I am a Speech and Language Therapist by profession, and have climbed the greasy ladder, with an enduring sense that my small intervention isn’t enough, and it’s the system that needs to change. However, now firmly at the system level, the change is disenchantingly slow and I miss people. I had my first, and currently only, child in…
disabledparents.org Like many people, I ended my marriage during the early part of the pandemic. I was already unhappy, and my husband and I had been living in separate parts of our home for seven years. Being in close quarters with him 24 hours per day put into sharp focus how…
In the UK, suicide is the leading cause of direct deaths 6 weeks to a year after the end of pregnancy. In 2020, women were three times more likely to die by suicide during or up to six weeks after the end of pregnancy compared with 2017 to 2019. At least one in five women experiences…
The best and worst bits of being a mother are one and the same for me. It’s having the ultimate responsibility: nowhere to hide, nowhere to run to, no calling in sick, no emigrating, no emptying the bank account and doing a runner, no not-tonight-dear-i’ve-got-a-headache, no scrapping what you’ve done and starting again from scratch,…
I don’t think you could ever tell the ‘truth’ – it wouldn’t be fair. I remember walking along the sea front in the early months pushing a pram. I could catch the eye of any other mother and we would smile knowingly. It was almost like a secret club. Only you and they knew what…
‘When you’re 30, shall we make a little one of us,’ my boyfriend drunkenly whispered. ‘Are you mental?’ I replied. Turning 31 four days ago, feeling more tired than I did at 30, but less tired than I did last week – hurrah, I reflect upon the 7 week old little one of us. I’m…
Nearly three years into this mothering lark and still the title mother doesn’t sit comfortably with me. It certainly doesn’t come first in my mind as a self-descriptor, despite the praxis of mothering occupying the majority of my time. I feel strangely distanced from it, although I am approaching it. It evokes to me a…
When I gave birth to my first child in 2004 I remember feeling like I wasn’t in the room, but stuck in a big tunnel, cocooned from reality by the effects of the epidural. The midwife said, ‘Let’s get Mum up to the ward’ and I thought, ‘my Mum’s not here, is she?’ I couldn’t…
