Motherhood without alcohol
Or the surprising pleasure of milk-spew drizzle down my back
People aren't wrong when they say that after a baby they have no time. Or sleep.
I've been calling it the baby cave. And likened it to falling down a well, only miraculously you have no broken bones and you are really happy to be there.
All of the reasons I didn't want to be a mother are coming to fruition: no time to write, little interest in my projects, the toughest baby care (aka the night shift) falling mostly to me.
What I couldn't account for, before motherhood, was how I would feel about the baby. My son!
(I have a son!!)
How I would want to care for and prioritise him. How I would feel lucky to be the one he needed most.
It's impossible to tell of course, but I wonder if I would have had a baby if I'd never begun therapy and decided to get sober.
Worry over my drinking and whether I would have a kid loomed large for much of my late twenties and early thirties. How could I drink less? Should I maybe (horror of horrors) just quit?
As I worried over this, I was aware I was ageing out of the mothering years, but did it matter? I mean did I really want to become a mother?
No, was the instinctive answer. But when you are living as an undiagnosed autistic, woman overly dependent on alcohol with undiagnosed ADHD thrown in, it's hectic, to say the least. Thus there isn't a lot of time/space to long for a baby.
It was hard to tell whether I wanted a family at all. Did I feel sad about not having a kid or was I just aware that society would always view me as a little bit sad if I didn't have one?
I finally resolved The Alcohol Question in 2016. I was 33, and after trying really hard to moderate, I quit.
It wasn't easy, but, I did it.
Da-dah! Resolution. Hurray! Etc.
One Big Question resolved, my ever-analysing brain turned with more clarity and gusto than previously possible to the question of motherhood.
Was it something I wanted? For myself? Even with the clear sight of sobriety, it was impossible to get a definite answer.
Falling for someone who knew they wanted a family helped me make a decision - I was willing to give it a try - but I continued to wrestle with ambivalence all the way through what went on to become a years-long quest to acquire a baby.
Surely somebody ambivalent about motherhood couldn’t put themselves through this, I thought. Often.
I must really want this. And yet I remained unfussed about acquiring the extra complexities of family life. It looked like hard work and increased stress, and I am not great at managing either.
As I sit in the back of our car, beside our five-week-old son - reader, I delivered him! - with a drizzle of milk-spew down my back as we drive out to see family in the country, I can totally understand my indecision. And I'm so glad that in the end, life unfolded this way.
Recovery/therapy taught me that I can make the best of whatever outcome/decision I take (this helps with my chronic indecision/ambivalence). And having the baby is testament to this.
The reasons I feared motherhood were valid but I have been blown away by the positives. The joy and wonder and pride and gratitude. Those, I didn't expect.
Motherhood highlights gender inequalities and it makes me feel empowered as a woman.
It fills the days with dreary, repetitive tasks and it imbues everyday chores with powerful meaning.
In my 20s and 30s, I used to say if I could be the dad I would probably have a family by now. And I meant it. Motherhood looked difficult. More difficult than fatherhood, for realz.
Right now I'm experiencing firsthand the truth of that. And I am not entirely okay with it. But I also feel sorry for dads because they will never understand what it is like to grow and carry a baby. To feed them from your body. For them to be, for a while at least, a part of you. To be in symbiosis with them. Essential for their survival. Forever changed by their arrival.
Oh dear, I seem to be writing poetry.
But I find myself so exploded with love (and demented by hormones?) that it makes me sad I didn't do this sooner, that I didn't look forward to this experience, rather than dreading/critiquing/trying to avoid it.
Why was that, I wonder?
Was it to do with growing up undiagnosed autistic? Or coming of age in a gruesomely misogynistic time? The lack of a mainstream feminist movement in the 90s and 00s that left me with a lot of unidentified internalised misogyny (UIM™)?
I don’t know. I'm just glad I’m getting to do this thing that I’ve spent decades feeling ambivalent about. And I stand by my reservations about motherhood.
It isn't only the sacrifices of your body (I'm experiencing a lesser banquet of these now but they are/have been v real and troublesome - heartburn, backache, carpal tunnel, sleep deprivation, mega rage) but the way that society treats you. Mums, generally, do the majority of the work, yet dads draw the majority of the appreciation. Often from The kid themselves too. (This part’s a killer. Is it even true?)
Oh, look at him! Isn't he WONDERFUL? People say about a dad just doing a totally normal element of everyday parenting.
The bar is set lower for dads. In my twenties, I suspected that this would make me angry. Because it's unfair and I HATE UNFAIRNESS. Already I've been incensed by the discovery that mum and baby events have tea n biscuits while dad's get bacon sandwiches.
WTAF?
My partner doesn't even eat meat!!!
And I do. 😭😭😭😭😭
The double standard and lazy stereotyping is going to make me angry, and I'm sure I'll end up writing about it, and ranting often, but I'm so glad this injustice and my anger around it didn't keep me from having the experience.
(I have a son! 🍾🥳👑)
And I wonder if it might have if I'd kept drinking the way I used to, and hadn't looked underneath my angry feelings, and learned more healthy ways of managing them.
Thanks for reading! And sending love from the baby cave. Major props to all the women who dwell, have dwelled or long to dwell there.
And a caveat: I’m not saying I couldn’t have been happy or that my life would be less meaningful without a bio-baby but that I, personally, would have missed out on discovering that something I perceived as dominated by unfairness and drudgery is actually somehow also a pleasurable and wonderful experience.
(Well, duh.)
Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She writes about freedom, addiction, nature and love at Beautiful Hangover, and is also working on a non-fiction book about getting sober and finding out she’s neurodiverse, and a new YA novel.
You can connect with the Autistic community on Twitter. If you have a question, use #ActuallyAutistic or #AskingAutistics (or both). You can also visit The Autism Self Advocacy Network and the Autistic Not Weird Facebook page and website. I also love the book by Rudy Simone 22 Things Your Girlfriend with Aspergers Wants You To Know
Just read over your kind and insightful comment on my first, and so far only, substack post way back... I'm always a bit 'too shy' to comment publicly, but wanted to wish you a very special merry Christmas - the first as a mother! Many congratulations.
👏👏👏❤️🙌👌