‘At 45, I grieved the idea of motherhood. Then, by pure fluke, I was pregnant’

The birth of my first child, after the maelstrom passed, was a deliverance. It brought me closer to my real self. I have learned how to surrender when I need to. I am learning to live in the rhythm of other lives; I have learned to share my life.

‘Motherhood is an obliteration of the self,’

Matrescence. ‘The process of becoming a mother, which anthropologists call “matrescence,” has been largely unexplored in the medical community,’ Sacks writes. ‘Instead of focusing on the woman’s identity transition, more research is focused on how the baby turns out. But a woman’s story, in addition to how her psychology impacts her parenting, is i

‘Do you mind either way?’ The woman behind the till has scanned my box of Colgate and bottle of nit shampoo, but her hand pauses over the pregnancy test. My eyes flick quickly up to hers. I have four children already; asking me if I mind, as I buy a test that will seal my fate, feels way too intimate. What if I had been a different person, in diffe

Unlike other cultures, which treat becoming a mother as a major, traumatic life crisis, with special social rites and rituals, Western societies had been failing to recognize matrescence as a major transition: a transition that involves a whole spectrum of emotional and existential ruptures, a transition that can make women ill, a transition in whi