Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

Becoming a Mother

Enjoyed hearing Kate Mosse, the author, that is, not the supermodel, speak at the Edinburgh Book Festival earlier this week. Mosse wrote the excellent Becoming a Mother at the start of her writing career, before becoming an international best-seller with her novel Labyrinth.  Becoming a Mother is a wonderful book, deceptively simple yet powerful, that helped launch Mosse's fiction writing. And it's helped me immensely too, lifting the guilt and grief I've been struggling with since a miscarriage in May.

Reading Becoming a Mother, I'm reminded of that famous line from Alan Bennett in The History Boys, about how we read books to find that hand stretching out through the darkness to take ours. Bennett's referring to the joy and relief of finding a kindred spirit on the written page, meeting someone who's experienced the same feelings as ourselves when we thought we were alone in them.

Unlike most of the many books I've read on pregnancy and childcare this book doesn't judge any of the ordinary women who feature in it. Instead it tells their stories, starting from the decision to try for a baby through to the early days caring for a newborn. Without preaching or pedantry. Not once does she lay claim to being an expert. Not once does she lay down the law.

Mosse manages to get inside women's heads, and gives voice to many of the conflicting emotions we feel. She understands the rollercoaster of ovulation kits and pregnancy tests, the obsessive weeing on sticks, the running to the loo to check for bleeding every twenty minutes.

On the subject of miscarriage, Mosse quotes one woman unlucky enough to suffer this experience saying:

"I know it is better to lose an abnormal baby - but the loss coincides with the ambivalent feelings you have at the start of the pregnancy. Half-feeling it was a bad idea - even if the pregnancy was planned - just makes you feel guilt when you do miscarry."

That's exactly how I felt when I had a miscarriage in May and I blamed myself for having felt daunted by the prospect of looking after two babies, both of them under two. I thought the new baby must have sensed my ambivalence and thought better of joining us, but couldn't admit this to anyone. Somehow reading that other women have felt the same way has helped me see it's ridiculous to torment myself like this.

Posted 24 August 2007 22:18

Books Edinburgh Festival Guilt Miscarriage

• StumbleUpon
• Delicious
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Digg