On Matrescence and Birthing myself

Becoming a mother is not the unifying ‘one-size-fits-all’ journey that popular culture would have us believe. Mothers are required to work out their identity as women, who they have been and who they are becoming all in the shadow of the myth of the Perfect Mother. It is therefore refreshing that within the last 18 months conversations about matrescence have begun to move into more mainstream thoughts and conversations (see: Lucy Jones’ book ‘Matrescence: On the metamorphosis of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood’ and Zoe Blaskey ‘Motherkind: a new way to thrive in a world of endless expectations’).

Matrescence – a word my spell check does not recognise – is the time after birth in which the mother experiences ‘dramatic psychological, social and physical change.’[1] It is a time of realising that during the period of pregnancy, birth and early mothering, there has been a fundamental change in who you are. And so, as women we must learn who we are becoming as mothers, when Western society priorities the baby and not the mum. As our babies have been born, we are turned inside-out birthing ourselves again (and again) as mothers.

My foray into the theology of motherhood and mothering has been nurtured through my own experiences of becoming a mother. I have three young children that I carried and birthed. I have a supportive and loving husband, a supportive extended family, and as a white, thirty-something, woman would have benefitted from positive labelling and assumptions made on my behalf by others. I am – from an external point of view – already embodying the myth of the Perfect Mother. And yet…

And yet there is very little that is neat and tidy that happens during this period of matrescence, this liminal time that bridges pregnancy, birth and early motherhood. The neat-and-tidy compartmentalised pregnancy and birth story is one that we create to share over coffee at playgroups and playdates. Even with other mothers there is an embarrassment to talk freely about the physical changes that happen during matrescence. Where are the conversations about hormones changing how your sweat smells after birth (totally normal, it will improve)? Or the conversations about damaged pelvic floors and weak bladders post-pregnancy and birth (not normal, go and see a woman’s health physio)? Even in rooms and spaces surrounded by other mothers we often stumble over the messiness of our uncontained and unbound bodies, embarrassed and uncertain of navigating these physical changes whilst also raising children.

And whilst this isn’t every mother’s experience, perhaps some of us have been fooled into thinking that these are not things to talk about. Instead, we must create a neat and tidy narrative, our very own metaphor of creation, our own Genesis and idyllic Garden of Eden. But mothering and motherhood isn’t neat and tidy. Matrescence is the ‘what happened next’, it is being banished from the Garden of Eden, it is the Flood, the Exile, and it is the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the yet-to-come. It is the tentative beginning of birthing ourselves as mothers, a discovery and rediscovery of who we are.

Whilst at Theological College – in the throes (and throw ups) of new baby- I completed my dissertation ‘A theology of becoming ‘mumma’: a practical and feminist exploration of ordinands’ journeys into motherhood’ where I asked participants about their experiences of becoming a mother focusing on their spirituality; mothering as creating and; mothering as sacrifice. My findings showed that the embodiment of becoming a mother was a spiritual time for participants, where their own experiences of pregnancy, birth and mothering revealed God in new and different ways.

Since then I have had another child, another experience of matrescence, of the person I thought I was being taken from myself, as my baby was taken from my womb. This wasn’t the impassioned, exciting experience of discovering myself as a mother that I had with my first child. Nor, the deepening of spirituality that I had with my second. Instead, this was an undoing of identity, as mother, as woman, as self and disciple. Who I was – who I thought I was – had once again been changed and lost, as I carried, birthed and fed my child.

It is this third experience of matrescence that forces me to consider if I had asked the right questions when I wrote my dissertation, because it is easy to theologise our matrescence retrospectively. It is easier to find God when we have the time, the space, and the language to look for God.

I wonder what my findings might have shown if I had asked about navigating rage as a new mother and finding God within that. Or, what I may have discovered if I had been bold enough to ask about new mothers’ spirituality when facing intrusive thoughts (80-99% of mothers experience them during matrescence[2]). How do we trust our loving God, when we cannot trust ourselves to mother our children without thoughts of harming them, or us?

I found it easier to theologise the embodied experiences of becoming a mother, more comfortable talking about post-partum bleeding and lactation than the hidden, hushed feelings of terrified mothers wondering quietly to themselves, ‘is this normal? Am I normal?’.

In the period of matrescence after each of my children I have experienced ‘dramatic psychological, social and physical change’ that Lucy Jones[3] talks of. And each time I have been surprised by how different it has been; I do not become the same ‘mother Jen’, instead there are new challenges and new discoveries. There are new ways for me to feel like I am failing, new ways for my heart to be shaped, to be stretched, to be broken. It was during the period of matrescence following my third child that has forced me – with urgency and seriousness – to do battle with the question ‘who am I now?’. I have been turned inside out and there is a need for something to fill and make sense of this new space that is more than ‘being a mum’.

The creation story we mothers have lived for each of our children is different to the creation story we tell others. And the creation story we experience in our time of matrescence is a different story to the one we present.

For many mothers we want to pass as Perfect Mothers: our embodied femininity parcelled up as neatly as swaddled newborns. But the period of matrescence is a time of undoing and a time of becoming; it is untidy, unbound and at times frightening with its potential.

And so, my question remains ‘who am I now?’ and in truth, I do not know. I have been undone, reformed and recreated by the conception, pregnancy and birth of my three children. I have identified with those in exile, walked through desert places and I have grieved the person I was and I hope for the birthing of myself as much as I have hoped for the birthing of my children.

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[1] Lucy Jones, Matrescence: on the metamorphosis of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood (UK: Allen Lane, 2023), p. 12.

[2] Fanie Collardeau, Bryony Cobyn, John Abramowitz et al. ‘Maternal unwanted and intrusive thoughts of infant related harm, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression in the perinatal period: study protocol’, BMC Psychiatry, vol. 19, no. 94 (2019).

[3] Lucy Jones, Matrescence: on the metamorphosis of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood (UK: Allen Lane, 2023), p. 12.

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© Jen Green, 2024

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Cover Image: Artwork by Geordanna Cordero on Unsplash, free to use under the Unsplash License.