All Posts

It arrives out of nowhere. You are carrying your baby down the stairs, or standing by the bath, or watching them sleep, and a sudden, horrible image or thought flashes through your mind. Something terrible happening to them. Or, worse and harder to admit, something you might do. It is gone as fast as it came, but it leaves you shaken, sick with guilt, and certain you must be the only person in the world who has ever thought such a thing. You are not. And it does not mean what

Most people feel some nervousness about giving birth. That is ordinary. But for some, the fear is a different order of thing entirely. It is the dread that sits in your stomach when a friend announces a pregnancy. It is avoiding the subject of birth altogether because even thinking about it makes your heart race. For some people, it is wanting a child deeply and feeling unable to face the path to having one. If that is closer to your experience, there is a name for it. It is

Everyone told you your life would change. What no one quite explained was that you would change. Not just your routine or your sleep or your body, but your sense of who you are. You catch sight of yourself and feel like you are looking for someone who used to be there. You love your baby completely and still, quietly, you miss the person you were before. There is a word for this, and learning it can be a genuine relief. It is called matrescence. What matrescence means Matresc

You are standing in the kitchen at 3am. The baby will not settle, the muslins are somewhere you cannot find, and your partner has just asked, in a perfectly reasonable voice, whether you have tried feeding again. Something in you snaps. A wave of anger comes up so fast and so hot that it frightens you. An hour later, once everyone is finally asleep, you are left wondering what on earth is happening to you. If this sounds familiar, please know two things straight away. You are