I appreciated the sentiment in Polly Hudson’s piece, but ironically I also felt that it still framed motherhood as a wonderful thing, which of course it is for many, but not all women (I confessed a deplorable secret about motherhood to a friend – and it changed my life, 3 February).
To fully tackle this issue, you need to look at a more rounded view of women’s experiences of motherhood, especially in those earliest days. For some women, it’s not just wanting to scream into a pillow every now and again, it’s feeling suicidal every day, having intrusive thoughts of harming yourself or your child, fearing sleeping in case they die in their cot and it’s your fault, or not leaving the house because you simply cannot put one foot in front of the other.
Following the traumatic birth of my first child and a neonatal intensive care unit stay, I developed post-traumatic stress disorder and other complex mental health issues that still plague me. Accessing NHS perinatal mental health care was nigh on impossible, and it stops when your baby turns one.
The NHS often farms you out to third-party providers, who will then “triage” you from the minimal notes from your 10-minute GP consultation, which can either get lost in the system or so delayed that you give up chasing them because you’re so depressed, alongside trying to keep another human alive, that it feels impossible. It is a stain on our country that from prenatal to postnatal care, we seem to fail women at every point of their motherhood journey.
We owe women greater awareness of the full extent of birth, motherhood and everything in between, that extends beyond meaningless expressions such as “motherhood is like going to the moon”, so we can equip ourselves, our partners, the NHS and wider government policy as a whole.
Name and address supplied
• I do not seek to discount other women’s experiences of motherhood. But there seems to be precious little balance in what you publish from those of us who found it the best and most fulfilling and worthwhile thing we ever did. When I had my first child in 1990, I felt profoundly angry with my teachers from the 1970s who continually told us that we didn’t want to be “just” a wife and mother. Many women don’t. But many do. Please stop giving the unrelenting impression that being a mother is difficult and a challenge to be endured. For some women it is, but for many like me, we embrace it and love it.
Fiona Berry
Market Rasen, Lincolnshire
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
