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Praise for Lost in Motherhood

‘At turns hilarious, horrifying and always painfully honest, [this] is a memoir about how one woman ‘gained a baby and lost her shit.’ This is the side of motherhood and what it can do to your mental health and your labia that isn’t covered in NCT classes.’

SARRA MANNING, Red Magazine

‘A spit-out-your-tea funny chronicle of becoming a mum for the first time, from the awkwardness of making friends on maternity leave to the politics of post-baby sex. A great read.’

Marie Claire

‘An honest take on the way we approach and define motherhood. It made me laugh and Grace is a refreshing voice on the subject.’

LORRAINE CANDY, Sunday Times Style

‘Hilarious in parts, poignant in others, reading Grace’s musings on motherhood felt like stumbling across the diary of a witty classmate. I wanted to hug her, thank her for reassuring me that I’m not alone in questioning my self-identity as a mother and then I wanted to invite her to the pub so we could chat about pregnancy wind and post-birth coital relations. Five stars plus a little bit of laughter-wee.’

SARAH TURNER, author of The Unmumsy Mum

‘I howled with laughter’

LUCY PAVIA, Marie Claire

‘Honestly brilliant’

EMINE RUSTON, Psychologies magazine

‘This is the best book my daughter ever wrote about her vagina.’

CHRISTOPHER TIMOTHY

‘Grace takes a deeper, more raw look at what being a mother means for a modern woman. Like Bryony Gordon did for the twenty-somethings in the Wrong Knickers, Grace has now shone a similarly funny and candid light on motherhood. She has managed to express exactly how I felt as a new mum, but in the way you’d like your funniest motherhood anecdote to be told.’

HELEN WHITAKER, author of The School Run

‘A friend of mine just had her first baby. I didn’t send her champagne or flowers or breast pads. I sent her Grace’s book. I’m now that baby’s godmother. It’s that good.’

GEORGIA TENNANT

‘Low on data but high on empathy, this is the memoir on the overwhelming identity crisis that becoming a mother can be.’

The Pool

‘This book absolutely blew me away.’

RUTH CRILLY

‘Grace writes with wicked wit and real emotional resonance too – even though I’m not a mother I related deeply to her exploration of what it’s like to navigate the world as a woman, and the expectations that are placed upon us all.’

DAISY BUCHANAN, author of How To Be A Grown Up

‘Brilliant!’

CLEMMIE TELFORD

‘Such a good read, even for us dads. There’s talk of vaginas, babies, IKEA chairs and, er, more vaginas.’

JAMIE DAY

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my girl, of course. Kid, you made me as much as I made you, and the world is so much better with you in it. I love you. Thanks for your patience, your joyousness and your helpful notes. You’re already wise and funny beyond your years. I’m excited about you, bubs – go get it.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Lost in Motherhood

Dedication

PROLOGUE

PART I: THE THREAT

1. THE FIRST TRIMESTER/SHOCK

2. THE SECOND TRIMESTER/DENIAL

3. THE THIRD TRIMESTER/ACCEPTANCE

PART II: THE STRUGGLE

4. BIRTH

5. 0–3 MONTHS

6. 3–6 MONTHS

7. 6–12 MONTHS

PART III: THE CRISIS

8. CRISIS TALKS

9. RECOVERY

10. THE WORST NEWS

11. RELAPSE

12. A NICE FOOT RUB

13. I EVENTUALLY SELF-SOOTHE, I THINK

THE AFTERBIRTH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

I attempt to sit still, to look as relaxed and open as possible, but I’m on one of those chairs that leans back on a bendy frame. You know the ones? That kind of plastic-looking blonde wood with a creamy-coloured leather cushion. I looked it up online after our session – it’s from IKEA (obviously) and it’s called ‘Poang’, which is Swedish for ‘point’. As in, what’s the point? I think people buy them as nursing chairs, too.

Well, I would have lost a nipple if I’d tried to breastfeed in this chair, let me tell you. My stomach muscles were shot to hell once I’d given birth and I’d have been about as steady on a rocking chair as a drunken eel. Plus, my vagina was so mashed up, the idea of grinding it back and forth on a beech veneer would have broken me for good. I definitely rocked in those early days, but it was more of the rocking-in-a-dark-corner type of move, deprived of sleep and a functioning pelvic floor. The sort you can do on completely immobile furniture or even the floor.

You have to be so cocky to make one of these chairs rock gently and comfortingly, and not throw you off like a spooked horse. I am not cocky or relaxed in this scenario, and have to slam my feet down suddenly to steady myself. I’m aware it’s made me look uneasy. One false move and you look like you can’t handle it. This chair is basically a metaphor for motherhood and the predicament I find myself in now.

I am sitting here in a stranger’s living room with no shoes or socks on. Bit weird. It’s OK, I’m actually here for a nice bit of reflexology, with a birthday voucher from my mum and I’m finally getting round to using it six months later, on the day it expires. ‘You deserve a bit of a treat, darling,’ she’d told me at the time, ‘You look a bit knackered.’ Weird way to kick me when I’m down, I think, smiling through clenched teeth at the thought of trying to fit in this so-called treat, and of the new electric toothbrush I’d hinted at for three weeks. But my mum volunteered to babysit and now here I am on Pat’s Poang, answering her questions about my medical history.

I’m an easy customer in this respect – no operations, no medications, no family history of diabetes. Uneventful pregnancy and straight-forward vaginal delivery. Couple of stitches, nothing to write home – or down on a form – about. I don’t have so much as a high blood pressure or a tennis elbow, so we whizz through the checklist. A nice little foot rub, I think to myself, Might be awkward when she finds the verruca I picked up at BabySwim, but otherwise, I’ll just sit here, relax, be serene … Then she says it:

‘And how about your emotional wellbeing, how are you feeling right now?’

I smile, a smile I plaster on my face, which should say I’m fine! But usually makes people take a step back and ask, ‘Are you sure?’ from a safe distance. It’s become my ‘mum face’ – the mask that covers up the underlying cocktail of anxiety and bewilderment which has been simmering since I gave birth nearly three years ago. But this time, it slips:

‘I would say … well, I am maybe a bit anxious. Well, a lot. And most of the time, too.’

‘Oh?’ She doesn’t seem surprised, ‘And why’s that?’

‘Mainly because I love my daughter so much I’m terrified I’ll lose her or fuck it all up for her. I don’t think I was ready to have kids and I have literally no idea what I’ll do when she starts nursery because I don’t know who I am anymore without her.’ This sounds much worse out loud than in my head and I think perhaps I’ve overdone it a bit. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love being a mum!’ Reel it back in. Don’t call the Social, don’t take her away! ‘But I find myself just bowling through the routine every day and then feel a bit joyless when she’s gone to bed. Like, what’s it all for? I mean, I really enjoy my job, but doing it makes me feel guilty, plus, I’m not sure I’m very good at it any more. Is she even having a nice time? I don’t have much of a social life anymore; I don’t really have many friends nearby. I don’t really know what to say half the time. I’ve also lost my sex drive,’ – I soundlessly mouth ‘sex drive’ rather than say it out loud – ‘my body, my name even …’ I pause – the massive digital clock on the wall flickers to 10.25 and breaks my flow. It’s a beautiful autumnal day and I catch a glimpse of golden leaves and rolling hills outside as the Roman blind is blown away from the window for a second. It feels good sharing like this out of my family’s earshot.

‘So you feel it’s changed you, Grace? Becoming a mother?’

One minute I was just me, doing my thing. I defined myself by my likes and dislikes, my desires, career and relationships. I did whatever I wanted to do. After years of body-image battles, I finally felt like the agent of my own body and I’d grown to understand how it worked. No matter how far I travelled or how my life changed slightly, the constant was the familiarity of my own self. But a cursory New Year’s shag before the takeaway curry arrived was enough to change my life forever. In that instant, I lost control of my body and mind as they were repurposed to grow a baby. My identity started to slide off me as hormones and then love infiltrated every thought and feeling. The colleagues, friends and even strangers who played a part in shaping and supporting my sense of self slipped away, work dwindled as every hour became a moment in my child’s life. I felt like I had to fight twice as hard to have a voice. My confidence was knocked by the constant feedback from everyone and their suffocating deluge of opinions and anecdotes. I tried to fit in everywhere – old life, new life – and didn’t fit in anywhere.

It doesn’t matter how you come to motherhood – biologically, by adoption or surrogacy – it changes everything. You are now a MUM. What I experienced is an identity crisis which no social group, age, creed or race is immune to. It’s something I’ve heard of in different forms from every mother I’ve ever met, an uncomfortable truth that belies the belief that being a mother is the most natural thing a woman could do. From the physical and emotional changes you encounter to the way your agenda and daily life is altered, your identity is constantly up for redefinition. ‘I thought I was patient,’ I would think to myself, ‘I thought I was bright …’ And you’re expected to shelve these concerns because you don’t matter anymore. Not compared to the baby, how you’re working to help shape her identity.

My coat is folded over my lap and my fingers are burrowing through the pocket where a thread has come loose. I tug at it, pushing my fingertips through the ragged seam into the lining. This coat is enough of an answer to this question. I find a small, plastic toy fish floating around. Found Nemo, didn’t I? That would obviously never have happened to me before I had a child. Nor would the crispy Wet Wipe I’m nudging aside. Nor the coat itself – a navy blue, knee-length puffa coat, waterproof, functional and covered in stains. You don’t have a coat like this unless you’re a mum or a shepherd.

In truth, I’m unrecognisable from the person I was just three or four years ago, before I got pregnant. If you’d told me back then that I’d be sitting here now deep in the Sussex countryside, wearing leggings that bag around the knees and pouring my heart out to a total stranger in a beige tunic, I would have called bullshit. Back then I was invincible and so sure of myself.

But here I am in this ugly chair, one finger now tangled in the lining of my mum-coat, mid identity crisis. I’ve lost sass and flirting, and about 65 per cent of my labia. I’ve lost perspective and 5,689 hours of sleep. I don’t stride or strut now; I hurry and chivvy, usually weighed down by my child, umpteen bags or a scooter. The responsibility is weighing heavy too, for this person I love so intensely – I am her advocate, I am her carer, and I have to get it right. But can I ever be good enough, be the parent she so deserves and I am in no way qualified to be? And where am I, where is the confident person I was before? I am now the wife who blackmails her husband for lie-ins, who criticises the way he looks at his phone when his child is asking him a question. I’m the woman who drives around for hours on end if it’ll help my kid nap, rather than face the screaming and ultimate failure of putting her in her cot and hoping for the best. I forget to turn up to things, I flake out on the nights out I used to live for, knowing the next day will be unbearable. I stand back from conversations with new people, no longer sure of how to introduce myself.

The simple bits of being a mum are obviously awesome – everyone knows how good it feels to hold your child, to laugh with them, to share their joy and see things afresh through their eyes. Even the more mundane bits can be an unexpected treat – it always surprises me how much I enjoy washing and drying her clothes, for example. I pick up the scrap of cardboard that holds the yoghurts together and tell my husband, ‘Ah, we’ll make something out of that’. I absolutely love being my child’s mother; nothing has made me happier, or could ever make me happier than being her mother. Nobody could love her more.

And this kid – she is the most amazing child. If I can’t excel at parenting this one, I’m seriously inadequate. She is incredible, the best thing ever. But the stuff is harder than anything I’ve ever endured. It’s hard sharing the experience and responsibility with someone else who may not always agree with you, the loss of sex and intimacy with that person, the onslaught of self-doubt. It’s hard to get through each day on so little sleep and then each night – hallucinating, nursing, arguing, worrying and begging for rest. I feel guilty when I’m not with her, guilty when I’m with her that I’m thinking about not being with her, or because we’re watching too much TV. I’m always tired, always.

I’ve been policing myself, too – cautioning myself not to become that kind of mum or that kind of woman. No sugar, no soft play, no iPad, no tacky plastic shit, no chemicals … but also, like, super-relaxed and laid-back. My ambitions have been compromised, of course they have, but what’s worse is that it bothers me. I’m also bad at work now, and when work’s going well, I’m bad at being a mum. And I’m scared every single day, scared she’ll die, that I’m doing it wrong, that I’m letting her down. I realise neither Pat nor I have said a word for a long time now.

‘Soooo, will we do the foot rubbing bit now?’ I ask eventually.

‘If you want to, but we can just talk if you’d like?’

Uh oh, sounds like Pat might be moonlighting as a therapist here, I think. Oh, I shouldn’t have said anything. When I’m not forthcoming, Pat places her pad down on the floor and reaches out to hold my hands in hers.

‘I think you really need to invest in some space for yourself,’ she goes on, ‘Have you tried meditating? Book 15 minutes out to meditate, another 15 for a walk outside, just you. And I think you’d really benefit from some body work too – regular sessions with me and maybe some cranial osteopathy. You need to make time for yourself, Grace.’

I consider this. ‘Do you have kids, Pat?’

‘No.’

‘Ah.’

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

THE FIRST TRIMESTER/SHOCK

You just know when you first find out you’re pregnant that having a baby is going to change everything. The obvious things like your day-to-day life, your financial status and your independence are hanging in the balance. Your home will quickly fill with plastic toys, the corners softened, the plugholes stuffed. Your body will be repurposed like a dodgy doer-upper on Homes Under The Hammer, which you might start watching because you’ll suddenly be switching from working woman to stay-at-home mum, at least until the stitches heal, but probably for a year.

I was most worried about how becoming a mum would affect my identity, with which I’d only just felt comfortable at the age of 28. If work, marriage, friendships, your body and even your name are directly affected by this twist in the road, where will YOU end up? ‘Just A Mum’ and nothing else? Finding out I was pregnant felt like taking a pair of scissors to the threads which my future hung from, snip-snip-snip – I knew I would have to change and I didn’t want to.

I know – this is not how books about child-bearing usually begin. They’re all BLESSED to be with child, the fulfilment of a lifelong dream to be pregnant. Well, I could write that book, for the record. My love for my child is endless, boundless and unconditional. I love being her mother. But this book is not about my baby or my relationship with her. It’s about saying, without caveat or excuse: being a mum is better than I’d ever imagined, harder than I thought possible and I am a completely different person now. I have gone through a transition at a rate that would make your eyes bleed.

If that’s not enough and you’re about to cast this book down in disgust and write me off as undeserving of the gift of childbirth, let me pre-empt some of the hard stuff with a little story. You’re still getting to know me, after all, and this story is quite a good yardstick for measuring my kind side.

When I was 19, I saved up for months and months to go on a turtle-saving expedition. If you’ve seen that Attenborough documentary or Moana you’ll know that turtles lay their eggs in the sand at the top of the beach and a baby turtle’s instinct when it hatches is to scratch its way up through the sand then head for the sea, scuttling towards the light of the moon bouncing off the water, where it will swim away and presumably find its mum and live a long and fulfilling life. But, sadly, now there are hotels and traffic to confuse them, many will wander the wrong way and try crossing a road and die under the wheels of a car. Also, they are poached and made into soup.

So I selflessly left a summer of partying behind me at my peak party age, and started trawling the beaches of Grand Cayman at 5am every morning to check nests and help any little guys that had got stuck to crawl up through the sand and make it to their destiny, to fulfil their little turtle dreams. So when you’re thinking, JESUS, THIS GIRL IS BLOODY AWFUL TO HER HUSBAND/MUM/GYNAECOLOGIST, just remember the tiny turtles I saved and how nurturing and motherly I must be beneath all that bravado. Ahh, little tiny turtles, guys! What’s cuter than that? God, I’m such a good person.

Before I became a vessel for my mother-in-law’s third grandchild (if that wouldn’t make a great slogan tee I don’t know what would) I felt fairly sure of who I was. Actually, I never paused to think about it. I felt young first and foremost – endless possibilities stretched out ahead of me once I’d earned a bit more money and turned 30. A map of places I would one day visit, a menu of experimental haircuts, clothes that really lasted and a collection of house plants lay in wait. I was building up to all that and in the meantime I was a swearer, a drinker, very occasional smoker and when I went back to my parents’ place, still an idle teenager, glued to their sofa because they had Sky and I wasn’t yet adult enough to sort that out for myself.

By 28 you kind of know the sort of friend you are, the sort of girlfriend, the sort of daughter. You know what makes you tick, what you can and can’t stomach, which drinks will make you blow chunks all over a car park and which will help you live your best life. You know how you handle work, stress, heartache and you know what kind of social being you are. But you probably have no idea what kind of mother you’ll be.

There was a lot of trial and error to make the 28-year-old me. A lot of hard work to take me from diligent intern to magazine staffer, then finally to this freelance career as a beauty writer, which was just taking off. I had fallen in love with my husband Rich at university and so we had grown up together and whittled ‘young professional’ identities side by side. Like most millennials,* we had lived with my parents for six months, and that’s as hard as it got for us.

We saved up and bought a tiny flat in Brighton once we were both working, and continued to save for sofas and TVs and maybe a holiday one day. Thanks to Rich’s unshakeably stoic and calm personality, I never had to work very much at being a girlfriend or wife, because it was the easiest gig in the world, but I was very aware of – and grateful for – our dynamic as partners. I remember reading an article in a bridal magazine when we were first engaged which asked, ‘What kind of bride will you be?’ and I remember thinking, just like, me … but in a wedding dress? It hadn’t affected either of us at all, getting married. I hadn’t even changed my name. During the week I was still a hard-working, single-minded writer for women’s magazines, and at the weekend I was a semi-retired party girl. I had just discovered karaoke and how adept I was at Cher’s greatest hits. I hadn’t encountered loss or redundancy or impotence – nothing that could throw me off-course for even a second. I was surrounded by brilliant, funny women all the time, who were just as selfish as me. There wasn’t a baby amongst us, just a working week punctuated by red wine, books, boxsets, shopping for olives and sex with my husband. There was no ill that couldn’t be remedied with a cocktail, a cheese sandwich and at worse, a cigarette. I was solid and robust.

Then one New Year’s Day, my husband thumbed in a softie just before the curry arrived, and somehow that was all it took to derail this well thought-out life. We hadn’t even had sex in a purposeful, deliberate way, really. Having been together for six years already we didn’t do it as often as we used to, and on New Year’s Day I was always overcome by a combination of hangover guilt and the need for fresh starts to announce that we would be doing it more often that year. We would make it a priority; it would be our New Year’s resolution to shag plentifully. And so every year, despite not wanting to, we would have sex, because to not have sex would set the tone for the year. But this perfunctory two-minute act was all it took to get those robust Yorkshire sperm into my reticent, slightly uptight eggs and lo, I was up the stick. Getting pregnant was the biggest curveball I’d ever been thrown. It was the ultimate kick-you-in-the-gut moment for a control freak like me, especially as I assumed I was infertile on account of the chlamydia.†

Too much? If you’re feeling like you already know more than is necessary about the workings of my genitals, I urge you to continue regardless. (Except you, Dad. If you’re reading this, chlamydia is a rare but very beautiful orchid. Don’t read the footnote, ’kay?) Think of it as an endurance test of sorts. I’m not sure what the reward is for enduring multiple descriptions of my innards, but still.

I blame motherhood for the need to over-share. I never used to discuss my vagina with anyone who wasn’t directly involved with it, and that was generally confined to my gynaecologist and my husband, and before that, a brief but distinguished list of men in their late teens/early 20s. And most of them didn’t discuss it per se, as much as compliment it or suggest it be better groomed.

But the minute my vagina was ripped open by a crowning head in a room of eight strangers, it became public property and my number-one topic of conversation. I took back control by talking about it to everyone, presumably so they’d get a fair idea of what it was like before they inevitably saw it. It’s possible I need therapy. Anyway, buckle up, there’s more to come. You’ll be able to draw a very accurate diagram of my labia by Chapter 7, and I urge you to do so.

Wait, why are there TWO lines?

Let me take you back to the moment the story really began. It’s 9.15am on 24 January 2012, and I’m at home in Hove, sitting on the toilet, staring down at the knickers looped around my knees. Tears are quietly pooling in the gusset. I have just seen two blue lines darken purposefully on a pregnancy test, where I’d have preferred just the one, and maybe a thumbs-up emoji. Because two lines mean, yeh, you are all kinds of pregnant. You’ve basically AirBNB’ed your womb; another human being is setting up camp in your innards. Your vagina is about to be split in two, then chopped up like mincemeat.

It was not the news I had hoped for when I planned to fit a quick pregnancy test in between breakfast and the start of my working day, writing about – ironically – whether it’s ever OK to ask a woman when she’s going to have kids, for the Huffington Post. It was off-topic for me, but since our wedding in 2010 it was all anyone asked me and it had really started pissing me off. I mean, sure, on paper, my husband and I were all set for the childbearing years to begin. But the assumption that as a married woman the next logical step would be motherhood irked me. I am a fully practising feminist so I’m not into the yokes forced upon our sex. But also I was still keen to prioritise spontaneous holidays and sleep. Oh, and my career. And I just didn’t fancy it.

Then I realised I hadn’t had a period since 2011, so when I popped out to get the paper and live yoghurt (in case it was thrush delaying my menstruation) I added a pregnancy test to the basket. There I was, midway through furiously tapping out this angry argument that ‘when are you having kids?’ was an entirely inappropriate question when I saw that the answer from me would be, IN ABOUT NINE MONTHS ACTUALLY.

My first instinct was to go back in time and nuke that errant sperm, ripping its microscopic little head off and dousing the remains with a shot of spermicide. I know, I know – I seem like such a maternal soul, why on earth would I not want to embrace this little miracle?

The truth is I enjoyed being an autonomous, self-obsessed, one-blue-line kind of person. I liked who I was. I liked our tiny flat full of sharp corners and bottles of rum. I liked my husband. I even liked my body. I didn’t want all that to change. Plus, I was about to start a new job which I had spent the past seven years working my butt off to bag (often for free): acting beauty editor at Glamour, a part-time gig so I could also start writing a book. It felt like I’d finally got to where I wanted to be.

Just the week before I’d been sitting in the pub with a group of girlfriends slagging off people with kids for invading our favourite brunch bar – the buggies skinning your ankles and the thoughtless amount of noise and space-invading stuff these women came with. The general gist was: mums are selfish and obsessed with their kids and lose all reason and ambition when they give birth. They moan and stop dyeing their hair. They don’t have sex anymore. They live vicariously through their kids, letting their own lives slip from the radar. They lose the will to engage with the world and crusade for what they believe in, unless it was #FreeTheNipple or banning junkies from parks.

I was fine with concealing my nipples and would a Brighton park even be a proper Brighton park if it didn’t offer a grassy knoll up to a junkie once in a while? I couldn’t join this gang now, swallow my words about not letting prams on commuter trains. Also, imagine not being able to have a sneaky smoke when you felt like it. What would I do with my right hand when there was a bottle in the left?! I did another test. Still pregnant. Fuck.

How can you become a mum and not lose your sense of self? I considered the examples of motherhood I had to go by. Kirstie Alley in Look Who’s Talking. Diane Keaton in Baby Boom. She had given up a kickass career to make apple sauce. APPLE SAUCE? I hate apple sauce. And how about Three Men and a Baby? What drove the mum to leave her baby at that weirdly massive loft apartment and flee when she could have stayed and asked Tom Selleck about his moustache? Plus, it took THREE men to keep said baby alive, by the way. It wasn’t just something I’d gleaned from Touchstone Pictures, though. A school friend of mine had got married and had a baby all before I’d finished university. The friend I’d danced up against on smoky dance floors, sneaking a Volvic bottle of vodka from my mouth to hers had a son, an actual kid that was hers. All I’d gleaned when I popped in before returning to the smoky dance floors was that she was hoovering all the time and seemed … dazed. Happy, but not like before. Different. Like a body-snatched kind of different. Not a happy I could understand because it revolved around nappies and a crying baby. Of course, it was love, but I was too self-involved to recognise that.

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Lost in Motherhood

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COPYRIGHT

Praise for Lost in Motherhood

DEDICATION

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

PART I

THE FIRST TRIMESTER/SHOCK