Name: Jane 

Children: Wilf, 7, Bertie, 4, Iris, 11 weeks, 
and Baby Zee, 
Stillborn at 40 + 4 in September 2013

Location: Chorlton 

Expectations of Motherhood: I had wanted to be a mum for as long as I could remember, having a pretty good one myself I was lured into a false sense of security that motherhood was a bit of a breeze. I envisaged long, rosy days of cuddles, coos and calm; I dreamed I would be brilliant at it. 

Reality of Motherhood: It isn’t easy, it isn’t a bit of a breeze and my days are certainly not the utopia of cuddles/coos/calm that I imagined. It is, hands down, the hardest job I’ve ever done – and I deal with hundreds of challenging teenagers for a living. That said, it is without a doubt the most rewarding, amazing and fulfilling role I have ever played. In any given day I can be a hundred different people – cook, cleaner, butler, teacher, doctor, nurse, dentist, spy, superheroine, playdoh modeller extraordinaire – the list goes on – and I love that about motherhood, the variety of it, the unpredictability of it. 

There is also, still, the unbelievability that I made them! I love that picture of Wonderwoman with the caption, ‘I grow humans, what’s your super power?’, sums it up just perfectly.

The growing humans element is amazing but in very rare cases things don’t work out with this little person you have been growing inside you for 9 months and often dreaming of for even longer. The reality of being a bereaved parent is shockingly awful, something that you can never be prepared for and something you should never have to be. Losing our daughter at full-term has taught me a lot of things, most significantly to make the most of every single minute I have with my babies; I have come face to face with many women who would give anything to be a mother for the first time, and even for the second and third time, and I think of them often these days as I cuddle my three crazies and remember the one in the sky who didn’t quite make it but left a huge imprint on all of our hearts. 


Taking your children home for the first time: aaaargh! It felt like we’d drawn a lot of money out of the bank and everyone knew we had it on us; driving home from the hospital I was convinced that we were somehow more at risk than before, that someone would definitely crash into us, that the whole world knew we had this precious bundle in the car and were all out to get him. And there it began, the worry of being a parent, the innate mechanism you have to protect your child against any harm. Once home, we set him down on the living room floor and looked at each other – both terrified even at the prospect of getting him out of his car seat. Eventually we got him out and showed him around his new home; even to this day I can hear my husband’s little speech for the different Mr Men and Little Miss characters in his bedroom, it was something he did from that moment on almost every night with Wilf before bath time/bedtime. I also remember that feeling that he might break, he seemed so small and fragile and I was convinced I was going to trip and drop him. It took a lovely midwife to show me that, actually, they were pretty hardy things these babies and it needn’t take me half an hour to get him out of his vest! 

The hardest parts of being a mother: definitely the guilt and the worry. The guilt comes from whether you are doing enough with and for your baby/children. When the return to work happens, if it has to, there’s a sense that you are not doing any of your roles (mum, wife, friend, sister, employee etc) as well as you possibly could be. Coming to realise that you can’t be perfect in every role is a tough thing to accept. 

The worry of parenthood has shocked me, I was a worrier before but my hubby has (probably rightly) recently diagnosed me as a ‘catastrophic thinker,’ particularly in terms of the children’s health. It takes all my self-control to stop myself from self-diagnosing a rash as meningitis or worse. This has definitely been compounded by losing our first daughter at full-term without any warning at all; that’s made me feel that the rug can be ripped out from under us in the click of a finger. I speak to many mums who identify with this worry of motherhood, who worry and panic over any symptom of illness their child presents with and they haven’t experienced a stillbirth. I think for some of us, it goes with the territory these babies are your most precious things and I know my mum still worries about me now; finding strategies to help with the worry and help to calm concerns definitely helps – Doctor Google is most certainly not your friend.

Has becoming a mother changed you? it’s made me a little less frenetic, a little more anxious and a little better at baking and playing at being a superhero. It has made me feel incredibly fortunate and more proud than I ever though possible of these people we have made. 

Losing Baby Zee has made me more aware of the silent mothers who walk amongst us, mothers without babies here on earth but still mothers none-the-less; there are times when I catch one of these mums watching me in the street, looking at me and my three children. She doesn’t say anything but she doesn’t need to, her look is one I know all too well as it’s a look that I used myself to look upon so many mums in the days and weeks that followed our loss. Mums with girls, mums with three children, mums with two boys and a girl, mums with newborns. I don’t say anything back to her, I don’t even catch her eye but in my heart I send her a hug because being that mum is so, so tough. Before our loss, I wouldn’t even have seen her. 

Hopes for your family: that we always love each other, laugh with each other, support each other and be the best team we can be. It sounds cliched but I truly hope that my children will be happy, that they will dream big and that they will utterly love their lives. 

What advice would you offer to new and expectant mums?