Life of an unglam mum

For Rebecca Oxtoby, 29, the picture-perfect portrayals of new motherhood on social media didn’t ring true

- BESS BROWNING

As I sat in a session on baby choking prevention with my daughter Isabelle, then eight months, propped on my knee, I listened intently as the group leader described the intense trauma of a child’s suffocation. As all the other mothers and babies sat quietly, Isabelle suddenly began to bawl. Subtly whipping out my boob so she could latch on for a feed, I hoped I’d prevented her potential screaming session in the middle of a very serious moment. But, as Isabelle withdrew to catch her breath after the initial suckle, my breast acted like a sprinkler, super-soaking her and a couple of nearby babies and toddlers.

Other parents gave me an awkwardly sympathetic smile before quietly wiping the warm breast milk from their children’s faces. ‘Well, that’s something they don’t tell you in the rule book,’ I thought.

Early in pregnancy, I’d swotted up on all the latest motherhood manuals and followed the ‘mumfluencers’ on social media obsessively. But, by the time Isabelle was about three months old, it was pretty flippin’ clear to me that no mother’s journey was the same – and mine certainly wasn’t the scene of calm and serenity portrayed on Instagram as the ‘norm’.

Looking at snaps of sickeningly glowing parents with flashy smiles, immaculate nurseries and neatly folded stretch suits, I thought, ‘Where’s the depiction of the reality?’ I surely wasn’t the only mum with super-soaking boobs, wearing sick-stained clothes and being screamed at for hours?

I’d always wanted kids and, after meeting my Danny at just 15, we grew up together and often talked about our future and starting a family. But it wasn’t until October 2018, after fertility treatment, that I fell pregnant.