What happens to a woman when she becomes a mother?

It was when I saw my closest cousin’s pregnancy that I consciously thought of motherhood. What I was witnessing was not a simple event, though it is to people around her. I could see so much happening with her. She was in a process of transformation. She was not the same woman I saw during her college days; she will never be. This left a lasting impression on me and then I started observing motherhood closely.

In a world where mental health has become an indispensable concern to an average individual, one question kept intriguing me when I observed women who were to become mothers and who just became mothers.

What happens to a woman when she becomes a mother? What does a woman go through in the process of becoming a mother?

This is perhaps a question that is not discussed too often. Rather, it is a normal “this too will pass” event to most common people. To whatever part of the world or culture a woman belongs to, motherhood is a phase she’ll has to pass through. But that phase is not a smooth one for most women. Depending on social and cultural pressures and family conditions, most women undergo early motherhood, do not receive enough care and do not have enough time to understand themselves.

The Difference Between a Woman and a Mother:

A woman during her adulthood builds her identity, defines her goals, and strives to show up her uniqueness to the world around her. She builds herself a personality after so much struggle between her individuality and the social, cultural osmosis she is imposed upon. As a student at college, a young girl at home, as a professional at work, as a woman of character in her relationships, and as an individual she wants to be, a woman undergoes a tremendous amount of psychological transformation as an individual.

By the time she finds herself in a position to pursue her dreams, motherhood sets in. And she does not know, that what she thought of herself is going to be turned upside down. That she can never be the woman she was, she is going to be a new person again.

As a mother, a woman has to redefine her identity. She has to redefine the way she thought about herself. Her goals will now be different. She has to give up her personal goals, and her dreams for a while maybe forever. She has to devote everything of herself to nurturing a new life.

This made me wonder how a woman can handle herself at such a complex phase of her life, with the combined physiological and psychological changes happening, the growing responsibility to take care of her child. When I started searching for an answer, I found a word that is used to name this transformation of a woman to a mother. It is called Matrescence.

What is Matrescence?

Bearing a child and becoming a mother are two separate aspects. Giving birth does not automatically make a woman a mother. Becoming a mother takes time. Matrescence is the period when a woman takes birth as a mother. It is a transformation, a tremendous physiological, psychological transformation of a woman from being a woman to a mother. It is a phase where a woman transforms her identity, goals, thoughts, relationships and herself as a human being. The transformation is phenomenal. But the attention given to it is minimal.

Dr Athan, based at Teacher’s College of Columbia University, the first in the world to create an area of study based on matrescence says, “Understanding that motherhood is the psychological and spiritual birth of a woman is the greatest story never told. It makes a tremendous difference. We can see in ancient cultures that we’re meant to be handed down information as we move through these stages of life: those who have done it before need to pass down the knowledge to those who have yet to do it. That is the way this is meant to happen. And when it doesn’t, when we don’t have those markers or acknowledgements, we feel lost.”

The feminine as a dimension of life bears the responsibility of carrying forward human existence in her womb. How the woman as an individual takes this responsibility and how the one related to a woman becoming a mother takes her responsibility is something one should consider as a human being. During motherhood, a woman needs non-medical care. Motherhood needs attention, study and an approach that helps every woman to undergo a conscious transformation in becoming a mother.

Dr Alexandra Saks, an MD and reproductive psychiatrist affiliated with the Women’s Program at the Columbia University Medical Center, describes it like this: “Like adolescence, it is a transitionary period. Being pregnant is like going through puberty all over again: your hormones go nuts, your hair and skin don’t behave the way you’d like and you develop a new relationship with a body that seems to have a mind of its own. The difference? Everyone understands that adolescence is an awkward phase. But during matrescence, people expect you to be happy while you’re losing control over the way you look and feel.”

It is time we look at motherhood differently. It is time for a radical shift in our perspective on motherhood.