Writings by me

The latest bee in my bonnet is our culture’s obsession with mums bouncing back after having babies, to get our bodies back, to get back to work and back to our friendships, back to our sex lives, social lives and everything else, as if nothing extraordinary has happened. There’s a real lack of acceptance of this.

The truth is that we DO change after becoming mums and that is ok. Some of it’s bad; some of it’s good. But it is the truth and not accepting it is not good for us. Expecting to be the same after becoming a parent is asking for trouble. Bouncing back is not the goal; adapting to this new phase of your life is far healthier for yourself and for wider society.

On becoming a mum, one of my biggest fears was that I wouldn’t be the same afterwards. That my body would change forever and never snap back. My teenage diet of Heat magazine showing mums snapping back to pre-baby bodies within a very short time period of giving birth did not help. And it’s not just a physical thing. Mentally I am a different person from who I was before I had children. Your life changes. Not accepting this, because of a culture that demands you snap back is damaging and probably another reason why so many women struggle with PND.

Let me give you an example…

When I found out I was pregnant with Freddie, I worried constantly that my life would never be the same. That my body would never be the same, that I’d never be able to do all the things I wanted because I was a mum. It wasn’t just internal worry; one really lovely friend told me how my vagina would never ever be the same again (she’s no longer my friend and my vagina is just fine thank you).

The question is, would I have worried and obsessed so much about ‘getting back to normal,’ after having babies, if that wasn’t the expectation in the first place? If actually, instead of ‘bouncing back,’ society encouraged us to rest, recover and re-evaluate? Because that is ok you know. It’s ok to not bounce back straightaway. Seven years on and I only now know that I won’t ever bounce back or be the same as I was. But that’s not the goal anymore and it really never was.