Motherhood: When the knowers become the thinkers.

I went to a secondary school that regularly celebrated their ‘position’ in the top 10 in the country, based on their results in GCSE and A Level league tables. I have an A* in French GCSE, despite not and never having been able to actually speak more than very basic French. The prospect of getting a ‘B’ in anything felt mortifying to me. 

Did that string of academic ‘success’ make me a thoughtful, curious, creative person? No. I think I’ve always been those things, but despite the journey through education, not because of it. What I became very, very good at (and I know what a lot of you reading will be very, very good at), was learning and regurgitating the correct ‘stuff’ and being rewarded for it. 

It’s often not until the momentous life events of pregnancy and birth, that the flaws in this learned approach come to light. 

You might find yourself coming to this pregnancy journey following this tried and tested route to success.. you plan to learn EVERYTHING there is to learn about giving birth. You’re going deep into data. You’ll read the research papers. You’ll dig out the guidelines. Because knowledge is power. If you know everything, you will succeed. If you fail, it’s because you didn’t know enough, train hard enough, revise long enough. And you do not want to fail. God, how terribly embarrassing.

Deeply ingrained in anyone like me, is the desire to ‘be good’ at things. And EVEN though we can rationalise that it is impossible to ‘fail’ at birth, there’s a secret part of you (that you’re trying to hide) that still thinks YOU could. (I remember a huge emotional battle with myself after accepting an induction for my first baby, thinking  just how much I wanted ‘to have done it myself’ and worrying about what other people would think of me. My aim wasn’t solely that we had a safe and ‘positive’ experience of birth; I also really, really want to ‘be good’ at it (whatever ‘be good’ meant in my head at that time). I was NOT good at pregnancy, thanks to 9 months of hyperemesis, did this mean I was failing at birth too?). 

It’s taken almost a decade of self reflection and development to really, REALLY shake the urge to ‘be good’ at everything- much to my 8 year old’s dismay when I jog in last in the Mums race at Sports Day. (He WILL not be slave to the ‘be the best’ narrative, if I’ve got anything to do with it!).

Hey maybe you’re like me: maybe you had an inkling this approach seemed stupid whilst you were living it (but you did still live it. It did still impact you). Or maybe you’re having this realisation now, pregnant for the first time. Maybe you’re expecting your second or third and motherhood has rudely and confrontingly shown you that this isn’t your finals exam, your dissertation. This isn’t your French GCSE (you can’t just learn by heart a 3 page long speech about recycling in French and use random sentences from it to answer every question on the paper, ahem.). There isn’t some magic correlation between innate talent, hard work and being a ‘good’ parent. 

And I think the difference really, is the deeply physical, emotional and relational aspects of conception, pregnancy, birth, feeding, motherhood. I’ll be honest, I had no emotional connection to my French GCSE. But when you really FEEL something, you can’t just rely on the data for the answers any more. When it’s frankly impossible to hold total control over the outcome, we can feel totally unmoored. And we either surrender to it, or it drives us even deeper into the rabbit hole of learning ‘all the stuff’ (and not always to our benefit). 

Sure, the science, the research, the biology, the system; the medicine- it’s important to understand. Essential even, in today’s maternity system. But it can’t end there. It won’t guarantee you a certain outcome or experience. And in part, our preparation needs to be sitting with the feelings that lack of control brings up for us. Reflecting on our need for total control or external measures of success.

Becoming a mother for the first time, or the second or more brings us this wonderful gift of perspective. Maybe it’s a gift gently unwrapped and revealed a little at a time. Maybe it’s a gift set on fire and smashed into your face so you have no choice but to see it. However it comes, it’s pretty cool. Sure, my brain hurts from the constant thinking, but my heart also sings for the peace it finds me, the connections it’s made me and the impact it’s helped me have in the world. And if it’s not landed for you yet, I’m excited that it will. (And it will!). Your only job is to be curious, listen and be open to the new version of you that it will make you. 

You’ll never know everything. 

Give yourself grace, and space to reflect.

Because motherhood, is when knowers become thinkers.