There’s No “Me” in “Mummy”: My Identity as a Mother
“How are you doing, Mummy?”
The first time she said it, I felt quite excited. I was in hospital, in the early stages of an induced labour with my first child. I’m going to be a mummy, I thought, and it felt thrilling to be addressed as one by the midwife. The second time she said it, as labour increased and I was no longer in quite so warm and fuzzy a mood, I was starting to think it sounded a bit trite.
The third time she popped her head around the door to ask, “How are you getting on, Mummy?”, I was beginning to worry she might have forgotten my name.
I didn’t know it at the time, but when I was admitted into hospital for my induction and the intake midwife checked my details, that was the last time I’d hear a healthcare professional refer to me by my own name. From that point onwards, I ceased to be Allegra. I was now Mummy.
I saw several medical personnel during the 18-hour process of having my daughter – I got through two midwives, two consultants, three anaesthetists and a paediatrician. Every single one referred to me as “Mummy”, or “Mum”, or, once or twice, “Mumma”. My daughter, on the other hand, was being named before she even made her appearance. I had told the midwife what I intended to call her, and when the consultant later referred to her as “baby”, the midwife pointedly corrected him with her actual name. Yet she still referred to me as “Mum”. And I struggled to figure out at the time why it was bothering me. It wasn’t until several months later that I identified what had happened – this was the start of a long process of losing my identity to motherhood.
The newborn identity
I asked on Twitter whether other new mums had been called by their names or only referred to as “Mum”. Only 17% said that healthcare professionals had used their actual name. Most said that their names had vanished during their antenatal appointments in pregnancy, when the child was still a way off even arriving.
One woman told me:
“As soon as he was born, I stopped having a name. He had to go into NICU for a few days and I was able to stay in a parent room. They had written on the door ‘[name]'s mum’. I added my name to the sign but they still continued to call me ‘Mum’”.
Another woman said, “I felt like I totally lost my identity the moment I gave birth. I didn't know who I was anymore and what's worse no one even called me by my name.”
That feeling is, unfortunately, not unusual. And it’s not surprising. Everything changes when you give birth. Your body feels entirely alien to you, from the extra weight, the new shape, these strange inflated beach balls strapped to your chest where your breasts used to be. Your internal organs have been moved around and put back again, and the outside seems to have been rearranged too. Then there are the emotional changes; the massive flood of hormones surging around your body, the love that is so intense it’s a bit frightening and that comes coupled with a crippling terror of something happening to this tiny human, or the worry that you haven’t felt the flood of love yet and does that make you a terrible mother (no, it doesn’t). The lack of sleep. The general confusion over where you are, what time it is and what the hell are you meant to do about anything?!
And, however much you thought it wouldn’t, your whole life changes. For me, I had to let go of being the workaholic corporate ladder climber who put in 12+ hour days in my marketing job. I no longer had the energy or capacity for nights out drinking cocktails and dancing until 2am – even if I had, pretty crippling separation anxiety (mine, not hers) meant I couldn’t leave the baby for that long anyway. One particularly weird side effect of motherhood is that, having been a massive fan of horror and thrillers my whole life, I can no longer watch either – any sense of peril immediately has me thinking of my children in that situation and emotionally destroys me. So much of who I was vanished almost overnight.
I know I’m not alone in that. 54,000 women in the UK lose their jobs every year because of maternity discrimination. One in ten women who return to work after having a baby, give up their former roles to become self-employed. This isn’t because motherhood endows some magical entrepreneurial spirit or insights into market opportunities, it’s simply because traditional work models don’t work for mothers. We have to reinvent ourselves.
Then, having lost any sense of identity that was tied to what we did, we have to also get used to a whole new way we look, reinvent our wardrobe, make new Mum friends, rediscover our relationships with our partners, and learn how to be a mother. It’s a lot.
The “othering” of mothers
So why aren’t healthcare professionals helping? Surely, as it is so widespread, they must know about this identity crisis that new mothers face? Why would they actively make it worse?
Perhaps it’s a lack of awareness. Maybe even working so closely with pregnant people and those giving birth day in and day out, healthcare professionals still don’t understand the emotional and psychological impact of having a baby. Maybe they don’t know about the wider societal context. Maybe there’s a lack of inclusion training that would help them recognise the needs of their patients (that’s the person giving birth, not the one being born).
But perhaps there is a darker reason. Perhaps this “othering” of mothers, distancing themselves from them by not acknowledging their names, allows them to follow guidelines that are not in these nameless entities’ best interests. Like not recommending pain relief. It is common practice in the UK for midwives to encourage, even pressure, women into avoiding pain relief during one of the most painful experiences a human body can go through. The reason is not to do with outcomes for the mother or the baby – it’s to do with cost-savings and hospital efficiency. It takes longer for a woman to be able to walk following an epidural, so a woman who has had one will take up a bed longer than a woman who hasn’t. Post-natal care in this country is woeful to say the least, and very little care is taken over a new mother’s recovery. The sooner they can kick you out, the better.
There are also recommendations about post-baby contraception. After my second child was born, my husband and I knew our family was complete. So he went to the GP to ask about a vasectomy. She spent some time trying to convince him that I should have a coil fitted instead. There is no excuse, except for a deeply internalised medical misogyny, to talk a man out of having a simple, risk-free and almost entirely painless procedure in favour of pressuring a woman into having an incredibly painful, high-risk and not all that effective procedure instead. Except that they have “othered” us to the point that they see us only as baby-making machines, and cannot accept a treatment pathway that would stop us from performing our female duty.
Then there are the women that they have “othered” even further. Black women in the UK are four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women. Black women are 43% more likely to experience a miscarriage and up to two times more likely to have a stillbirth. Black babies are 67% more likely to die after birth, whereas Asian babies are 72% more likely.
None of this has any basis in genetics or medical science. It is the result of, entirely false but highly prevalent, beliefs that Black people can handle more pain, unwillingness to listen to women of colour when they report pain, propensities to disbelieve symptoms reported by women of colour, and systemic racism that means healthcare professionals often simply care less about outcomes for non-white patients.
The healthcare system “others” women from the moment they conceive, reducing them to less than a person. This is taking a serious toll on the mental health and wellbeing of people doing a vital job of caring for young children that requires a serious amount of mental strength and energy. Sometimes it is having tragic consequences. We deserve to be treated as individuals.
I am a mummy, but I’m still me.
Written by Allegra Chapman
Allegra Chapman is a motherhood and business coach, writer, activist and Co-Creator of diversity and inclusion consultancy Watch This Sp_ce. One day she’ll finish that novel she’s been working on. You can follow her on Twitter at @Allegra_Chapman or on Instagram at @The.Newborn.Identity.
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