DARKNESS AND LIGHT by Jenny Fisken

This week we’ve a wonderfully lyrical poem for you from Dispatches from New Motherhood. In DARKNESS AND LIGHT Jenny Fisken takes us into a world that’s poetic in the keenest sense – full of feeling and imagination and connectivity with the natural world.

‘Writing has given me a way to collect my thoughts and connect with my emotions at a time when my experiences could sometimes be overwhelming,’ says Jenny. ‘Putting pen to paper, most of the time just for me, has been such a comfort. My other solace has always been the natural world around me and it provided me with space to breath in the first year of being a mum. Noticing small changes and small details has a real calming influence on my state of mind. I found that I applied this to my son too: the enormity of motherhood can be overwhelming so I focused on details, looked at him in parts – his smile, his eyelashes, the curl of his hair – and I tried to feature these feelings in my poem.’

All the contributors to our Mothership Writers anthology went through an editing process with their pieces, and for almost all this was a new experience. Jenny says ‘I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the editing. Really contemplating the flow of a line or spending a significant amount of time thinking about just one word was like meditation and something I continue to do now.’

The result is a poignant and transporting study of a mother and her baby’s first year, and the change undergone by both.

 ***

DARKNESS AND LIGHT
Jenny Fisken

You begin in the veiled darkness of winter,
A night full of stars in a sky black as grief.
Venus, resolute and constant amidst old winking light,
Whispers your name before I know it on my own lips.
Born in the night, the world heavy with sleep,
From inside to outside,
Skin on skin on skin.
Nothing but instinct, unable to fathom your own limit,
Your centre a heart of frenzied wingbeats.

We nest until springtime,
Warm blankets and the gentle rise and fall of miraculous breath.
Poking our heads into low yellow sunlight,
We are white snowdrops from the warm earth;
Our bodies uncoiling fern fronds,
Casting long shadows on an Earth that doesn’t know us yet.
Gentle blossom gladdens dark limbs
Becoming a cathedral of comfort and sleep;
The birdsong your lullaby.

I wonder at your defined edges as you learn to inhabit your body,
The summer sun filling it with light,
Your smile reflecting the radiance.
Sea-salted skin from the vastness of oceans
Provokes anxiety to rise all the more readily in my body,
Like the electric feel of the air before a storm.
But there’s such comfort when you sleep cradled in my arms
Though you are no longer sustained solely by my body
And we are you and me.

With trees like fire, autumn mirrors the sunset
And wings once stretched out to catch the sunlight
Fold back down and prepare for rest.
Berry jewels stain our chins purple
And you’re gleefully impatient for the world;
You can’t walk but you dance,
You can’t speak but you sing.
I stay close to the trees so I can’t see the woods,
I know the enormity would overwhelm me.

And every morning you touch my mouth, my eyes, my hair,
Checking I’m unchanged
As the darkness of winter pours in like spilled ink,
A tangible coolness seeping into every cell of my body.
But I’m not afraid of the dark,
I’ve seen it before and I’ll see it again;
Like an old friend reminding me of days gone by
That I no longer mourn
Because now I’m facing in the right direction.

***

Darkness and Light by Jenny Fisken appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.

ON THE LANDING by Jan Bishop

This week’s offering from Dispatches from New Motherhood is Jan Bishop’s beautiful poem ON THE LANDING. Jan explores a moment of nighttime stillness, and the feeling of connection as she stands by her window, looking out at the after-dark world around her.

‘I wanted to try to capture a small moment that many mums will relate to,’ says Jan, ‘but in a setting that is unique to me. It's about grabbing a moment of calm in what feels like a crazy whirlwind. I know many mums will have it much harder than me and I'm lucky my baby (now toddler!) usually only wakes a few times a night. I really feel for those mums who are up every hour. But you know what - whether your baby wakes lots or doesn't - you are all heroes. Looking after a tiny human being and loving it with all your heart takes so much energy. It consumes you and changes you and it can be exhausting and overwhelming. We all need a moment to just be still. Being part of Mothership Writers helped me have a space to share those feelings and take the load off and has been an amazingly rewarding experience.’

Here's to finding those moments of stillness wherever you can. And here’s Jan’s wonderfully transporting poem.

***

ON THE LANDING

Jan Bishop

This is the time when the night breathes out,
and lets its stillness speak.
I’m standing at the window between your room and mine,
caught in a sort of sleepy limbo.
While you, full of milk and dreams, lie like a starfish in your cot.
Eyes gently closed, little fingers softly unfurled.
I’ll be back soon, my love, when you call again.
But for now it’s quiet and you sleep.

This is a moment just for me, gazing into the world outside.
02:13 says the glowing blue face of the thermostat.
But my slippered feet know this spot well.
And each time it’s different but the same.
The waxy green leaves of our hedge which needs cutting.
The spindly Christmas tree we still haven’t moved.
The airport bus as it thunders past, its passengers oblivious.
And somehow I don’t mind being awake,
because for a few moments I notice the world.

 I’ve seen the 1am taxis and 4am ambulances.
The pelting rain caught in the streetlamps.
The chinks of light from other people’s windows and tellies still on.
The flash of faces on bikes and buses,
looking forward or down or into the dark.
The hiss of tyres and reflected red lights.
All of us working the night shift.

I’ve been back to bed a thousand times over. 
Warm sheets, wrinkled pillow, rest.
Then comes the pink and the grey and the blue,
and the morning is almost here.
I rise for your familiar cry and we’re together again.
Your small rosy face and tufty bed hair
and the love-stained bunny clutched to your chest.
And we’re here as one, hot cheek to cheek,
at our spot on the landing.
Making the world our own.

***

On the Landing by Jan Bishop appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.

THICKER THAN BLOOD BY Abi Lancaster

This week we’re very happy to share a piece from Abi Lancaster, an Early Permanence (EP) foster mum. THICKER THAN BLOOD is a powerful and affecting read, with Abi reflecting on her role as an EP Carer, and some of the reactions she receives from other people.

‘As a prospective adopter of our Early Permanence (EP) / foster baby’, says Abi, ‘the piece ‘Thicker than Blood’ came to me as I found many questions thrown to me about whether bonding with our newborn EP baby was different to the bonding with my biological child, who was about five years old at the time. This piece explores the intimacies of the bonds we made from the early days, in the context of the confusing world outside, that seemed to challenge whether our bond was ‘true’, ‘real’ or ‘thick-enough’.

With rhythmic, highly visual writing Abi takes us through the rituals of a day with her foster baby, addressing her extraordinary piece to ‘you: the mother of my child’.

 *** 

THICKER THAN BLOOD
Abi Lancaster

I cradle your baby close to my chest. She reaches out to touch my lips. Her lips, busy with feeding, make a symphony of noises, and I sink into those dark eyes. Those eyes that don’t match mine. Those eyes so intense I see my own reflection. Those eyes given to her by you: the mother of my child.

I wipe your baby’s bottom, till it’s clean enough to kiss again. I run my fingertips over her skin, and study her birthmark. A strawberry mark, from the time before we knew her. I’ve watched it grow, and change, and one day it will fade. But the scar that won’t fade is the one I can’t see. The visceral scar. She’ll scratch at it; re-open; re-scar; remembering you: the mother of my child.

I sit naked with your baby, and let her touch my breasts. I yelp when she pulls my nipples too hard, and we laugh in surprise at the noise. I am her larger-than-life jukebox: press my nose and I can sing Twinkle Twinkle. She invites me to tickle our spot: about two inches below her armpit, either side of her belly. She squeals in glee asking for more. Then later, exhausted, we move to the slow songs, and your baby cries for tiredness, for teething, for missing you: the mother of my child.

I hear your baby's cough through the darkness. An electric-shock alarm clock. Drawn to the crib of your baby, she smiles with relief at the sight of my face. She reaches up for her morning songs, her story books, her rituals, formed in our home with our family. Yet we have no face, no songs, no rituals from you: the mother of my child.

I walk your neighbourhood. Your baby hearing the noises and smelling the scents of her time in your womb. I play a game of would-I-rather: Would I rather bump into you in the street, or at the courtroom? If I found myself looking at a woman with those eyes, that face and that smile, could I be sure it was you? I know every hair on your baby’s body. I could write a manuscript describing her face. So surely, I could recognise you: the mother of my child.

I tell your baby that it’ll all be OK, as the others in the waiting room chatter. It’s a phrase I repeat in my head, more often than I say out loud. Your baby’s name is called, and as I stand up, no one turns to stare. Later, I settle her, as the nurse approaches with the needle. A comfort smile. I hold your baby. Steady. Firm. That piteous cry. I weep inside and continue to hold. I have a lifetime of holds for her. Thicker than blood, your baby will never be abandoned by me: the mother of your child.

*** 

Thicker than Blood by Abi Lancaster appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother. 

DELIVERY: IN THREE ACTS by Lisa Griffiths

Today we’re very happy to share the next of our Dispatches from New Motherhood pieces. In DELIVERY: IN THREE ACTS Lisa Griffiths offers us a fascinating peep behind the curtain as she tells us of her work in maternity units, and how her relationship with her role changed as she became pregnant and, later, returned to work. 

‘My job is such a big part of who I am,’ says Lisa, ‘and I found being pregnant and working on Delivery Suite to be an emotional and physical rollercoaster at times. One moment I would be crying happy tears delivering a baby to a delighted family, the next I would be shaking in a cupboard, convinced something awful would happen to my own. I wanted to try to reflect those feelings in this piece, and it was interesting to think about how those days have moulded me now, as an obstetrician and a mother.’ 

The result is a clever, moving and compassionate piece about the ‘before’, the ‘during’, and the ‘after’. We’re proud to share it here.

***

DELIVERY: IN THREE ACTS

Lisa Griffiths

‘You have to trust me,’ I say. ‘You will both be fine.’ 

She darts her eyes away, looks at her husband, and nods. I don’t think she believes me. 

I go to wash my hands, prepping for my role in the scene that is about to unfold. Instead of greasepaint and spotlights, it’s iodine under fluorescent bulbs. I go over my lines, my cues, as the scalding water washes away the world outside. Wrapping myself in a voluminous blue gown, I step onto the stage.

The other players look to me to lead. I make eye contact here, throw a reassuring smile there, share my thoughts in an undertone with the scrub nurse and anaesthetist, my supporting actor and actress for the night. We’re well-rehearsed, have done this hundreds of times before.

There’s a moment’s silence, a deep breath, then we begin.

‘You will both be fine,’ I repeat, trying to convince her.  ‘I’m popping forceps on now.’ 

Mum looks terrified, Dad clutches her hand.

‘Now, I need you to push. Well done, a bit more.’

‘I don’t think I’m doing it, I can’t feel anything.’ 

‘Yes you are.’ 

She’s not, but knowing that helps no one.

‘Now stop. Tiny push. Well done, we have a head.’

‘Is she OK?’

‘She’s fine. Next contraction and she’ll be here. Right now, big push, yes, look down. Happy birthday, baby girl!’

A thin wail, a slippery transfer and cord cut later and the three of them are lost in their own world, the rest of us merely scenery. I sit to stitch and return to myself. A flutter low in my tummy makes itself known.

*** 

Four months later and I’m being pushed into theatre. I don’t register the familiarity, the boards I’ve trodden so many times. I see harsh lights, smell the iodine. I clutch my husband’s hand, lost in a world I should recognise. 

‘You have to trust me, you will both be fine.’

I’m scared and know that sometimes the scene doesn’t follow the script. I try to listen to the muffled beat of my baby’s heart on the machine in the corner.

‘I’m popping the forceps on now.’

I picture them round his head, hope the placement is correct.

‘Now I need you to push. Well done, great work.’ 

We both know I’m not pushing, but my pride appreciates the pretence.

‘Now stop. Tiny push. Right, his head is out.’

Then, in one moment my world is forever changed. A cheer, a red and purple slither and my boy is here. The scenery disappears and it’s just us. He’s wailing, he’s tiny and he’s perfect. 

*** 

A year later, and I’m back on the stage. The players are the same, the lights, the gowns, the props unchanged, but it looks different now.

I look into Mum’s eyes. 

‘You have to trust me. You’ll both be fine.’ 

She clutches her partner’s hand, then looks back at me and nods.

We each take a deep breath, and begin.

*** 

Delivery: in Three Acts by Lisa Griffiths appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.

THE PENDULUM by Aslı Tatlıadım

This week’s piece from Dispatches from New Motherhood takes us into the most intimate of spaces – the bedroom at night-time. In THE PENDULUM, Aslı Tatlıadım writes of her rituals with her baby son with great tenderness and lyricism.

‘Sleep is a big theme for parents,’ says Aslı, ‘and it took me a very long time to sleep train my son. Sleep deprivation and lack of personal time made me discover my capacity for patience and love. Ten months into motherhood, I found it as frustrating as magical. When I was writing this story, I felt this juxtaposition very strongly and was inspired by the extremities of my feelings.’

Aslı beautifully captures the magic of this time of day, as well as the reality – and the emotional complexities that are never far away in new motherhood. Here, for your reading pleasure, is THE PENDULUM.

***

The Pendulum

Aslı Tatlıadım 

I added up the hours I've spent trying to get you to sleep, and so far it is 19 days of my life. Most nights, you lie down close next to me, a small little thing. But you fill the whole bed. Your rapid heart beats with your hot and sweet breath falling and rising. I lie on my side and offer you a raw nipple to suck on, hoping you will eventually drift off to sleep. You hold my swollen breast on either side with both of your miniature hands and pull it to yourself. Your big eyes wide open, sometimes you mumble. Sometimes, you join along with my lullabies, your mouth full, your muffled voice continuous, humming your clumsy rendition of my native songs. 'Söyle güzeller şahına. Yüz süreydim dergahına…'*

Your body constantly moves, feet kicking, torso turning. One of your hands begins to wander, twirling my hair, poking my nose, holding my lips, scratching my eyelids, all the while you suckle. Maybe in 40 long minutes your brain starts to quieten, your body becomes warmer in peace, your movements slower in pace. Our loft room seems hazier now, drowsier, darker. Your sounds soften, your eyelids begin a slow dance of up and down, up and down. '…Zehir olan kadehine. Doldur beni dodur beni…'** I sing the same folksongs over and over again. Waiting to descend into the final hours of my evening, to finally take a break from motherhood.

At times, I am the mother the world has anticipated, watching your angelic face with immense patience and an overflowing wholesome affection that’s fit for the big screen. As I watch the rise and fall of your chest I feel a heat and shine inside my own. At times, my gargantuan love for you swaddles all of my inner selves. But other times, when you have cried all day long, when I have not slept because you have not slept for weeks on end, when I have not had a silent moment alone, when I remember that before you I too was a person with direction, desires, dreams, I become impatient. I thought it was only an intense love affair that could make me feel like this: thirsty, hungry, frustrated, exhausted but wanting more and more and more. As I wait for you to fall asleep, the pendulum swings between the extremities of my motherhood. Your infinite need of me defines both ends. I feel suffocated and satisfied. I feel pained and peaceful. I feel alone and alive. I feel I must get away from you to see myself clearly once again and yet I feel no one, no power, can peel you off from my embrace except for yourself, when you are ready. It is to this tempo, and with this beat, every night I watch you fall asleep. 

*Tell the Shah of beauty. I would like to appear in his court.

**Pour me into his poisoned cup. Pour me, pour me.

***

The Pendulum by Aslı Tatlıadım appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.

THE OUTER REACHES by Liza Thompson

This week’s piece from Dispatches from New Motherhood is THE OUTER REACHES by Liza Thompson – a brilliantly observed account of roaming suburban streets with a buggy and seeking refuge in a pub.

‘I wanted to write about feeling far away – both physically/geographically and existentially – from an old life,’ says Liza. ‘I’d heard people say that becoming a mother could often feel like a loss of identity but I’ve never felt that way, more like the same person, with the same sense of self but transplanted somewhere other. Like a different country almost. It’s a subtle distinction but one I think is important.’ 

Of her Mothership experience, Liza says it was ‘the first ‘real’ thing I’d done with Keir - our first class was when he was 4 weeks old! I felt so emboldened by getting us both out of the house. Funny to think how important these minor victories (being somewhere other than at home on the couch) can feel in the midst of it all.’ 

THE OUTER REACHES captures a seemingly everyday moment in time with great insight and poignancy (doesn’t it feel like the start of a novel?). We’re delighted to share it here.

***

THE OUTER REACHES
Liza Thompson

I parked the buggy by the Deal or No Deal fruit machine. How drab it looked against the blinking lights. ‘Flint’ was the colour on the Mothercare label – very understated, very me. Now it looked like the colour of looming storm clouds. I wished it would pour, then I’d have an excuse for being in this pub. I ordered a large, watery sauvignon hoping I could get through the exchange of money before he woke up again. Such a small task, yet so fraught with fear. I darted a few glances at him lying peacefully beside Noel Edmonds’ enormous, grinning face. A curious coupling but then life felt full of such incompatibilities these days.  

I spent that August in suburbia. Deep suburbia. So deep you felt you could disappear entirely. Which I had in a way. Yet I took a strange kind of comfort in the long stretches of houses exactly the same apart from small flourishes of individuality – an outdoor fern here, a zesty lime car there. Everything was how it ought to be. Built out of an ideal, and post-war optimism by Quakers, I think. It looked a little tired and dreary now. That’s the thing about ideals – the cracks of real life will always find their way through somehow. Or maybe it's life that finds a way through the cracks, a necessary fracturing. 

This sauvignon wasn’t having the invigorating effect I’d hoped for, and my eyes were scratchy as if full of tiny grains of sand. I attempted a conspiratorial glance with a man nursing a lager and reading the Telegraph. Us day drinkers, eh? He stared back blankly. I pulled out my two-month-old London Review of Books and started an article about Elizabethan crockery as a metaphor for something. I’ll make the most of this nap time, I thought, do something edifying. I couldn’t focus and Googled ‘make four month old sleep through the night’ for what felt like the millionth time. I couldn’t read that either, I could barely read the soggy beer mat in front of me. ‘Guinness: made of more’. Made of more what? The more I said it the more nonsensical it became. Made of more … made of more … I dreaded to think what I was made of these days. A frayed wool jumper left out in the rain sprang to mind. Heavy and not quite what it once was. If I was made of something soggy and bedraggled, what was he made of? Similar stuff, I suppose. I pulled the buggy over and peered in. One of his hands was open slightly and I grazed his palm with my index finger. He clasped on, as babies tend to do. I knew it was a reflex but suddenly I felt a part of something, even out here, lost as I was in the outer reaches of the city and the outer reaches of an old life. I held on a little tighter, no longer worrying if he woke up. 

***

The Outer Reaches by Liza Thompson appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.

YOUR FIRST VISITOR by Tamsin Phillips

Today we're excited to share the next piece from Dispatches from New Motherhood. In her incredibly moving poem YOUR FIRST VISITOR, Tamsin Phillips writes of the meeting between her newborn son and her terminally ill mum.  

'Writing this piece was challenging', says Tamsin, 'but important to me as there were times when I thought Mum might not meet her grandchild, and I am so thankful that she did.' Tamsin's poem brims with the emotion of this encounter, and is all the more affecting for its restraint.

On finding time to write, Tamsin says, 'it has taken a while for me to realise that it's OK to take time out for myself. The Mothership Writers project has felt like a fortnightly treat; I started packing a notebook in the nappy bag and squeezing in time to write.' 

Here's to notebooks in nappy bags. And here's Tamsin's beautiful poem.

***

YOUR FIRST VISITOR

Tamsin Phillips

Your dad set off across the hospital grounds, permission granted
to deliver your first visitor in a porter's wheelchair.

Your gran, dressed in a nightie and navy dressing gown, 
her wrist, like yours, adorned with a name band: 
dates of birth 71 years apart.

Her body, frail and jaundiced, 
is kept warm, like yours, with a hospital blanket.

Her eyes, brown like mine, focus on your hours-old face
searching for family likenesses.
Your eyes are blue for now. 
She may never see their true colour.

Her arms, weak but tender, embrace you with ease. 
Your arms, full of energy, wave restlessly and without purpose.

Her hand, bruised by a failed cannula, experienced in comforting,  
seeks out your hand to reassure, so happy to meet you at last.

Her humour, 
like mine, checking for the Martin-family outsized big toe.

Her heart, 
like mine, exploding with love.

Her life, 
like yours, fragile and precious.

Her hopes, like mine, for more time:
to watch you grow 
to buy you books and read them with you
to cherish you
to finish the blue knitted blanket.

***

Your First Visitor by Tamsin Phillips appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.

NOURISH by Claire Miller

This week's anthology piece is a story of extraordinary resilience. In Nourish, Claire Miller documents the first ten weeks of her daughter's life, through the prism of breastfeeding. Written with elegance and great power, Claire lets us into this intimate space and offers a story of hope when faced with feeding adversity.

Claire says, 'I joined Mothership Writers when my daughter was two months old. She had only just started to breastfeed after a long and torturous expressing process. I knew I wanted to document the experience somehow before I forgot the emotional details, but I wasn’t sure how - Mothership Writers gave me the outlet for this'.

On finding time to write, Claire says, 'I eventually found that breastfeeding was the best time for it; she was quiet and occupied, and background noises were switched off so as not to distract her. I would compose lines in my mind and then note them down later. I found the lack of pen and blank page freeing, and became more imaginative with the language I used.'

We're very proud to share Claire's piece here. 

***

NOURISH

Claire Miller

It’s the hottest Easter Monday on record, and you are one day old. The air is thick, outside the grass is parched, and you won’t drink from me. The midwives say you’ll feed next time I try, and I believe them. I’m not concerned, my happiness cannot be diminished today. Despite my unresponsive legs, my whole body tingles with elation, as though every one of my hairs is reaching out to welcome you.

***

Later, I lie on the bed in the almost-dark and wait for a midwife to help me feed you. An unfamiliar hand pulls at the blue curtain and my tired eyes focus on the syringe. You lie swaddled in lilac cloth and adoration, and I wince as hard plastic scratches at my nipple; a stranger mining my body for liquid gold. Disappointment begins to wrap its arms around me, staved momentarily by your satiated state. I promise that I’m going to feed you, my treasure.

***

Four days in and my breasts are still full. My nipples are raw and I sense your determination. I hold your tiny head to my chest, and wear a hopeful smile for the midwife who again asks if you are feeding yet. As they try to post my nipple through your pursed lips, I wonder if I’ll ever know what it’s like to breastfeed. Your hunger is palpable as you dive toward my chest, but once there you don’t want it: an arched-back banana baby, peeling away as I try to hold you close.

***

I hear the phrase ‘breast refusal’ from outside of our cocoon. I know these words are bound for us and I want to protect you from them. The sound of grumbling wheels announces a midwife with a machine hungry for milk. I sit alone with it, my nectar taken with uncompromising urgency. From umbilical cord to syringe to bottle; the degrees of separation grow. But it means we can take you home now, so that we can learn your ways. Unhurried, and far from inspecting eyes.

***

Weeks pass and our bedroom bursts with the weight of anticipation. Lips to nipple: nothing. Nipple to machine: milk. Bottle to lips: drink. Skin to skin: sleep. A two-hourly cycle of hope followed by defeat. I’m consumed by your feeding, it’s heavy both in my heart and on my chest. Expressing on car journeys and in public toilets, the machine’s sad hum is the soundtrack to my days – and it’s on repeat. I question how is it possible to feel full and hollow at the same time.

***

At ten weeks old you're into your stride and then, finally, you drink from me. I watch you claim my chest as your territory, your delicate hands controlling the borders. There’s no dispute, my landscape is yours to harvest. Our complication resolved without words, embrace our only language. I’ve become your favourite scent, your comfiest pillow, your cookhouse and your first love. The summer heat is here now, and with it my shoulders relax.

***

Nourish by Claire Miller appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.

UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES by Rebecca Megson-Smith

We’re excited to share the next of our anthology pieces with you here: Unexpected Consequences by Rebecca Megson-Smith. With tenderness and lyricism Rebecca evokes the otherworldly feeling of new motherhood, before going on to celebrate the glee to be found in 'sneaking off'; Unexpected Consequences is a paean to simple pleasures, and the fulfilment that comes from being your true self.

Of her process, Rebecca says 'these days my writing time tends to be of an evening. I don’t always feel my perkiest but I write longhand, in a notebook, usually just before I go to sleep, so it feels like a nice cosy quiet way to end my day. Even if I don’t really feel like it, I coax myself in with the line ‘just write one sentence’ – I’ve not yet put down the pen after that one sentence’.

Here’s to starlit writing sessions; to keeping that pen moving and those sentences coming.

***

UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES

Rebecca Megson-Smith

You arrive in a hurry, defying the old wives’ tales of first-time lateness. One arm above your head, you fly into the world, Supergirl style. The midwives chatter excitedly about the unexpected ease of your birth. 

At home we maroon ourselves on our island sofa. We become mermaid and merbabe. Slung across my belly, a warm sea slug lying as close to your original watery home as possible, you’re lifted by the rise and swell of my tidal breath. I hardly dare move, for fear of disturbing you.

Time shifts. Until you, my time had belonged to everyone else. I had belonged to everyone else. But now I belong, by absolute and unalterable priority, to you.

Saying ‘no’ is suddenly easy. ‘No’ to the groups I don’t really want to join; ‘no’ to the coffee-and-cake catch-ups with women I hardly know; ‘no’ to going out on cold evenings for too much wine and too little return. First I say ‘no’ to others for you; but increasingly the benefit is mutual.

I’ve never been one for the shallows, the small talk at social gatherings. I tend to freeze at the simplest questions, gaping inelegantly, a fish out of water. 

Emerging from our cocoon, however, ‘I’ has become ‘we’, and, well, that changes everything.

We swim synchronously, my seal-pup and I. There’s a simplicity and a flow to it that opens a new channel of thought in my mind when I think about future engagements. You charge your way through milestones – sitting, crawling, standing, chatting, walking. Life holds no fears for you. And I follow in the wake of your courage, all the way into our first formal social as a family.

It is a beautiful, faceless wedding. 

We sit on the grass in the unexpectedly hot April sunshine, amusing ourselves and each other. Tottering on increasingly confident feet you laugh at the enormous stick you’ve found, dragging it behind you down the little path by the breezy daffodils. 

We leave the reception when we’re ready. Just after the puddings but before the speeches. Before the day collapses into its drunken cups of grown-up fun, after saying our goodbyes to Daddy. No apology needed.

In the car, the lowering sun chases us all the way down the country lanes. We twist this way and that, singing ‘the wheels on the bus’ like naughty schoolchildren let out of class early. Back at the digs, your bedtime routine – often fraught with niggle and complaint – flows like a merry brook, as we babble, two conspiratorial fishes. Before long you’re blinking and yawning, soft warm baby-breath sighs.

Back in the sitting room I have a hot cup of tea. I open my novel. Contentment seeps out of me. I laugh out of luxury, the unexpected pleasures of being here, doing exactly what I like and never let myself do. The rain thrums on the window above me whilst you, my innocent co-conspirator, lie dreaming on the other side of the wall.

***

Unexpected Consequences by Rebecca Megson-Smith appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.

FLOWERS by Hannah Simpson

This week it's Mental Health Awareness Week, so the first piece we'd like to share from Dispatches from New Motherhood is Flowers by Hannah Simpson: a deeply affecting account of a visit from a mental health nurse.

About her piece, Hannah says 'I expected to write something a little lighter. But when I sat down with pen and paper, the words that rose to the surface and asked to be let out were from a dark place. Reliving those early newborn days, when I struggled severely with my mental health, was difficult. Ultimately though, the writing process brought me a better understanding of my own experience.'

The theme for this year's Mental Health Awareness Week is kindness – and Hannah's piece speaks directly to this: kindness from others, and learning to show kindness to oneself. We're incredibly proud to share it here.

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FLOWERS
Hannah Simpson

The nurse from the perinatal team walks in with the sun. Perches next to me. My eyes are wide, tracing the pale, worn patterns on the sofa cushions. I know they're flowers. But today, in the wrong light, they look like stains. I am rocking, while in another room my partner cuddles the baby.

I tell her that I’m living in a nightmare and I need to wake up. I just want to escape and leave it all behind. Just – as if it’s just a sip, just a nibble, just a quick look, nothing too difficult. The tiny, mewling one and the one I loved first are better off without me. They’re the perfect pair dragging a dead weight. 

I’ve been Googling hostels, in Bristol and further afield. Wondering if I could turn up somewhere and not be me anymore. Considering which doorsteps I could arrive on. A lone stork, empty handed. 

In her calm, measured, mildly blunt way, the nurse says, ‘That’s just not realistic though, is it?’ 

I want to tell all my keyworkers: I was once coiled as a spring with life. But that was an achingly long time ago. Now I’m an octogenarian crowing from a threadbare chair: lady, you should have seen me in my heyday. I would dance till the end of the night: beyond, sometimes. 

She's right to say that escape is not an option. Breastfeeding holds me hostage. I'm in pain when I do feed, more pain if I don't. I picture myself staggering in a toilet cubicle on the train, gripping a urine-soaked rail and a pump to my breast. Imagine emerging to a grumbling queue, weeping, wide-eyed, leaking. No, I come with far, far too much baggage. And I would still be a mother at the end of the line. 

The nurse doles out her dose of words and my sobs subside to sniffles. She takes her leave and in the coming days I take steps to make this new world my home. I buy jeans two sizes bigger than I used to. I practise saying ‘mummy’ when no one’s around. I count things to ground myself, like she tells me to:

I see flowers, blankets, rattles, books
A bar of sunlight slanting in.

I hear heavy sighs of traffic outside
Squawks, squeals and the sucking of a thumb. 

I feel the grip of tiny hands
Soft skin, wriggling limbs. 

Breathe the scent of my daughter's head
Cotton just out of the tumble dryer.

I reach for the taste 
Of that last cup of tea. 

The nurse comes weekly, her kindness sinking in gradually, a grace I begin to learn to show myself. I lounge on the sofa with my child in my arms and the flowers become flowers once more. I'd been berating myself for my weakness, when I should have been praising myself for my strength. I'd said I wanted to leave but deep down I just wanted to be able to stay.

***

Flowers by Hannah Simpson appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.