Who is mothering the mother?
It’s late into the night. You are bone tired but you cannot sleep.
It’s your rapid heartbeat.
It’s the constant beeping.
It’s the competing screams of mothers and their newborns.
Somehow your partner has passed out in the chair next to your hospital bed. An empty pizza box on his lap. An open bag of size 1 nappies by his feet. The baby dozes on your bare chest, her tiny, limp body pressing heavy on your stomach, her former home. You feel a pain so brutal that you want to scream. It makes you feel light-headed, feverish. Your mouth is so dry that your breath catches in your throat. But you dare not move even an inch, you dare not make a sound for fear of waking her. If she wakes she will cry; scream. If she wakes she will want yet another feed. And you cannot do it. Any of it.
Your phone lights up.
The messages keep coming. They don’t seem to stop.
Congratulations, you’re a mum!
She’s so precious!
Enjoy every moment!
This should be the happiest day of your life. You should be lying here right now, exhausted, yes, but energised by the pure, unbridled love you have for this tiny, helpless being.
She needs you. You are all she has.
The love is there, as expected. It is primal, instinctive. You cannot help but feel it.
But also loss. So much loss.
That you were unprepared for.
A conflicting identity has been thrust upon you. You felt it the moment your daughter arrived into this world.
It is inconceivable how one can exist without the other.
How you can be both mother and motherless.
How you can do without receiving.
How you can be without having.
Who is mothering the mother?