Writing and motherhood

I recently joined the alumni writer's network for UTS, and the coordinator asked me to write something for their "Writers on Writing" series in their newsletter - only to write about how having a baby has affected my writing. Here's my submission, which is being published in September.

As a writer, having a baby is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Not just the having of it, which though incredibly painful, is now a blur. No, I’m thinking of the selflessness. The realisation that my needs would never again come first. Does that sound harsh? It’s also a wonderful thing. How rare, in these materialistic times, to realise life revolves around a completely uncommodifiable thing!
I still remember the complete bafflement I felt when faced with this tiny, red-faced, screaming creature. The black hole of time swallowed up by breastfeeding, laundry, cooking and cleaning. The hours spent getting her to sleep, to eat, to just stop crying. How it felt to organise myself to get outside for a few hours, and then find at the front door she’d vomited over her clothes, her blankets, my coat. To end up indoors again, back at the laundry sink.
The anxiety I felt over doing it right. Whether she ate enough. Slept enough. Whether her poo was the right colour. Whether I was doing her a lifetime of damage by giving her a dummy. Whether swaddling would turn her into a cripple. Whether I should be co-sleeping or putting her in the bassinette, carrying her in a sling or in the pram.
Part of the problem was my own approach – years of being a journalist and a voracious reader had given me the tendency to over-research. I read absolutely everything available on the subject. Only everyone had something different to tell me. According to Gina Ford, we should be adhering to a strict schedule of sleeps and naps and fresh air and feeds. At 9am the baby should be in the nursery, curtains drawn, while I was washing the bottles and having my toast and tea. But then Dr Sears told me I shouldn’t give a damn about schedules, just to co-sleep, always carry my baby and feed her whenever she desired it. Which was all very nice, except none of us slept well with her in the bed (baby included) and sometimes I needed to put her down. When was I supposed to go to the toilet? And according to the Baby Whisperer I should be thinking about her toilet training before she turned one.
But the thing that bothered me most was that I felt as though I wasn’t getting any writing done. I know my expectations were high, but I was raised in a generation where I was prepared for nothing as much as a career. I could do whatever I chose, I was told, as long as I worked hard at it. My career of choice, journalism and writing, seemed a perfect fit with motherhood because of the flexible hours and the ability to work from home. I remember telling people, smugly, ‘I’ll just write while she’s sleeping’.
Was I thinking at 8pm, before I ate my own dinner and collapsed into bed only to be woken a few hours later to nurse again? Or during one of the several 40 minute catnaps my little one took during the day? I’m not sure what I was thinking, exactly, but you can’t blame me or any of the other first time mothers who come into this completely unprepared. Most of us haven’t been in close contact with others who’ve had babies yet. Sure, there are the friends and relatives, but unless we live in the same place, we’re probably not present for the 3am wakings or the arguments about whose turn it is to change the nappy.
Besides, while I was always dying for her to fall asleep so I could do some writing, which I felt I desperately needed, as soon as she slept I couldn’t bear not to watch her. Those perfect eyelids, the lips. Making sure her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. And then perhaps I would steal away to have a shower, and by the time I was finished she would be awake again. My disappointment disappearing as she wriggled in my arms. Or smiled, showing rosebud-pink gums, as she lay on the change table.
Even now, as she’s fourteen months, the only reason I can sit down to write is because she’s off for a few hours with her grandmother. Even now, after more than a year, a few hours to write is precious. I have to ignore the sink full of dishes, the dog hair coating the carpet and just sit down at my computer.
Part of the challenge, indeed, is that not everyone sees writing as work. Particularly if it’s not something I’ve been commissioned to do, if it’s an idea brewing in my head or something I need to get out of me. Or perhaps the fiction manuscript I never quite finished before she was born. If I had to be in an office during this time, wasting precious hours commuting and gossiping with colleagues, no-one would question that what I did was work. Yet staying home and writing is, for me, the hardest work of all. Why then do I still feel guilty about doing it? Maybe it’s the absence of a regular pay check, or the raised eyebrows that others give me when I tell them what I’ve been doing.
Yet somehow, underneath all of this, I have a sense that motherhood will give me new insight as well. Grist for the mill of my own creativity. A whole new world has opened up to me – of sensations and challenges and fears. A world of selflessness, of empathy. Of fierce love, fiercer than I could have imagined.
My new powers frighten me, how everything I do will help form her little person, the way she thinks about this world. Every action I take will set an example for her. I want to use this power for good, but I also know how important it is to find the time to be someone other than just a mother. To write again. Not just for me, but for my daughter as well.