Hi,

I’m just back from my two-week staycation, during which I ate well, tried to exercise regularly, and dreamt a lot.

One night I dreamt that I was at a work meeting. We were in an outside space where everyone was chit-chatting. All of a sudden, I stood up and blurted out: “I’m fucking free! After two years, I’m finally by myself!” I was so deranged in the dream that our founding editor, Rob Wijnberg, left the table after hearing me swear. 

It was clear to me even in the dream that when I said I was free, I was referring to being away from my son. But why was I so desperate to be free? After all, in real life, my husband looks after our son during the day, and I have a bunch of childfree work hours every day.

When I woke up, a question started roaming through my mind: since becoming a mother a year and a half ago, do I only feel free during my dreams?

Becoming a mother is a juggling act of identities. To my list of roles (a partner and lover to my husband, a friend to my closest people, a daughter to my parents, a sister to my brother, a writer to my readers, and so on), I’ve also become a mother to my child. But where am I among all these labels? I must confess there are days that I don’t know what to do when I’m not fulfilling one of these roles. Where is Irene? Who am I, deep down?

Reborn as a parent

While I was on my break, my colleague

“My identity was no longer my own,” writes Catherine Cho in her book Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness, in which she discusses her experience of postpartum psychosis. “It was as though I’d transformed without knowing it, and without any warning that I would be.”

Not every new mother suffers from depression, anxiety or more extreme experiences like postpartum psychosis. But hearing these women’s accounts is a sombre reminder of how much pressure there is on parents, especially on new mothers, and how transformative an experience it is.

“Having children transforms you into someone completely different; you’re reborn as a parent,” writes my colleague Lynn.

So, what kind of a person was I reborn into?

Your experiences of transformation

I’m privileged to be able to think about my new identity as a mother and to write about parenthood and childhood while I raise my son. I can read up and think about things that I probably wouldn’t otherwise be able to find time for as a new parent. It also exposes me to the experiences that you readers share – and I learn a lot from those too.

Here are some of the contributions that touched me from below Lynn’s article:

  • “I’m still struggling with finding my new identity, and learning to deal with the renewed bodily anxiety after my experience. I’m almost 11 months postpartum and am just now beginning to find some semblance of normalcy again. I’m not there yet, and I definitely don’t have a map or a direction to go in, but I’m still trying,” says
  • “Fathers have probably as much mental issues with these things as mothers, but unfortunately men’s conversational culture is nowhere near women’s culture with this (at least in Finland). Also I see the transformation (at least from father’s point of view) more of a path than as a simple transformation,” writes
  • “People didn’t want to talk about any negative aspects of birth and motherhood after the baby arrived. It was such a weird experience, to hear such negativity at the birth but then hear such positivity after. It’s easy to feel lost within those cracks, I think. People would say, in response to something I was having a problem with, "but it was SO worth it, right?" I think it is difficult AND worth it. It can be both,” writes

Let’s be honest

I believe that it’s important we discuss honestly what it means to be parents. It matters because parents (and carers) mark children’s lives, and children represent close to a third of the world’s population. They are an important part of our present, and they are the future.

I would not have been able to reflect on the first 1,000 days of life were it not for the support of paying members. Members of  The Correspondent have enabled me to write about and to interview one of the most lucid thinkers about parenthood and childhood.

“For most parents, raising children is one of the most significant, meaningful, and profound experiences of their lives. Is this just an evolutionary illusion, a trick to make us keep on reproducing? I’ll argue that it’s the real thing, that children really do put us in touch with truth, beauty, and meaning,” writes Gopnik in her book The Philosophical Baby.

Thanks to our members, I’ve been on a path to get a sense of that truth, beauty and meaning Gopnik talks about.

Support my work!

If you’re enjoying this ride as much as I am, please renew your membership now. Members make our journalism possible, and we need your support for another year to keep going, and create even more meaningful journalism.

So, if you’re a member, to make sure you have renewed your membership. (And many thanks if you’ve already done so!)

If you’re not a member but like these newsletters and the other work I do for The Correspondent, You can choose what you pay to become a member, because we know we can’t set the worth of independent journalism for you. But paying for our journalism allows me to continue deep into the most foundational years of human life. 

I can’t wait for my second year as your First 1,000 Days correspondent!

Until next week,

Irene

Illustrated avatar of the reporter, on a purple background. Do you want this newsletter straight in your inbox? If you’re interested in reading more about early childhood, as well as reproductive rights, sexuality and the challenges and joys of parenting, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter about the First 1,000 Days of life. Sign up here!