My loneliest moment as a mother was the second night, after my son was born. My husband had stayed over in hospital the first night and so I hadn’t been alone – I was also hopped up on morphine. The second night I was on my own and my son was a voracious cluster feeder and I couldn’t settle him, I couldn’t get him to go to sleep, whether in my arms or in the basinet and I remember just feeling the weight of keeping this little human being alive, just descending on my shoulders and realizing that my life was forever changed… and in that moment I felt a kind of… a crushing regret and it’s the moment that I wish other mothers would talk about, because I know that we all experience it. Because it does come, but it’s not going to be the only feeling and there’s other feelings that everyone talks about – the overwhelming love and the joy – all of that will also come as well.
