Having a baby turns any woman’s life upside down, but for some mums the overwhelming emotion is not joy but regret – and a yearning for the life they had before giving birth. Anna Moore examines motherhood’s last taboo
When Emma became pregnant at 32, everything seemed perfect. She had spent her twenties having fun and following her passion, building the portfolio career she wanted as a musician. She’d married at 30. Now she felt ready for the next stage. Her pregnancy was a breeze – no sickness, no stress, no signs of what was to come – and her son was born on a warm spring afternoon (a water birth, no pain relief). But in less than a week, she became aware of a new reality.
“It was this horrible sense that I’d made a mistake,” Emma says. “Instead of feeling happy or in love, as I’d expected, I just felt awkward around him, and everything was such an effort. And this feeling didn’t go away. When I remember the baby phase – my husband working long days to make up for my lost income, most of my friends off enjoying their lives – my main memory is just the loneliness and the horrible, heavy sadness of it all.”
REALITY BITES
“I remember one day putting him in a baby carrier and walking to the park,” she continues. “It was a really sunny day, and strangers were smiling at me and him, but I just felt so cut off. I didn’t want to be trudging round a park in the middle of the afternoon. I wanted to be the person I used to be – but knew I never could be again. I came home, drew the curtains and cried.” According to Emma, this wasn’t postnatal depression – it was regret, pure and simple. Even now, 14 years and another child later, she feels the same. “My career never recovered,” Emma says. “I’m a part-time piano teacher now, and this isn’t what I wanted.” It’s not a simple case that more childcare or more help from her husband would have fixed this. For Emma, the shift was more fundamental.
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