What I wish someone had told me before having children

Released May 2022

Maybe if we hadn’t been hounded for centuries “Having children is just happiness” And other really simplistic ready-made sentences and naive, I wouldn’t be there.

Maybe if the parents I met in my life had told me the truth and didn’t want me to believe in myth of the perfect motherSometimes, despite them, I would feel less guilty when I’m not fooled into dosing a bottle with one hand while running a machine with the other.

The myth of the perfect mother who hurts a lot

Since I became a mother (of two children), I realize that there are really things I was not prepared for. I may have worked on the subject during pregnancy by eating a bunch of books, I may have asked for advice (and even received it without asking for anything), I didn’t know what to expect before having a first roast of 3.7 kg in your arms.

Can I blame anyone? Yes and no. If I can blame those who keep spreading this ridiculous myth of the exemplary mother, I can also well accuse this kind of involuntary amnesia, which pushes all those who have already given birth to forget the worst moments of their motherhood, or to select selected passages. It is one way to do it perpetuate the species ? Maybe, but hey, it’s not like we weren’t enough on Earth, you don’t even need to have a breeding medal.

So yeah, I knew I was going to sleep less, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep anymore, I knew it cost, etc.

But there are really things I wish I had known before become the lifelong guardian of the children. Concrete things, but not only, and maybe the knowledge would help me to say to myself that ok, what I feel is normalit’s just that these are things that obviously aren’t being said.

It’s hard to love so much

It doesn’t matter that the love for your baby comes as soon as it’s in the womb, as soon as it comes out, a week later, 3 months, 6 months or even sometimes years later, it’s there. This love is so exhausting it is demanding, tiring and without the possibility of stopping.

It consumes, it can drive you crazy, it can hurt, but it can also bring an absolutely indescribable and indecent happiness, ranging from the pride of seeing your baby eat the crushed carrot to the fear that something will happen to the fruit of his gut, and that the rooster of the ‘love it stops suddenly.

Loving your child is not just loving the company of another human being. It is visceral, intrinsic and brutal. It is as pure as the love it gives you back, and it is unconditional.

Even when my children bore me, force-feed me, even when they are boring, painful, grumpy, even when I want to be everywhere except in their companyeven when I tell myself, sometimes under the influence of anger, that I hate them, I love them so much it is almost painful.

It’s hard to worry so much, all the time

With love comes fear. Fear of losing them, fear of being kidnapped, fear of getting sick, the fear that they will die. I don’t think you know, until you have children, how afraid you can be of the death of someone other than yourself. But maybe I’m wrong, maybe those who don’t have children know what I’m talking about.

It is not a reasoned and controlled fear, it is such overwhelming fear who can sometimes behave in absolutely unreasonable ways.

This constant hypervigilance is exhausting, and it never seems to end. For example, when my daughter is sick, very sick, it’s like I’m sick with her. I can’t eat, sleep, think. I constantly think about her condition, I look at her like milk on fire, I interpret her every reaction, I celebrate the slightest positive evolution of her illness as if she had just won a Pulitzer.

It’s exhausting. I could pay dearly, dear, to be sick instead of her, so that she does not have to pass this test and that she does not know suffering. Even though I know that unfortunately he has to deal with it like everyone else, sometimes I find myself pray to be sparedthat they leave her in good health, and that they attack someone who is not her, or above all, that they attack me instead.

It’s hard not to be the first choice in your life anymore

In your life you can meet people, hang out with them, love them and tell yourself “we could give everything for them”. True, it can happen. Oh no eh, everyone does what he wants with their relationships with others.

The problem, when you have children, is that it’s true, up to the power of 1000. Even if you fight against maternal injunctionseven if we want to banish forever the heavy and false myth of the sacrificial mother, we know that if something serious happens and you have to make a choice for me or my children to survive, I always stood in front of them so that they were spared.

I can be a committed feminist, I can try to make the mothers I know or write for feel guilty, as I can, I know my life is a second choice. If one day there is a war and the food runs out, they will eat first, that’s obvious.

And it is difficult. It is difficult why I have the impression that I no longer exist completely since I became a mother, and that I have divided myself into two other people: my children. I, all alone, no longer really exists. I, without being a mother, will never happen again.

So yes, I can have childless “moments” in everyday life, holidays, weekends, days, hours, where I am the only one who counts, where I exist only for myself. But these moments are only short breaks.

Sometimes I can regret having children. When I’m tired, when they jump on me as soon as the front door opens and overwhelm me without even giving me time to catch my breath, I’m fed up. When they scream, when they ask, when they forget that I too am human, I want to drop everything.

However, I love them so much that it is painful at times. Is this the ambivalence of motherhood? Couldn’t I have been informed before diving into it?

Of course, not everyone has to experience all of this. This reflection is personal, but it can speak to others. To me, I would have liked to have heard all of this before I have children. I’m not sure it would have made any difference, but at least I couldn’t have said I didn’t know.

Photo credit image of one: fizkes