FINALLY SEEING THE LIGHT

Natalie Finnerty - 23 Sep 14

On admitting my pregnancy to people I often received the same lovely response: “Oh you’ll be such a natural mum”, they’d say. I’d smile modestly but in my head I’d secretly agree. I’m calm and patient, I give good hugs, I’m a great listener – hell they were right, I’d be a great mum!

I’d never once considered whether I wanted children or not. To me it was just a given that I would have them, and that when I did I’d take to it as naturally as people said I would. But I felt anything but a ‘natural’ on the day Isaac was born. I looked down at him and felt, well not a lot really. Motherhood suddenly felt like a terrifying ordeal and I was convinced I’d made a huge mistake. Oh sure he was the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen, but he was a stranger. Holding him felt like having an out-of-body experience, and caring for him felt like I’d been left to look after someone else’s baby.

“Don’t you feel like you’ve never known love like this before?” my friend S said in one of the many texts that flooded my phone in those first few hours. “Oh yes, completely”, I lied. I desperately wanted to feel that way, more than anything, but at that moment I think I felt more for my cat. I felt like a fraud, and that I’d let everyone down. As I waited in the hospital corridor to go home I sobbed into my little man’s bobble hat and wished he’d been born to a mum who deserved him.

Those first difficult days passed in a fog of sore nipples, sleeplessness, visits from midwives and knocks from the postman. I watched as the pile of cards grew on the coffee table, unable to face opening them. I didn’t feel up to having any visitors and I couldn’t even contemplate pushing Isaac in his pram to Tesco.

I felt so sorry for my poor husband too. Like most men I think he’d expected me to pilot us through this daunting new world of parenthood, but I could barely stop crying for long enough to have one rational thought. Instead he had to be the one to stay strong, keep things together and YouTube how to swaddle, sterilise and stimulate milk flow. I felt exactly like Alice in Wonderland, like I’d fallen down a dark hole, was drowning in a river of tears and was surrounded by people who didn’t understand me.

The loneliness and despair I felt made me feel physically ill. I remember wishing I could get a non-life threatening, but adequately serious, illness that necessitated a lengthy stay in hospital, so I could sleep and someone else could look after Isaac. I should have been careful what I wished for as when he was five weeks old I caught the mumps and my parents suggested I go to theirs to rest. As I lay in my old bedroom looking up at the ceiling I suddenly felt like I didn’t want to go home, and knew then that I needed to get help.

Nine months later, after huge support from my doctor and a mixture of tablets and talking, it’s hard to believe just how bleak those first weeks of my son’s life were. It still makes me sad that I didn’t enjoy those fleetingly precious newborn moments, but since then my love for Isaac has grown stronger every day and my memory has been filled with moments so wonderful I wouldn’t have dared believe they could happen when he was first born. There are still dark days, like all parents have, but I truly believe that with the right support, any mum going through a similar experience can climb out of that darkness and into the light, to love life with their little one.

Natalie Finnerty

Natalie Finnerty has recently returned from maternity leave to her job as a social media officer. She is currently trying to remember what she used to pretend to do all day. She lives in South London with her husband Andy and their one-year-old son Isaac. You can follow her on twitter @natfinnerty

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