about the second baby
16 things I wished I’d known | plus! an important new show on motherhood
This week sees the opening of Creative Mothers, a photography exhibition by Dunja Opalko of creative women with their children. I was just out of my fourth trimester when Dunja came to photograph me and my son. It was just beginning to get warm.
I loved Dunja’s photographs. It’s rare, I wrote to her at the time, that I like every shot on a contact sheet, but I liked all of hers. I’d look back on that shoot after what went down and curse my naivety. Nearly three years on and I’m kinder to myself, but that person looking out of the photo still seems like a different woman.
I’d forgotten I’d written this at the time, about the notion of creative motherhood. Dunja reminded me when she asked if she could exhibit the words alongside her photographs. I think it made me better understand myself, to connect myself with someone I’d forgotten I’d been:
While work and mothering has looked like this, it’s also looked like the new desk you built when the baby was tiny that was a promise to yourself.
It’s looked like replying to a bursting inbox via WhatsApp voicenotes because there’s no other way to deal with the deluge.
It’s looked like thanking people for their patience, rather than apologising for replying late.
It’s looked like worrying about book deadlines during 4am feeds, and worrying that you’re not doing mothering right when you’re filing copy.
It’s looked like recording podcasts with a baby curled on your shoulder.
It’s looked like standing on a stage, cradling your son’s head in an elbow and a mic in your palm, because you have no other options.
It’s looked like writing during nap time, and leaving the house in a state.
It’s looked like only rarely getting the balance right.
It’s looked like calling in the grandparents and typing while the baby rolls at your feet and telling friends to bear with you, perhaps for a few months yet.
It’s looked like wondering if you’ll regret spending this time making other things when you’re already making two new people.
It’s looked like holding onto who you were before as you change into something you don’t recognise yet.
It’s looked like guilt, and raw edges, and knowing that you can parent better if you’re creatively satisfied, too.
Dunja’s show opens at Downstairs at Mother tonight.
My daughter is now the same age that my son was in those photographs, give or take a few days. I keep telling friends - and my therapist - that I have been forgetting that I am post-partum, that I am matrescent, because it’s almost like life continues but there’s a baby there. That doesn’t mean it’s been easy, necessarily, but rather that there’s less time to dwell so much on everything that’s unfolding.
But here, sandwiched between International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day (I’ve requested a few hours to myself as a gift), it felt as good a time as any to reflect on what second-time (creative) motherhood has taught me so far:
People say it’s less anxious, but I’m not sure that’s true. There’s the same anxiety, but it doesn’t show up for the