It’s much talked about these days, but I still wonder if anyone outside the motherhood really understands. My cousin, Sonya, is at least 10 years older than me. I don’t remember the difference exactly, as I established her as ‘much older’ when I was a child, when even months felt like a huge difference in age. Another cousin was two whole months older, and I was very jealous of her seniority and perceived wisdom from age. Well, Sonya used to answer my long, well-constructed emails immediately and with only few brief, lumpy sentences, which I took as disinterest and lack of care on her part. Now, years later, I know why – because she had three small kids at home at the time and the only way to get anything completed was to do it immediately and with a slightly, permanently distracted brain, or risk never returning to it again. I myself now have three kids, a first-born girl and a set of miracle twin boys, and only now that they are in primary school have I been able to start to answer the occasional email. One well-thought out professional email every day or two is a major accomplishment.

Unfortunately, the isolation of early motherhood (not childhood, because motherhood is also a particular growth period that should be recognised) fit me all too well as I do prefer to be alone, somewhat on the periphery of life. This isolation was compounded by our move to France from England, with me only speaking a few words of French at the time, with a very attached and active 18-month-old in tow. If you don’t have children, ‘attached’ is often code for ‘never leaves my side’, ‘is very demanding’, or in our case, ‘refuses to sleep by herself and/or wakes up several times a night until she’s 7′. Hence, the parents’ brains begin to melt into mush from sleep deprivation until they finally decide/accept that this is just the way it is and that sleep, no matter where it happens, is the most important thing in the world and the habitude of musical beds begins.

Before this realisation, there were times when I slept on the floor of my daughter’s room to get her to stay in her bed, often with one hand on her tummy while I lay next to her on the floor. Not fun. The pink princess bed did not help, as we thought it might, as honestly it was a bit of a bribe to get her to love her room, which she did, just not for sleeping. Occasionally she would thrash about in her sleep and then hit her head on the tall sides, which we’d hoped would help her to feel cocooned, and then wake herself up, being startled by pain. Then there was the horror phase, not for her but for us, when she would wake up quietly and arrive at the side of my bed and just stand there, silently, waiting for me to wake up and then scare the living daylights out of me. Near heart attack every night. Perhaps needless to say, this adrenaline rush would often make it pretty hard to fall back asleep, feeling like I was stuck in some groundhog day of a Japanese horror film. This still happens some nights, but the floors of the house we now live in make a bit of sound when little feet cross them in the night, so at least we now have a bit of a warning when someone is about to arrive. That pitter patter fills one’s heart with fear and dread, not that particular joy that you’ve been told about. That joy only happens in the daytime, and often after a lot of coffee.

It’s now been 9 years since I have slept through the night, counting the end of the first pregnancy. Add to the kids the delight of early menopause and I have a multitude of reasons not to sleep well. By the grace of god, a few years ago I hit some sort of equilibrium, a new normal, where I miraculously didn’t need that much sleep anymore. Maybe it was my ‘advanced maternal age’ as you see old folks getting up earlier and earlier, or maybe it was just conditioning, my body finally accepting that it was just this way now and just surrendering to it. But that god, I acclimated, and by chance and with the help of a lot of coffee, I got used to it. Now, as long as every couple of weeks I can take a big nap in the middle of the day and recharge, it is ok.

There is already writing on the concept of the ‘I don’t know how she does it’ and even a lightly entertaining film about the idea staring an overworked SJP as the main character. I say lightly, because literally any film or series that attempts to talk about the difficulty and demands of modern motherhood is welcome, if not for the most basic reason that one needs to feel seen. This is a major theme of contemporary thought – people need to see themselves reflected in contemporary media and due great part to recent social criticism and more women in positions of power, influence, and finance in entertainment, there are now more realistic examples of motherhood in media. There are still some pretty terrible ones as well, hello American Housewife, you’re not helping anyone…

Here I am, about to say it though, I don’t know how they do it. How does a mother work full-time, raise kids, and stay sane? I’ve chosen a very different path, and here is the part where I’m supposed to say how great it is and how happy I’ve made my choice but spoiler alert, I’m not going to say quite that. Motherhood has been the hardest, most challenging, most isolating, most life-changing experience I’ve ever had. Would I change a single thing if i had the chance to do it all again? Fuck yeah I would, and I’d like to have a conversation with those women who say they wouldn’t, as to me there are like these miracle fantasy creatures that I am in awe of and would like to know their secrets. I do know from some of the more open moms at school that prayer, and a lot of it, sometimes (weekly) in a group. It’s just one more way to know that we are all in this together, experiencing the same types of difficulties, and praying, literally, for patience.

Now, I have been extremely fortunate in my situation. I left the US in 2010 to marry my dreamboat of a husband, a Frenchy that I met in Washington, DC at the start of 2009 and married at the end of 2010. At the beginning of 2010, while spending 2 weeks together in France, we decided to get married and move to London, a place that was a little bit foreign and a little bit familiar to both of us. It was the perfect compromise and would be our first home together.

We decided to try to have a baby in April 2013 and by the end of May I realised I was pregnant. Surprise, it worked! Being American, at the first doc visit I expected to be poked, prodded, and tested to confirm the pregnancy. Instead, the doctor asked me the date of my last period and then sent me off with a packet and a date to go and see a midwife. I was like whaaaaaat? No wand in the vagina? Ok fine. This continued, no docs, no wands, no poking, just 2 ultrasounds planned for the whole 9 months, until I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and then I did see a lovely team of docs and midwives. If I hadn’t had this risk arrive in my pregnancy, I never would have seen a doctor, as in England they don’t view it as necessary. Birth is not medicalised, it is thought of as a natural state which, unless routine tests show risks that need monitoring, required zero medical intervention. This includes getting poked and prodded in the vag – this never happened until one bossy midwife in the hospital insisted on checking my dilation, an intervention which did briefly stop my labor. But more on that later. My point is here that I was one, very lucky to live in an area in England with a good hospital system, as there is what they call the ‘post-code lottery’ there. Two, it was all free. All of it. The only thing we had to pay for during the entire pregnancy, and after, was the parking at the hospital. Well that and the childbirth classes, they were private and through the NCT, the National Childbirth Trust. There are some free ones at the hospital, too, but the NCT is your guaranteed ‘in’ to having a baby group, aka mom friends, after your baby is born. You then spend your 6 months of government mandated, paid maternity leave meeting up at least once a week for coffee and sharing notes, questions, concerns, and cuteness, and figuring out how to become a mom, together. If you desire, you can extend this leave to a full-year and your job must be legally held for you. So, as I said, very fortunate.

France was good, too, but much more medicalised. Tests monthly, more scans, and lots of vaginal prodding. But I was also pregnant with twins at a very advanced maternal age, so that may have had something to do with it. I had weekly, and then bi-weekly, home midwife monitoring visits, and weekly physical therapy, and finally a planned cesarean. My twinnies were born 6 weeks early and spent their 3 first weeks of their little lives in the NICU. Again, all of this was free, except for the parking. Had I needed help getting pregnant, including IVF, this would have been free, too. Meanwhile in America, families are being bankrupted and premature babies reaching their lifetime insurance payout coverage while in the NICU. Then the support comes. France actually gives you money when you have a baby. If I remember correctly, it’s about 1600€ per child. Then they give you money monthly, at least 300€, and heavily subsidise the creche, or day care, which can cost as little as 1.62€ per hour. Here moms typically go back to work after 3 months, but you can ‘borrow’ time against your retirement age if you so wish to stay at home longer, and you can take more time off for a medical reason such as post-partum depression. Also, home care is subsidised, and we were blessed with a helper that was qualified to either do housework or watch the babies and their big sister, as needed. She was called Laurance and was an absolute angel. I could’t have made it through those first 3 years without her. Again, we have been very fortunate.

Nevertheless, even with all this fortune and luck to be in countries where motherhood is supported, it is oh so very hard to become, and be, a mother. My god, was I unprepared. As has already been said so many times, there is the mother you think you will be before you have kids and the mother that you actually are when you have them. But for now, I want to talk about me as a mother, not the mother I am to my kids. I’ll try to explain the difference.

Motherhood changes you, in any and all aspects. I think before it happened, I didn’t really think about these changes very much, or perhaps at all. I always knew I wanted to be a mother, and I had the opportunity before I did become a mother, and decided to wait until I could become a mother in a traditional setting of mother, father, marriage, etc. But I never thought really how it would change everything and no one ever told me, anything. My friend Jessica became a mother right after I moved to London, where she’d been living for several years already since leaving Chicago. She did not take to it like a fish to water, and her transition to motherhood was also severely effected by her MS coming back with a vengeance and leading to terrible post-partum depression. I tried to support her as best I could, and didn’t think the same thing would happen to me. I deeply admired her commitment to the rigorous and demanding schedule that her baby required. I saw how her traumatic birth experience scarred her deeply. Her hospital was shut down just a few years later.

The changes that I experienced started with the pregnancy and continue to this day. The process is one of getting to know yourself all over again, perhaps more than ever before. Before there were no consequences, really. There was liberty, freedom, choice… now there are schedules, duty, responsibility that never even seems to take a pause. It starts with your body, from the very beginning, even before day one with the pregnancy. I remember being on a photo shoot as product director, in thick maternity leggings, an oversized tunic and furry vest. I thought my vagina had a bit of a funny smell in the loo as it had a few times before, and then I realised, to my horror, that I had, in fact, peed myself a little bit. I thought this only happened after you gave birth, and only if you jump or sneeze yet here I was, not even 8 months in, smelling of pee in the loo of a posh rented studio in Maida Vale. Fuck me. So I doused myself in the Dyptique 34 perfume in my purse hoping it would blend as well with the nuance of urine as vetiver blends with sweat in the summer.

Alas, time calls for now, and I must continue this extended explanation another day, as I must pack for a weekend away with friends who, thankfully, all now have husbands and kids of their own and will finally understand this all in their own ways.