appreciate the times when we feel more contented, rather than expecting that to be our baseline, and we can grow more comfortable with our emotional discomfort.
Because life can be tough, and as their mother, I believe that the greatest gift I can bestow on my children is the confidence and strength to weather any future storms they may face when I am no longer able to be their shield.
This article originally appeared on Women’s Health U.K.
