I Love Being a Mother; I Also Miss the Woman I Was Before

There are days when I look at my son and wonder how my heart ever existed before him.

He is thirteen months old now. He has his own little personality, his own expressions, his own ways of making me laugh when I least expect it. Sometimes he looks at me and smiles, and for a few seconds, everything else disappears.

I am his mother.

And I love being his mother.

But sometimes, usually when the house is quiet and he is asleep, I miss the woman I was before him.

I don’t always know how to say that without sounding ungrateful.

Because motherhood comes with a strange expectation: once you have a child, you are supposed to be completely transformed. Happier, wiser, more patient, more selfless. You are supposed to look at your old life and think, Why did I ever need any of that?

But what if I don’t?

What if I love my new life and still miss my old one?

What if I can look at my child with complete adoration and, at the same time, miss being the woman who could leave the house without calculating nap times, meals, bags, bottles, and who would look after the baby?

I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

Before I became a mother, I was simply me.

I had dreams that weren’t connected to another human being. I could make plans spontaneously. I could spend an entire evening reading because I wanted to. I could take a shower without listening for a cry from the next room.

I could go somewhere without carrying what felt like half the house in a bag.

I could be tired and simply go to bed.

I could have a bad day without wondering whether my bad mood was somehow affecting someone else’s childhood.

I miss that woman sometimes.

I miss how much space she had inside her own life.

And perhaps what I miss most isn’t the freedom itself.

It is the feeling of being completely responsible for only one person: me.

Motherhood changes that equation overnight.

And in India, I think there is another layer to it.

We don’t raise children in isolation. We raise them surrounded by opinions.

Grandparents have opinions.

Relatives have opinions.

Neighbours have opinions.

The aunty downstairs has an opinion.

The person you have never met at the supermarket somehow has an opinion about your child’s clothes.

There is always someone ready to tell you what you should be doing.

Breastfeed.

Don’t breastfeed.

Feed more.

Don’t feed too much.

Hold the baby.

Don’t hold the baby too much.

Go back to work.

Why are you going back to work so soon?

Stay at home.

Why did you give up your career?

And somewhere in all of this noise, the mother herself can become strangely invisible.

I have sometimes wondered: Where did I go?

Not because I disappeared.

But because everyone suddenly had a new name for me.

Amma.

Mummy.

Mother.

And while that identity is one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened to me, I am still a woman underneath it.

I still have ambitions.

I still want to work.

I still want to write.

I still want to earn my own money and build something that belongs to me.

I want to read books that have nothing to do with parenting.

I want conversations that aren’t about whether my child ate enough.

I want to dress up sometimes for no particular reason.

I want to sit alone with a cup of coffee.

I want to travel.

I want to discover who I am now.

Because perhaps that is the part nobody tells you.

You don’t simply become a mother.

You become a mother while simultaneously trying to figure out who you are after becoming one.

And that can be confusing.

There are moments when I feel guilty for wanting anything for myself.

I might have an hour to myself and immediately wonder if I should be doing something productive for my family.

I might think about restarting my career and then wonder whether I’m being selfish.

I might want to spend money on something for myself and instinctively calculate how many useful things that money could buy for my child.

Sometimes I catch myself doing this and think:

When did wanting something for myself become something I needed to justify?

My child doesn’t need a mother who has erased herself.

He needs a mother who is alive in her own life.

A mother who has interests.

A mother who has dreams.

A mother who laughs.

A mother who sometimes gets things wrong.

A mother who can tell him, one day, that becoming his mother didn’t mean giving up being a person.

I want my son to grow up knowing that women don’t stop having dreams when they become mothers.

I want him to see that love doesn’t require disappearance.

That caring for someone doesn’t mean abandoning yourself.

That family isn’t supposed to be a place where one person slowly becomes invisible so everyone else can shine.

I am learning that motherhood doesn’t have to be an either-or.

I don’t have to choose between being a good mother and being myself.

I don’t have to decide whether the woman before motherhood or the woman after motherhood is the “real” me.

They are both me.

The woman I was before my son gave me many of the things I bring into motherhood today.

Her curiosity.

Her ambitions.

Her stubbornness.

Her humour.

Her mistakes.

Her dreams.

Her ability to be alone.

Her desire to build something meaningful.

She didn’t disappear when my son was born.

She simply got buried under diapers, sleepless nights, feeding schedules, doctor’s appointments, household responsibilities, expectations, and the enormous emotional weight of loving another human being more than I knew was possible.

And maybe I don’t need to find her exactly as she was.

Maybe I need to meet her again.

Because I am not the same woman anymore.

Motherhood has changed me.

Some changes have been beautiful.

Some have been painful.

Some I chose.

Some happened to me.

And some parts of myself I’m still trying to understand.

But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life mourning the woman I used to be.

I want to make room for her.

I want to take the parts of her that I loved and bring them into this new life.

I want to become someone my son can look at and see not just his mother, but a whole person.

A woman who loved him deeply.

And loved herself enough to remain.

So yes, I love being a mother.

I love the tiny hands reaching for me.

I love the sleepy cuddles.

I love the laughter.

I love being the person my child looks for when he needs comfort.

I love this little human who has rearranged my entire understanding of love.

But I also miss the woman I was before him.

And I’m finally learning that I don’t have to feel guilty about that.

Maybe loving motherhood and missing your old self aren’t contradictions.

Maybe they are simply two truths that can live in the same heart.

I can love the life I have now.

And still make space for the life I want next.

I can be his mother.

And still be me.