There’s No Going Back

You need to get your body back…

You need to get your sleep back…

You need to get your life back…

You need to get back to work…

You need your career back…

Early motherhood can feel like a bad board game some times. One in which everyone else seems to be moving on taking over the world. Meanwhile you are sitting with little people who are your world, but someone keeps telling you to “go back”.

Whether you realise it or not, one or more of these messages is played on repeat in the mind of most women during pregnancy and post birth. Even if you consider yourself an empowered woman and have mentally chosen an “I am not bowing to that” approach, by the simple law of attraction those narratives will still linger somewhere in your mental backpack. A bit of a drag.

It’s backwards.

Nothing in life and birth is supposed to go that way. Let’s look at birth specifically for a moment. If you ask physicians if there is any time in which a woman’s body goes backwards. You will probably be met with a term they learn during their training: the “incompetent cervix”. This refers to a cervix that, from their perspective, has failed to dilate and may have even to their surprise have reversed, going from something like 7cm back down to 3cm. In that situation your birth would be deemed to be failing and the “emergency c” call would be made. It is a perspective that has left countless women moving forward in their lives with a subconscious belief that their bodies failed.

Talk to wise midwives, however, and the story you hear would not be one of failure but one of the incredible wisdom of the body. “Pasmo” is a Spanish word used for hundreds of years by birth attendants in South America to describe reversal of labour in a woman, which occurs when a woman feels she is in danger or threatened and her stress hormones raise enough to stall the birth until she feels safe again. It is what any birthing mammal would do in the presence of danger.

While there is no equivalent word in the English language for Pasmo, Dr Sarah Wickham refers to it in a perfect way, as “recoil”. This, may it be noted, is not the same as “incompetence”, but rather a healthy indication of a system switched on to its environment. Recoil is in fact the body’s attempt to retreat until such time that the woman feels calm and safe again so that she can ensure her baby is born in a safe space. Once she feels safe, we we could expect that we will then see a rapid progression.

The issue then, it is clear, is that what many women have been told is failure was not a betrayal by their body, but rather of their bodies. The failure is in a system that expects women to perform a deeply intimate, sacred event in an environment filled with the energy of fear, adrenaline, deadlines, protocol and paperwork. A system full of sub-systems that pull a woman out of the hormonal state necessary for healthy, smooth-flowing birth. And the same can be argued for motherhood.

If the only time someone or something retreats is in the presence of fear and the desire for self-preservation, why are so many women wanting to go back to the way they lived before having babies? What exactly are they wanting to go back to? We are the first generation in human history that has paid money to have breaks away from our children so we can, apparently, practice vital self-care to carry on without losing our marbles. Are children really that bad? I like to think not. Is it perhaps the hundred and fifty other things the world says we need to be doing that are the real energy drain? Is trying to mother in a society that prizes flying solo the real issue? Is the fact that most women spend their pregnancies planning and diarising for things to return to normal - just with an adorable baby in the mix - a recipe for disappointment?

The reality is that there is no going back. And we shouldn’t be wishing for it, or feeling guilty that we have moments of wishing for who we once were.

This is your evolution, not mine, not your mother’s, not your doctor’s, not your mother-in-law’s or Aunt Muriel’s. This is yours, and the only way you can do it in a way that does not leave you longing for the past, looking forward to your next kid-free moment, or even looking forward to the day the kids leave home, is to use the pregnant pause and the postpartum pause, as a time to recalibrate… A time to acknowledge that life will never be the same because it’s not meant to. A time to let go of past hang-ups and baggage, expectations and notions of perfection. Because it’s meant to be something greater, with a whole new set of lessons and experiences and growth, not just for your baby, but you as a woman.

Do that and you won’t want to go back, because you’ll love this you. The one with new layers of wisdom. The one who will have new layers of wisdom tomorrow.