My full-time mothering starts as summer turns to fall: just me and an eight-month baby, filling time in the foreign city we’ve moved to for my husband’s job. Robert is gone from six thirty to six: thus, my daily shift is about twelve hours — not counting nighttime interruptions, breastfeeding, and everything else. It doesn’t seem like much to do, but somehow it takes all my time.
It’s a privilege to live in London on mostly one income — to be able to be with my kid instead of paying for nursery. I love my baby. But I wanted to be a mother, not to dissolve.
I started the motherhood journey while already mid-career switch: from engineer to artist and writer. Ambition is a tough drug to kick; I have agents to pitch, illustrations to complete. I have an art commission on deadline, and every spare minute of nap time is flowing into it: if the boy is awake, I can’t work at all.
A baby is an enemy of the flow state. I’m trying to draw precise shapes on my iPad, but the stylus has been stolen from my hands. Day after day, I watch my child steal focus. Tools. Flow. With a very young child you can only live in the moment. It’s beautiful. It’s exhausting.
“Mamamamamamama….” My baby babbles, industriously interacting a doorstop he’s stolen with the dial of the kitchen radiator.
My dreams of productivity firmly back-burnered, I grab him around the waist and hold him aloft.
“I’m your mama! That’s me!”
He’s a delight. When Robert is home, we take turns saying this to each other, meaning it every time. He is. He picks up objects and examines them carefully. He stands, squats, stands, interacts every item in his inventory. He looks in our direction and his whole face is a smile.
Motherhood is everything I hoped it would be, but I don’t have space to mourn the passing of the woman I was.
Monday hits again, and truly, I would love to go into an office. I imagine the luxury of sitting at a laptop: a cup of tea, an entire hour. I laugh to myself. That laptop I once shoved away at the end of a workday has become an indulgent dream. I can’t help a twinge of jealousy as I watch my partner go.
In October, we have an experimental half day of daycare.
“Don’t get up,” Robert whispers, lifting the baby off me. “This is your day.”
It’s the first time since birth when I haven’t felt on call. I’m free, overwhelmed with freedom. I finish my to-do list by nine AM.
By eleven, I miss my child acutely. I’ve forgotten how be just a person — nobody has needed me for hours. How did I once spend all this time? But I can’t start anything new; I have only this morning.
At least I can finish my commission, I think. But my client backs out. After a wave of shock, I realize I’m overwhelmingly relieved. My last deadline, gone.
Normalcy arrives quickly, as muffling as overnight snow. I begin to think of the time before kids as my “single” time — as in “singular,” before I was motherbaby.
Between pregnancy and breastfeeding, there hasn’t been a time since early 2024 when my body was wholly my own — much less my mind, my time, my basis of emotion.
I love this chosen work, and still it is a sacrifice. Maybe, I tell myself, I will have time for work with deadlines five years from now. The current project is to grow three kids. And to that end: I’m pregnant again.
It’s not only a London winter, but a first trimester — now with a toddler in tow. Projects feel out of reach, but I manage the crossword puzzle sometimes. I have two technical degrees and this is my only outlet; my brain doesn’t seem to matter right now.
I do actually love every day of this. My one-year-old loves me, specifically. He toddles over and catches my eye; we share a grin. We stick out our tongues. It takes so little to make joy.
It’s raining pleasantly as I lay beside my toddler on the floor. All he wants to do today is cuddle, read books, and eat crackers. I can hardly argue.
My life no longer has rush in it. It’s full, every day — the baby needs constant presence.
Perforce, I’m learning a slower wisdom.
I embrace cooking slowly: the big pots on the stove turned low enough I can forget them. The cutting board is on the floor so he can watch instead of clinging at my knees. We tear portobellos with our hands. He bathes himself in yogurt; I re-bathe him in the kitchen sink.
In the wet days of winter, I shuffle the child between stay-and-plays. One week, I can’t take another nursery rhyme. I take him to the Tate Modern instead.
I know before we’ve even left our block that this is a bad idea. He insists on walking but will not hold my hand. He stops to play with sidewalk trash, then runs into other people’s front gardens. But I could really use a day that’s not like all the others, so we board the train.
In the city, the boy tries to drink from a sidewalk puddle. He runs into the middle of a school group. Finally at the gallery, my son dismantles an exhibit barrier: I stop him just before the rope can scatter the display. He shrieks and goes floppy as I lift him away: a charming new skill he’s picked up in the last couple of days.
We kick ourselves out and go home.
I’m exhausted; he’s bitey. I refuse to let him feed me a wedge of tangerine, so he shrieks and mashes it into the side of my face, then juices it over my lap. Wearily, I read a page or two while chaos unfolds around me.
He brings me a board book and settles in my lap for a cuddle, so I set my book aside and read his aloud, kissing his soft little head. He turns around to sweetly kiss my cheek: another new trick.
The second trimester of pregnancy corresponds with the return of the light: I feel better so gradually that wellness is a realization. It is not quite as difficult to keep up with my increasingly mobile son.
One morning, I answer the door in such an evident state of deshabille that the delivery man apologizes profusely. I’m in pajamas and mid-breakfast with the little one. I check the mirror on the way back in: is it really so bad? This food-streaked look seems normal to me.
“How much of your time,” a friend asks on a video chat, “do you spend entertaining the baby?” She’s watching me keep him occupied with one hand while I try to keep focus on the conversation.
“Like, 98%?”
I calculate it later, and discover that my glib math is not far off. If I’m not too tired by the time he falls asleep, I write, knit, make art: things that I can point to — but often, I fall asleep while he’s still settling.
Growing infant to toddler and zygote to fetus are both creative acts, but I can’t get my fingers around their edges. Too much of the act is slippery with laundry soap.
But there are glimmers. With early sunlight, I wake before the baby — and sometimes my mind is full. I can write, or rise to take care of myself before taking care of him.
One morning, I sit at the table, drafting with colored pencils — and an extra page for my one-and-a-half-year-old. He draws a couple of lines. Then he passes me each pencil in turn: “Mama.” Then he wants them back, to throw across the floor.
Even so, I draw a little. I progress because he’s learning ways to spend his own time. My swelling belly a sword of Damocles, I dare hope I can pursue my own projects — though I’m mostly thwarted still.
Perhaps this aspect of motherhood is its own bitter tonic. I’ve never been patient with myself. Pregnant with a toddler, there’s no energy left to self-recriminate. Work gets done, or it doesn’t. I publish raw with honesty, or not at all.
Every morning, we’re outside; his growing toddler emotions are too large for the confines of our home. I walk more than I would, listen more to the birds. I stop bringing work when we go out; he’d interrupt it anyway — so I’m present, watching changes in the season. My child and I point out to each other each pigeon, ladybug, snail.
My little boy gets cuddly when he’s tired: nap needed after all that fresh air. I lay on the couch and he climbs up, sprawling facedown across my chest. He sings to himself quietly as his breathing slows.
I could transfer him to the floor: I have a place prepared with a blanket. But it’s so peaceful, his warm weight making me sleepy, too. I could write, do dishes, hang laundry. I could read or even draw. Or I can stay right here, lean into this flow.
“I love being your mother more than I’ve ever loved anything,” I whisper into his hair. I close my eyes and hold him.
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To Love a Child
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May 24
The only time in my life I’ve been a bad student was when I was falling in love with my husband. I’m type A, problematically diligent. But in the autumn of our whirlwind romance, I let it all slip.
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