Saskia Neary: What would you tell a pregnant woman?

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 a crazy, intense, demanding, lonely, amazing, tiring time you were having right at that moment. These shared looks were, it felt, almost a nod to solidarity in the face of this enormous untalkaboutable challenge.

I think each day is different. But some days feel so mindless and relentless it’s almost soul destroying.

You would never particularly want to give space or voice to these feelings however, because not only are you so lucky and grateful to have a child – particularly if you waited as long as I did before having one – it would be an insult to yourself, your child and anyone else with or without a child to start feeling hard done by. However, unless perhaps you throw yourself whole heartedly into all things ‘mother’/ ‘mother and baby’ and really consume yourself in that then there remains a struggle or tension between being a mother and all that that involves (and a lot of it does amount to cleaning and wiping and changing and washing!) and being the you that you have always been and all that that might mean on any given day.

The most amazing aspect of being a mother is perhaps the extreme privilege of having a healthy and so far happy child, to be able to hang out with that child, and to feel so much love and to laugh and smile so much – this is completely precious and unique.

The biggest challenge is marrying up these overwhelming feelings with the mundane and dare I say it bored feelings that can slip in from time to time. It is sheer hard work – every day. As women we are all so different and it is quite hard to imagine how a friend who is about to have a baby will feel and cope. So, overall I would be very positive and encouraging to anyone about to become a mother because that’s all they need to hear at that moment!