I decided to write this column in the format of a letter. I wanted to set myself the writing challenge of citing some of the many positive things about having a baby without being saccharine, resorting to cliche or generalising, and the only way I could find was this way. It’s addressed to one person, but I hope that those who find themselves at a similar crossroads take succour from it.
To my friend A,
When you sidled up to me at a party recently and confessed that you wanted to have a baby, we were both drunk. So when you said that you needed reassurance that it wouldn’t be awful, because all you ever seem to hear about parenthood is negative, I probably didn’t give you what you needed that night. I’ve been mulling over what you said ever since.
I read somewhere not long ago that children ruin your life. I do not feel this (I was at a party, for a start). You create a new life in that child, and with that baby, you get a new life, too. I look back on my old self with fondness, and a little indulgence. She had a lot of fun, but it was time for a new adventure. A baby is more than just an adventure, though: you’re embarking on an epic quest that will hopefully see them safely into adulthood. We hear a lot about the obstacles we meet on the way and less about the wonders we encounter, so I wanted to say that: you will experience wonder the likes of which you can’t imagine now.
The wonder seems mundane to other people, of course, and that’s part of the problem. For example: my baby is doing this thing at the moment where he has started kissing his favourite characters in the books we read. Every time he does it I feel a soaring happiness that feels almost criminal, like I’m getting away with something. What I’m saying is that you can spend your whole life trying to be happy, taking up wild swimming or yoga or microdosing LSD or having therapy, but, for me, nothing has come close to the feeling of watching my child launch himself at a drawing of a fluorescent pink simian who has just learned the importance of saying sorry to an elephant with hurt feelings.
It’s not just your happiness, either: it’s theirs. Giving your baby a lovely day feels genuinely fulfilling for you, but less selfishly, joy has been created for them, and the amount of happiness on this planet has increased. It may be by a tiny amount, in a global context, but to that child, it is everything.
Another one of those cliches is that it’s “a love unlike any other” – a nonsense, because no love is like any other. What I will say is that it’s a love that feels primal and molecular. It has a before, and an after. Before I felt this love, I could imagine it, because like most humans I am capable of empathy, but I had not lived with it. The life I had before I got to feel this love feels like less of a life. That is not to say that I believe people who are not parents live less meaningful lives. I don’t, at all. But my life has greater meaning to me, for loving him.
And of course, his life has meaning. He exists! It still feels wild and miraculous that this should be the case, and not just because it wasn’t the easiest birth (try not to worry about the birth. We usually hear the horror stories, and they are important, but good births happen, too). Becoming a mother – and giving birth – has enhanced my feelings of solidarity with other women. It is a solidarity that is physical, intellectual, emotional and political. It is also historical. I feel empathy with women who lived and died many centuries before I even existed. And that has expanded my heart and my mind.
When I became a mother, it was as though all the mothers in my life, even peripherally, received some sort of alert signal, and rallied. Even the mothers of friends of mine, whom I rarely see, sent gifts and messages. Other mothers brought meals or gave breastfeeding support or medical advice. Their well wishes, guidance and care held me in an embrace that lasted for many months after the birth. My own mother’s embrace, and my father’s, not to mention my extended family’s, have kept me going.
We are used to hearing about how motherhood limits and constricts your life, less so about how it can expand it. A world of other mothers – other parents, actually – has revealed itself to me. I have always believed that life is fundamentally about human relationships, and having a baby has enhanced mine. I love my husband more than ever.
Parenting has also allowed me to experience childhood again. I always wanted to give someone else a childhood. My wide-eyed little boy is at the stage where he is simply in love with the world, and that love is thrillingly unconditional (he is beside himself every time he sees a pigeon). It is a privilege to witness, and it makes me determined to maintain it for him as much as I am able, because his laugh is the best sound that I have ever heard.
A note about sleep: you will be OK – you’ve had enough wild nights to know you can cope. And you can get your body back, whatever that might mean to you. I feel I have (ish). As for your career, it’s normal to worry. I speak only for myself when I say that I wish I had spent less time fretting beforehand about how I would write. I have far less time, now, but I’m still writing. Even a paragraph a day adds up to a novel, eventually.
There is so much untapped joy, hilarity and love there waiting for you, and I hope I’ve given you a small glimpse of some of it to hold on to.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author
