How the experience of birth links us to the women of the past
A short story exploring the journey of matrescence
A new series of short stories set in the deep past but inspired by small moments in my own life: seeking to illuminate mundane moments like these lost to the mists of time. These are intended to be little vignettes of every day life: small moments that don't warrant a whole narrative but are the substance of our experience of life on this earth.
Click here to read all previous short stories!
I wasn’t too sure what it was at first. I froze, shocked. Too many false alarms had cause me to doubt myself, but this was different. Only a little at first, then more. Enough to convince me that the moment had come.
Was it joy I felt? Or maybe all the emotions at once? If that’s even possible…
An ending, a beginning.
Like giddy children, our feet raced us on, eager for what was to come.
A few short hours passed. Quick, powerful, intense. My body moving instinctively through a journey traversed by countless others before me.
Then, a wet slimy body on my chest, in my arms. Bigger than I was expecting; this was his first thought too.
One by one, the wise women left us, until it was just me, you, and him. Your cheek soft against my chest, wet with tears. Your skin still pink with your newness. Your tiny fingers gripping his. Your big, deep blue eyes drinking in this new world you had become part of.
Here, finally.
Matrescence
‘The process of becoming a mother … Those physical, psychological and emotional changes you go through after the birth of a child.’1
Motherhood is a bond that ties us intimately to those who went before us: physically, in the sense of our descent from mothers, and experientially. There’s no reason why the mothers of the past did not undergo the same changes we do today when we birth our children. Feelings of loss of self, entrapment in new patterns, and overwhelm are common to many, and I’m sure that historical women experienced this too.
This short story is very heavily based on my own experience of my son being born last year; it is perhaps the most intimate story I have shared on here but I have left it in terms general enough to be familiar, I hope, to mothers with very different birth stories across space and time. It originally came into being as part of a writing session hosted by
, when we were encouraged to write 500 words on something we did for the first time: for me, that was birth.I wonder, if you are willing to share, what has been your experience of motherhood? How much of this process of matrescence do you think we share with historical mothers? I’d love to know your thoughts!
Have you read my most recent short stories? They’re based on my own experiences but set in the deep past, trying to draw connections between our day-to-day lives and those who went before us.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/matrescence
This was very beautiful. Thank you for sharing your experience. It is something I found throughout my early motherhood days too, I could be sitting in the woods feeding my baby and imagining that I could be at any era in time in that moment. Love to you xx
I felt such awe and humility after birth, and also such overwhelming but beautiful grief - it was like pulling back the veil on the truth of the beauty of a woman’s body, that birth was the closest thing to God I’d ever touched