As an art historian of twenty years, I’ve seen a lot of images of motherhood. But none of them prepared me for how I would feel when I had my first baby. Of course, there were snuggly moments that were as tender as this:
and as intimate as this:
I felt blessed by the abundance of utter joy and love that entered my life the moment I knew I was carrying a much-wanted child.
At the same time, often within the same day or hour, I felt something spikier, troubled by a deep sense of alienation from myself. Something that, perhaps, might look like this:
I am fortunate to have a sturdy and compassionate support system around me but often I felt adrift and disconnected from the world beyond my baby and me. My edges were frayed.
I didn’t understand at the time that the changes happening within me were as transformative and tumultuous as those I experienced during puberty. At a time in my life when often my most pressing physical and emotional job was to calm, soothe, and regulate a small infant, my own body and mind were overwhelmed by their own torrent of hormonal, physiological, and neurological changes. My most pressing job was to be a tranquil lagoon for this baby to gently float upon undisturbed by the undertow.
I couldn’t understand how focusing on the most vital task of my life - nurturing this beautiful new life - had made me feel so small and inconsequential.
The art historian in me had an instinctive sense that perhaps I actually needed to look beyond my little corner of the world, which had shrunk to a tiny triangle of space between my house, the park and the coffee shop. Instead, I knew I needed to look into other worlds - those found in paint and clay, those held in galleries and archives. I could lash these little stories together into a raft that could lift both me and my baby to shore.
So, with my baby asleep on my chest and unable to relax into sleep myself, I picked up my phone and began searching for historical fragments of mothering lives. I first ventured to the Wellcome Collection online archives, fuelled by an urgent need to find out if women in the past had shared similar breastfeeding issues as me.
I immediately came across Victorian nipples shields. Here was the evidence that I was not alone in having to find ways to mitigate a painful latch sometimes. As I looked at these historical examples made from tin, glass or wood, I gave wry thanks for the slippery silicone shields I had previously so resented.
Spurred on by this discovery, I carried on researching and, as I did so, felt myself being stitched into a larger history.
I became entranced by a rare, 6th-century Indonesian bronze statue of a seated weaver who has paused her work at her loom to breastfeed, captivated by the detail of the baby tweaking a bare nipple while they fed. In the ancient sculpture of the Woman of Willendorf, I saw, for the first time, a postpartum woman in all her vulnerability and supreme power. I studied paintings depicting a startling moment in history when it was more economically viable for Parisian parents to send their babies to wet nurses in the countryside while their mothers worked in the city. I found Bronze Age infant bottles, unearthed at burial sites and which contain traces of animal milk. I revelled in the unapologetic investigations of motherhood, sexuality, labour, and taboo that I found expressed in the contemporary performance art of the MAMA Collective, Lynne Lu and Jess Dobkin.
Visual art bridged the gap where words failed. I still feel we are bereft of language which can fully convey the vivid and sometimes paradoxical colours and textures of new parenthood. can express the political and poetic messiness of motherhood. It also charts the social and cultural changes, which allowed me to place my situation in the specific political and social contexts of today. Which reminded me: motherhood doesn’t have to be this way.
Two years after my son’s last feed, I stood in a London gallery, my eyes unexpectedly wet with tears as I looked at another Bourgeois sculpture. Encased in a large vitrine, on a cold steel plinth at the height of my chest, knelt a small pink woman, her head slightly bowed. White threads from her nipples connected to five spools fanned out in front of her. I recalled the long nights when I felt desperately alone, realising my struggles were never mine alone.
These fragments from history helped me to make sense of my experience, providing pathways to reconnect to myself and helping me to understand why, at times, motherhood felt like a personal and societal battlefield.
This sense of connection and understanding I found in history and art has continued to guide me through motherhood. And knowing that these parts of my identity are fully intertwined brings me comfort and confidence. When words fail me, there is always an image close to hand.
There are still a few spaces on my creative workshop Picturing Mother which brings together images and words with a series of art historical exercises. You can find out more here or click the button to book your place. I can’t wait to write with you x
Oh wow. The Catlett and the Moore resonate really well. I feel like I need both to properly represent how I felt about breastfeeding- either one on its own doesn’t sufficiently encompass the experience. Thank you for sharing these.
I remember being up w my daughter, breastfeeding in the early hours of the morning, filled with anxiety about if she was getting enough. Never have I felt so alone. 30 months later, still BF now my 2nd, things are a lot better but first time mom me needed to hear this.