I know I want at least one baby. But the more I learn about motherhood, the more terrifying it seems
It’s a conspiracy, I’m sure of it. Since the pandemic in 2020, the year I moved out of the category of young adulthood, my Instagram “for you” page has been filled with images and videos of the cutest babies you could ever hope to see. Round-cheeked and smiley, they drool and babble and fall haphazardly on their faces when they fart, or smile when they fart, or just fart very loudly.
It’s adorable.
As someone who, at 30, hasn’t been around many actual babies, and has only a couple of close friends who have embarked on parenthood thus far, this online exposure has been transformative. I had always known I wanted at least one child, but approached the idea with the naivety of youth and the assuredness of socialised gender norms – of course I would have a child because all little girls have the ambition to care for babies, and why would I have wasted all that time swaddling a plastic doll or discussing baby names when I was barely out of babyhood myself (Chloe was my favourite) if it wouldn’t one day translate into reality?
Initially, the for you page became a portal for my broodiness. Wouldn’t it be nice, I pondered, to be a youngish mum? For my parents to be grandparents? Except, at some point, my feed changed from cute pictures to more realistic portrayals of motherhood.
First came the ultra-candid birth stories, the honest relaying of trauma. Responsibly, I decided to search out different messaging and stumbled upon a parenting company that posted “positive birth stories”. Unfortunately, as I read them, I realised that while they were being cast in an optimistic light, for me, almost every single one of them was still terrifying. Then I started latching on to a proliferation of grim statistics. Black women in the UK are four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth, I read in 2021. The following year, it was reported that the number of women not returning to work after having a baby was rising for the first time in decades. And this January it was reported that the number of women who are dying in pregnancy has risen sharply.
It’s wonderful that all this information is available for women as it gives us the option to make an informed choice about motherhood. But for those of us who already feel that strong compulsion toward child rearing, from these god-awful statistics to Channel 4’s maternity ward docu