Coming Home

My journey of empowering motherhood began well before I even conceived my first child when I was managing a women’s centre in Hawkes Bay.  For quite some time I had the desire to start a family and get pregnant, yet I was hesitant to acknowledge this urge as I didn’t feel that wanting a child was a legitimate goal to have for my life. As much as I believed in a woman having the right to decide what was right for her and live her life the way she wanted,  part of me devalued motherhood and felt that I was somehow moving away from my feminist upbringing by wanting something so traditional and not wanting something that my life was geared towards, (paid employment) and that women had fought so hard to seek equality and equal opportunity within. 

Instead of acting on my desires, I immersed myself in pregnancy and birth from afar in the form of reading and researching anything and everything I could on this broad topic.  In doing this I came to the realisation that motherhood begins not with the birth of a child, but with the conception of a child, when suddenly the needs of someone else are considered not only alongside, but above your own.  I saw this responsibility as huge, not only for maintaining my own physical health with exercise and good nutrition, but also my emotional health as all my feelings and associated chemical responses also surged through my inutero babie’s blood.  Then the reality of the huge number of choices to be made on behalf of this child and myself became apparent with information on “routine” testing, ultrasound, labour and birth, vitamin K…..

Through this process being informed, critical thought and intuition became what I saw as the key combination for decision making.  I realised some of the strong social and medical values around pregnancy and birth, and became aware of how a pregnant woman, and a mother and her child were both seen as having a societal ownership and therefore unfair right to opinion and judgement.

It was only while recovering from work-related burn out that I really listened to my heartfelt desire to become a mother.  I became more grounded in myself during this process and acknowledged a core part of me that I had been ignoring. 

Once I was strong and healthy again I was lucky to conceive very quickly, and thus began my actual journey of motherhood.  I had an amazing pregnancy and was the happiest I had been in a long time.  I worked parttime in a role that was not too demanding and spent the rest of my time and energy immersed in pregnancy and preparing for the home birth of our baby. 

I took maternity leave from my job and didn’t think too far beyond the first crazy months with my new baby.  As I grew to love her more and more the idea of letting someone else care for her on a day to day basis was unthinkable.  I wanted to be there and I wanted to live and breathe my child.  So I came home and I stayed home.  Home in a physical sense and home to myself. 

PS:  I’ll write about the challenges that come with home and the wavering of commitment in future blogs as I don’t want to mislead and make out that it is all smooth sailing.