Who I was and who I am.?

A child changes our lives, how many of you have wonder who you are after you become a mother?

Well, I have, and I am sure there is thousand of women out there who have felt or feel the same way.

Pregnancy changes us, the birth changes us, and not less important a child change us. As a mother of a one year and a half boy I still haven’t found myself back since his birth and the only thing I am sure about is that I am not in any way who I was before him even though I still don’t know exactly who I am today.

Looking back and reflecting on who I was before my child I know without any doubts that something was missing on me, almost like my life didn’t have a clear purpose at least not in the same way that I feel it has today but...there is always a but isn’t it? But I had a kind of confidence on my self which I lack today,I had this free spirit which I find so hard to liberate. It’s almost like there is not a second that I have that I cannot worry, a lot of responsibilities comes with a child and know how to deal with them can be hard.

You are responsible to educate a little human and you just want to make sure you are doing everything right so the child that you are upbringing is a gentile and well-educated person, but this can be stressful, this journey will test your limits, your patience, your strength and along the way you can lose yourself for some moments.

A clear loss of identity has hit me, but let’s go sometime back more specifically on the pregnancy journey. Thinking back, I can only remember the pregnancy glow, in how beautiful I felt pregnant but not less important on how pregnancy changed my humour hormones and how everyone felt I was unbearable with my horrible mood.

Birth was tragic nearly died, I don’t think I will go down that path again and every time I think about it, I think I am crazy just to think about doing it again but that is me and it's important to highlight that birth can be beautiful too although it will always be somehow painful there is no other way to give birth, so if you want to become a mother you can’t really run from it.

Postnatal depression it’s a type of depression that parents can experience after having a baby and accordingly to NHS it affects more than 1 in every 10 women within a year of giving birth, looking back and acknowledging that I have suffered from it I know today that having the right professional accompaniment is crucial, psychotherapy has become such an important thing in my life and it has helped me to find the way back to myself. When I try to remember the first months of life of my child, I can only think that I made it through, I look at pictures of him and I just can’t remember him being so tiny...it's incredible how time flies and how our perceptions of things change overtime.

Having a child can be emotionally challenging, it can be triggering, physically and psychological tiring but it also is the most beautiful thing in the world, the unexplainable love and the feeling that it was the most beautiful choice you have ever made above all, you forget the pain, you forget the struggle, the tiredness and only love prevails.

Accepting that things take time is a process, accepting the changes within you too, as I feel closer to

recognising myself again, I understand that through this journey of becoming a mother I forgot to look after my self and the importance of doing so. Knowing that I can only transmit happiness if I am happy, that I can only give a healthy love if the love within me exists was an important step to where I am today.

Not long ago in one of my mother visits to my house she asked me if I would like her to brush my hair not long after I finished my shower, and without thinking twice I said yes, while she was brushing my long hair while seating on a chair and we would speak about how much hair loss I still have due to post-partum hormones I could only think how much I have missed to feel like the daughter and not like the mother. On this day I realised that I can still be both and it brought me an unspeakable peace, it was not only the feeling that for moments my mother being the mother and not the grandmother but that I can still be whatever and whoever I want that I will keep being the mother, the daughter and one day the grandmother.

You might relate to this story, you might not because in the end of the day we are all different, and we all experience things with different intensities and that is ok, the acceptance of different experiences it’s so important, it’s important to stop this constant comparison between each other and with what we see on social media. Having a child, it’s not only roses and it has thorns too, breastfeeding it not all nice and easy as you might see portrayed in some places, believe me it can be hurtful and exhausting. Important is to refer that and it needs to be ok not wanting to breastfeed as it also needs to be ok wanting to do so, it’s our body and we have the choice in our hands, the choice to choose who we are, who will we be and not less important the choice to take our own decisions.

I love my child and I would not change him for anything in this world even though I sometimes miss who I was, I re-learned how to love myself and to own the changes that pregnancy brought me as they are and always be a reminder of my strength and love.

Daniela Carvalho, April 2022