Breastfeeding is a natural and beautiful process whereby a new mother provides nourishment to the offspring from her own body. Despite its obvious health and emotional benefits, many face challenges in this journey often in the form of criticism and myths, which make the experience seem more daunting than it needs to be.
Mothers enjoy an extraordinary bond with their children. While emotional attachments are a work in progress for the best of mothers, biologically, this connection is undeniable and considerably deeper, both before and after birth.
Even as she is glorified, her work is devalued.
Time, heavy as a thousand suns combined,/ Bends mothers, smaller than the ones they bore,
Plenty of new and old parenting guides will tell you that you can spoil babies by holding them too much. Or rocking them to sleep. Or co-sleeping. Or cuddling and kissing. Fortunately for babies and for parents who are constantly pressured to fight against their natural instinct and hold off on responding to their children’s cries, science says you CANNOT spoil babies.
It is not uncommon for parents of young children to wish their children would grow up faster and not need their parents quite as much, especially after his fourth public meltdown, or on her third consecutive nightmare interruption in a night. However, here’s presenting the biggest contradiction of them all: parents miss this connection when it’s gone. Mothers, especially those whose children have hit puberty or flown out of the nest, often feel the absence of this kind of connection much more acutely than others because they have understood how fleeting it is.
Most of motherhood that is glorified — the process of giving birth, breastfeeding, the sleepless nights — is visible. What if we say that this is only the tip of the iceberg? The invisible and infinitely more extensive workload frequently goes unseen by the world and is most often, the root cause of why mothers feel tired all the time. We call it the mental load and all mothers can relate.
Motherhood changes everything you knew about yourself and the world you had carefully curated for the past however many years you have been alive.
Twenty-eight years ago, on an overcast day, an astrologer, sitting at the porch of our ramshackle house, had predicted that my mother would never give birth to a male child.
Breastfeeding is a natural and beautiful process whereby a new mother provides nourishment to the offspring from her own body. Despite its obvious health and emotional benefits, many face challenges in this journey often in the form of criticism and myths, which make the experience seem more daunting than it needs to be.
Mothers enjoy an extraordinary bond with their children. While emotional attachments are a work in progress for the best of mothers, biologically, this connection is undeniable and considerably deeper, both before and after birth.
Even as she is glorified, her work is devalued.
Time, heavy as a thousand suns combined,/ Bends mothers, smaller than the ones they bore,
Plenty of new and old parenting guides will tell you that you can spoil babies by holding them too much. Or rocking them to sleep. Or co-sleeping. Or cuddling and kissing. Fortunately for babies and for parents who are constantly pressured to fight against their natural instinct and hold off on responding to their children’s cries, science says you CANNOT spoil babies.
It is not uncommon for parents of young children to wish their children would grow up faster and not need their parents quite as much, especially after his fourth public meltdown, or on her third consecutive nightmare interruption in a night. However, here’s presenting the biggest contradiction of them all: parents miss this connection when it’s gone. Mothers, especially those whose children have hit puberty or flown out of the nest, often feel the absence of this kind of connection much more acutely than others because they have understood how fleeting it is.
Most of motherhood that is glorified — the process of giving birth, breastfeeding, the sleepless nights — is visible. What if we say that this is only the tip of the iceberg? The invisible and infinitely more extensive workload frequently goes unseen by the world and is most often, the root cause of why mothers feel tired all the time. We call it the mental load and all mothers can relate.
Motherhood changes everything you knew about yourself and the world you had carefully curated for the past however many years you have been alive.
Twenty-eight years ago, on an overcast day, an astrologer, sitting at the porch of our ramshackle house, had predicted that my mother would never give birth to a male child.
