Supporting new mothers

Fronted by Kate, The Princess of Wales, she stated that: “In these difficult times, it is more important than ever to help support parents and caregivers provide loving safe and secure homes for their babies and young children to survive.”

It was only on rereading it, that what I thought first was ‘thrive’ was in fact ‘survive’, which is a peculiarly dramatic choice of word. However, this time of life is often characterised by powerful emotions, yet it is predominately the mother who experiences them. At least one in five women experiences post-natal depression, or as it is more correctly known post-natal illness, affecting between 70 and 100,000 women and their babies in the UK every year. These are just the reported figures, the truth is many women suffer in silence.

• From the royal launch event of Shaping Us

In order to provide a ‘loving, safe and secure home’ a mother needs to feel loved, safe and secure herself. If you are feeling isolated, lonely and in the grip of depression, you cannot engage properly with your baby. I run Mothers Uncovered in Brighton, a creative peer support network to help women adjust to motherhood, with all activities led by past participants. We have seen close to 3000 women since our inception in 2008 and many are utterly broken by the impact of becoming a mother.

We live in an increasingly fast-paced society, where you can leave hospital as quickly as a few hours after giving birth and are expected to get on with it. A sense of neighbourhood is fast being eroded in western cultures. Excepting perhaps small villages, gone are the days when the whole street would rally round to help the new family, while the mother rested and adjusted.

Families these days are small, not extended, often you have moved away from where you grew up; women delay having children while they pursue careers and travel, so to be suddenly thrust into the role of housebound new mum without a support network can be terrifying.

People might say there are community spaces up and down the country packed with mum and baby groups, which is true. These are usually informal drop-ins however, not suitable for discussing issues that might be difficult and painful. The last thing a vulnerable new mother needs is to walk into a large room of chattering women who all seem to know each other and seem to be managing motherhood much better.

The report is skewed from the viewpoint of the child’s wellbeing, yet we need to begin the support much earlier, with greater investment in antenatal and postnatal care and creating lived experience communities for new mothers. Becoming a mother floods a sleep-deprived woman’s body with hormones and her worried mind with an overwhelming sense of responsibility. She will usually feel enormously protective towards her child. But she might feel fear that she doesn’t love her child, resentment or anger that her life is turned upside down, worried about money, or her career.

But, often if she mentions any of this, or there is an article in the media from a new mother saying how hard she is finding things, the response can often be that she should stop moaning and feel grateful. Or the ‘whataboutery’ brigade silences her with how women have been having babies for centuries, or what about fathers, or women without children, are they not important?

Our Mothers Uncovered groups combine facilitated discussion with a range of art forms, to help women process experiences and celebrate and mark this period in their lives. Being given time and space to air these views is of paramount importance to their wellbeing and self-esteem. Furthermore, when their stories are written down and shared with others, it validates their experiences. And they can feel pride at the very real work they are doing. Women often feel they are ‘just a mum’ or frustrated that they can’t do many other tasks in a day, as well as look after the baby. But loving, bonding with and looking after a child is work and should be treated as such. In order to give babies the best start in life, we need to look after those that give them life.

Maggie Gordon-Walker runs Mothers Uncovered in Brighton