Motherhood questions, questioning Motherhood

The Female Body as Home

Motherhood makes you question your feminine embodiment. From a single sperm, the female body grows an entire human being. If you breastfeed for six months, your body is the baby’s shelter and sustenance for a mere of 15 months.

But the female body extracts its price. Pregnancy shrinks grey matter. Milk is from blood plasma. Tearing, incision, the aching pelvis, the cracked nipples.

We Are Mammals but with Modern Womanhood

Motherhood makes you question anthropology. If you breastfeed, separation becomes impossible for more than a few hours. You begin to understand why bear mama and cubs in Whistler move in lockstep.

But the animal kingdom does not have feminism. Other mammals do not ask why parenthood lands on the father at different intensity. They do not stare at pre-pregnancy clothes lurking in the closet like relics of another self. They do not body shame themselves while their bodies are performing the oldest function of life itself.

Motherhood makes you question your relationships. First with your partner, with your own mom, then many others. You thought your partnership was unbreakable. But sleep deprived, both of you desperately want this growing family to work so bad that tenderness runs thin, and the smallest dust on the floor becomes grounds for war. You thought you have overcome trauma and baggage with your own parents, but they could just too easily come to you when you thought of circumstances of you being raised, by parents equally imperfect as you are.

Motherhood makes you question many things you heard and was told. No, it’s ok to let the baby to cry it out. No, breastfeeding doesn’t make you lose weight faster. Yes, it’s ok to bed share. And yes, it’s ok not to pay for an app to track your LO’s sleep time and poop.

The Politics of Raising a Child

Motherhood makes you question capitalism and social justice. There is endless shopping, much of it done in panic at 3 a.m. No AI, no parenting forum, no well-meaning friend can truly convince you why one stroller costs ten times more than another. I am forever grateful to parent in Canada, where there’s paid parental leave. But I can’t help but think of places where mothers are economically coerced to go back to work against their will. And places where mothers were being bombed, threatened by malnutrition and homicides on a daily basis.

The Currency of Time

Motherhood makes you question how you spend your time and organize your day, your screen time & device using habit, your values, your priorities. With so little time left for yourself and three interruptions in a single breakfast, your body and mind must become ruthlessly clear about what deserves your time and energy. You can sacrifice sleep. The house will always get dirty again. But your baby only has such time when you are their entire universe.

Motherhood makes you question how to be a better human being. How not be a martyr but still be loving and altruistic. How to expand your consciousness enough that you can still smile and answer your baby’s babble, even on days when you feel quietly broken inside, or just too tired.

Above Every Question, One Answer

Motherhood makes you question every set up in your life. Yet above every question, one answer remains: this has been the most profound, spiritual, whimsical, and humbling experience I have ever known. And forever, I am grateful that I chose to become a mother.