There's a story we tell about birth and new motherhood. You probably know it.
It goes something like this: trust your body, stay in the light, focus on the beautiful. When the baby arrives, you'll fall into a love so consuming it rewires you. Your partner will be your anchor. It will be hard, yes — but hard in a sacred, meaningful way. The kind of hard that makes you stronger.
It's not a lie exactly. Parts of it are true. But it is incomplete in a way that is quietly doing a lot of damage.
What Happens When It Doesn't Look Like That?
What happens when breastfeeding is excruciating and you're not sure you can keep going? When the love doesn't arrive on cue? When your relationship with your partner isn't an anchor but a source of tension, because you're both running on nothing?
What happens is: you think it's you.
You think everyone else got the version with the soft light and the love bubble, and somehow you got a different experience. A worse one. You wonder what you're missing, what you're doing wrong, whether something is broken in you that isn't broken in other mothers.
That thought — I must be the only one — is one of the loneliest feelings a new mother can have. And it is almost always wrong.
The Avoidance Starts Early
At the mother's blessing. In the birth prep classes. In the way we talk to pregnant women — there's an unspoken agreement to keep the difficult things out of the room. The fear, the ambivalence, the grief, the rage, the loneliness — all quietly ushered out before the conversation even begins.
We do it out of love, mostly. We don't want to scare her. We want her to feel hopeful.
But what we're actually doing is leaving her unprepared. And then, when it gets hard, she has no frame of reference. No permission to say: this is not what I expected.
What I Want to Say Instead
Breastfeeding might be really hard. You might not fall in love immediately. You might grieve the life you had. Your relationship might take a hit. You might be angrier, lonelier, more overwhelmed than you've ever been.
And also: it can still be one of the most meaningful experiences of your life.
Both things are true. That's the version we should be telling.