The Accidental Sidelining of Maternal Joy

Have we made so much room for the struggles that there’s less space for our contentment?

Mary Cassatt, Mother’s Kiss, 1890–1891; Drypoint and aquatint on paper, 13 3/4 x 9 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of John and Linda Comstock in loving memory of Abigail Pearson Van Vleck; Photo by Lee Stalsworth

At my first prenatal appointment for my first child, my doctor asked how I was feeling.

“Good, I said, “but tired.” I wasn’t throwing up, just sleeping.

“Don’t tell any other mothers that,” she said. “Tired and not puking is better than tired and puking,” she said.

Fast forward through forty weeks of pregnancy, labor, and delivery. My son arrived, and we spent most of those first three months in bed, both of us sleeping, or him sleeping and me reading Anna Karenina, or both of us awake. He blinked slowly, swimming through new consciousness. I stared with the awestruck eyes of new love. My nightgown was damp with milk. His diaper needed changing. He nursed, and then one or both of us slept again.

When we finally rose from bed, we walked in our neighborhood, trudging up the hot, dry hills behind our little house. We both wore hats to block the sun. Strapped to my chest, he sloshed like a milk jug.

“Don’t tell any other mothers you have such an easy baby,” a friend warned.

New motherhood is, for many, a time of intense loneliness and isolation, not unlike living on the ice planet…