Becoming a Mother: The Third Chapter of You

Anjali Sharma
Working Mom, Founder & Editor of The Balanced Working Mom
Practical, research-led guidance for Indian women navigating marriage, motherhood & work.

Before Dhairya was born, I thought I understood what becoming a mother would change.

Sleep, obviously.

My routine.

My body.

The freedom to leave the house without carrying half the house with me.

I knew there would be feeding and nappies and doctor’s appointments and a hundred things I had never done before.

What I didn’t understand was how completely another person’s existence could rearrange the inside of my head.

A baby arrives into the world very visibly. Everybody sees him. People ask how much he weighs, who he looks like, whether he sleeps, whether he feeds well. Photographs are taken. Messages arrive. An entirely new person joins the family and everybody watches him become part of it.

A mother arrives too.

Nobody quite sees her being born.

Marriage had already changed my life, and I had already written about the strange experience of losing yourself after marriage. Motherhood changed me in a different way. I had gone from working independently to becoming a wife, moving countries, becoming a daughter-in-law and eventually living in a joint family in Punjab.

But motherhood was different.

Marriage changed the shape of my life.

Motherhood changed its centre of gravity.

Suddenly another person’s hunger, sleep, temperature, crying and happiness could change the direction of my entire day. And I loved him with an intensity I had never experienced before.

I could also miss myself.

It took me time to understand that those two feelings could exist in the same woman.

This is Chapter Three.

The chapter where the love really can be as enormous as everyone promised.

They just forgot to tell us how much space we would make inside ourselves to hold it.

A Mother Has to Be Born Too

There is a word I wish more women knew before they became mothers.

Matrescence.

It describes the transition into motherhood — not simply giving birth, but the emotional, physical, psychological, relational and identity changes involved in becoming a mother.

We understand adolescence as a transition. Nobody expects a teenager to wake up one morning completely comfortable with a changing body, changing emotions, changing relationships and a changing sense of self.

Yet a woman gives birth and somehow we expect her to know how to be “Mummy” almost immediately.

Recent research involving urban Indian mothers describes matrescence as an evolving process rather than a neat before-and-after moment. Women spoke about changes to their bodies, emotions, relationships, autonomy, professional identities and sense of self, while also negotiating family expectations and cultural ideas about what a “good mother” should look like.

That makes sense to me now.

You are learning an entirely new human being while simultaneously meeting a version of yourself who has never existed before.

Of course she sometimes feels unfamiliar.

Why Do I Feel Like I’ve Lost Myself After Becoming a Mother?

Because motherhood does not only add a child to your life. It can change your time, body, relationships, work, priorities and the amount of mental space left for the things that once made you feel like yourself — all at the same time.

The friend who could make spontaneous plans, the woman who had uninterrupted thoughts, the professional who could focus on one deadline, the person who chose what to do with a quiet Sunday afternoon — those parts of you may suddenly have much less room.

When so many pieces of daily life change together, it can feel less like you have simply taken on a new role and more like you no longer recognise the person underneath it. That sense of identity disruption can be part of matrescence. It does not mean you regret becoming a mother, and it does not mean something is wrong with your bond with your child.

Sometimes it simply means that the new version of you is still taking shape.

You Can Love Your Child and Miss Your Old Life

This shouldn’t be a controversial sentence.

And yet mothers often say it with a disclaimer.

“I miss how life used to be… but obviously I love my child.”

Of course you do.

Missing parts of your old life does not require a defence of your motherhood.

You can desperately want a baby and still miss sleeping until your own body wakes you.

You can hold the child you prayed for and miss being able to go somewhere without calculating feeding, naps, bags and who will watch him.

You can enjoy being needed and occasionally want nobody to need you for twenty minutes.

You can be grateful for your family and miss the woman who could make a plan simply because she felt like it.

For some women, that feeling starts before the baby even arrives. Pregnancy brings enormous excitement, but also the uncomfortable awareness that your marriage, routines, freedom and relationship with your own body are about to change.

Then guilt arrives because you’re apparently supposed to feel nothing except happiness.

We don’t treat other major transitions this way.

A person can move abroad and love her new life while still missing home. A graduate can be excited about the future while grieving the end of university.

But a mother says, “Sometimes I miss who I was,” and immediately wonders whether saying it makes her ungrateful.

It doesn’t.

The love is real.

So is the grief.

Sometimes You Have Plenty of Help and Still Don’t Feel Like Yourself

This is one part of Indian motherhood that deserves more nuance.

Many of us do have help.

Grandparents. Parents. In-laws. Domestic help. A nanny. A husband who genuinely loves and cares for his child.

That support matters enormously.

I know that personally.

My husband has always been involved with Dhairya. Even now, while running his clinic with his father, he takes care of him while I work. Dhairya has also grown up surrounded by family.

I would never dismiss that support by saying a mother still “does everything.”

Often, she doesn’t.

But there is a difference between doing everything and being responsible for knowing everything.

Somebody remembers when the vaccination is due.

Somebody notices the shoes are getting tight.

Somebody knows which medicine worked last time.

Somebody remembers the school message.

Somebody notices that the favourite snack is nearly finished.

Somebody knows which birthday is coming up, what needs to go into the school bag tomorrow and whether the cough sounds worse than it did yesterday.

Very often, that somebody is the mother.

That is why a woman can have a cook, a nanny, involved grandparents and a supportive husband and still say:

“I am exhausted.”

India’s Time Use Survey 2024 gives us part of the picture. Among people aged 15–59 who performed unpaid caregiving, women spent about 140 minutes a day on it compared with about 74 minutes for men. Women were also much more likely to participate in unpaid caregiving in the first place.

And even that cannot measure the list living inside somebody’s head.

I have written separately about why working mothers can feel exhausted even when they have help, because the mental load deserves its own conversation.

But motherhood is often where that invisible list begins growing.

Help Can Be Complicated Too

There is another side of having a village that doesn’t get discussed enough.

Sometimes your family is physically around you, but you still don’t feel supported in the way you need.

Someone may happily hold the baby while he is smiling but hand him straight back when he cries.

Your mother may genuinely come to help but still have her own ideas about what help should look like.

Your mother-in-law may love the baby deeply while also offering advice you didn’t ask for.

People may be doing things for you while you are still managing their feelings, preferences and expectations.

Sometimes the village helps.

Sometimes the village creates more people to coordinate.

Often it does both.

And then there is another emotion women rarely admit.

What happens when the help is genuinely wonderful?

Imagine returning to work and your baby spending most of the day with his grandmother. He is safe. He is adored. You couldn’t ask for somebody to love him more.

Then one evening you hold him and he reaches towards her.

You know this is healthy. You are grateful for their bond.

And some tiny part of you hurts anyway.

A mother can feel:

“I am so lucky my child has her.”

and simultaneously:

“Does he need me less because I’m not here all day?”

Motherhood is full of emotions that refuse to arrange themselves into nice categories.

You don’t have to be proud of every feeling for it to be human.

The Good Mother Is an Impossible Woman to Compete With

Somewhere in our culture lives an imaginary mother.

She is endlessly patient.

Naturally selfless.

Always available.

She instinctively knows what her child needs.

She feeds the right foods, remembers everything, keeps the family running and rarely seems resentful because motherhood is supposed to be a blessing.

If she works, somehow the child never experiences the inconvenience of her work.

If she doesn’t work, she is completely fulfilled by being at home.

She keeps relationships warm.

She remembers festivals.

She looks presentable.

She doesn’t complain too much.

And if she does all of that successfully, perhaps we will finally call her a good mother.

Real mothers are considerably more complicated.

The Indian matrescence research found that women were not simply learning how to care for children. They were also negotiating idealised cultural ideas of “good motherhood” while trying to preserve or rebuild their own identities.

Social media has simply given the imaginary perfect mother better lighting.

You see the homemade baby food.

The educational activities.

The coordinated nursery.

The mother who appears delighted by every second she spends with her child.

You don’t see her lose patience at 6:15 p.m.

You don’t see the argument before the family photograph.

You don’t see her wondering whether she should have gone back to work earlier, later or at all.

We call so much of this mom guilt.

But sometimes guilt isn’t evidence that you’ve done something wrong.

Sometimes it’s what you feel when you’re failing somebody else’s definition of motherhood.

Your Body Becomes Everybody’s Business

Pregnancy begins it.

Motherhood somehow makes the committee permanent.

Are you eating enough?

Is the baby getting enough milk?

Why haven’t you lost the weight?

Why are you dieting?

Why are you tired?

When are you going back to work?

Why are you going back so soon?

Why aren’t you going back?

When are you having another baby?

Your body has done something enormous and somehow almost immediately becomes a public improvement project.

Try not to join the committee yourself.

You don’t have to “get your body back.”

It didn’t disappear.

It went through something.

Let yourself become familiar with it again without treating every change as a problem that needs correcting.

Losing Yourself After Motherhood Usually Happens Quietly

Most women don’t wake up one morning and announce:

I have lost myself.

It happens much more politely.

You stop reading because you’re tired.

Then you stop buying books because the unread ones make you feel guilty.

You stop meeting one friend because evenings are difficult.

You postpone the haircut.

The workout.

The course.

The trip.

The idea.

Not forever.

Just until things settle down.

The baby becomes a toddler.

Then school starts.

Then homework.

Then activities.

“Once things settle down” can stretch surprisingly far.

For some women, years later, there are only two obvious identities left.

Mother at home.

Employee at work.

Everything else has become optional.

Friend.

Woman.

Reader.

Runner.

Dreamer.

Person who once had interests that served absolutely no practical purpose.

That is the part I want us to notice.

Because sometimes the solution isn’t another productivity system.

It is making sure there is still a person inside the system you’re organising.

And Work Isn’t Automatically the Enemy of Motherhood

Chapter Four will be about working motherhood, so I don’t want to solve that entire problem here.

But this belongs in Chapter Three too.

Returning to work can be painful.

It can also save a part of you.

Leaving work can feel like relief.

It can also create grief.

Some women cannot wait to return after maternity leave because work gives them confidence, adult conversation, financial independence and a part of life where nobody calls them Mummy.

Other women return and realise they desperately want more time at home.

Some step away from careers and feel peaceful.

Others make exactly the same choice and deeply miss the job they left.

None of those women love their children more or less.

There isn’t one morally correct amount of ambition after motherhood.

For me, returning to work after a four-year career break became an important part of finding myself again.

But I didn’t do it alone.

There were Mondays when I travelled hundreds of kilometres for work while Dhairya stayed with his father and dadu. For a period of time, my husband was the more physically present parent during the week.

That didn’t make me less of Dhairya’s mother.

And it didn’t make my husband my “helper.”

He was his father.

I understand that much more clearly now than I did at the beginning.

There Are No Simple Villains in This Chapter

I want to keep the promise of this series.

There are no easy villains.

Your mother may tell you children should always come first because that’s what respectable motherhood meant in her generation.

Your mother-in-law may step in constantly because she remembers how unsupported she felt when she had babies.

Your husband may genuinely believe he is doing half because he changes nappies, handles bedtime and loves his child fiercely, without seeing some of the invisible planning around those tasks.

And sometimes you may be the person refusing to let go.

You might correct how somebody dresses the baby.

Rewrite the lunch instructions.

Remind your husband three times about something he already knows.

Take a task back because it is easier than watching somebody do it differently.

Then wonder why nobody takes full responsibility.

That isn’t because mothers are controlling.

Often it is because being told that you are ultimately responsible for the child’s wellbeing makes surrendering control feel frightening.

We inherit these scripts from people who inherited them too.

Understanding where they came from doesn’t mean we have to pass them on.

What I Want You to Keep in Chapter Three

In Chapter One, the independent woman was building herself.

In Chapter Two, the wife was learning how to make room for herself inside a new family.

Chapter Three asks for something slightly different.

Don’t give motherhood every room in the house.

It will happily occupy them all.

That is part of its beauty. A child can become one of the most meaningful parts of your life.

But meaningful doesn’t have to mean exclusive.

Let somebody else become fully competent at caring for your child. Not merely helpful under your instructions — competent.

If your husband owns bedtime, let him own bedtime.

If grandparents are safe and loving caregivers, let them develop their own relationship with your child.

The goal isn’t merely more hands.

It is fewer things that require your brain.

Keep one thing that belongs to you too. If even small things that belong only to you have disappeared from your week, these realistic self-care habits for working moms may help you start small without turning self-care into another job.

Not five hobbies. Not an elaborate self-care routine.

One thing.

A friend.

A workout.

Reading.

Your work.

Painting.

Walking.

Music.

A silly television show nobody else in the house likes.

Something whose value cannot be measured by how useful it is to your child or family.

And talk about what you’re carrying before resentment becomes the way you communicate it.

Instead of:

“Can you feed him dinner?”

try handing over the whole responsibility:

“Dinner is yours tonight, including deciding what he eats.”

That second version gives your mind a break as well as your hands.

Stop Waiting for the Old You to Come Back

I used to think that after a big life change, the goal was to get back.

Back to work.

Back in shape.

Back to routine.

Back to normal.

Back to myself.

But perhaps there is no going back.

And maybe there doesn’t need to be.

The woman before motherhood had freedoms you may miss.

This woman has experienced things she never had.

The goal isn’t to restore the old house exactly as it stood.

It is to decide what from that house deserves a place in the new one.

Recent Indian research describes matrescence not as a one-time transformation but as a continuing, recursive process — one that can be revisited as children, bodies, relationships and circumstances change.

That feels much closer to motherhood as I know it.

Dhairya is seven now.

Nobody would describe me as a new mother.

But motherhood is still asking me to become somebody slightly different.

The baby who needed feeding became the toddler who needed watching, then the schoolchild who needs routines, conversations, reassurance, discipline, freedom and increasingly his own opinions about all of it.

Children keep changing.

So mothers keep changing too.

Maybe we don’t “find ourselves after motherhood” once.

Maybe we keep making sure we haven’t left ourselves behind as motherhood moves into its next form.

If This Feels Heavier Than an Identity Shift

This chapter is about the complicated but common transition into motherhood — love, exhaustion, ambivalence, changed identity and sometimes missing your previous life.

But not everything should be explained away as matrescence.

If you feel persistently hopeless, intensely anxious, unable to function, unsafe, frightened by your thoughts, or simply feel that something is seriously wrong, please talk to a qualified professional or someone you trust.

You do not have to prove your strength by struggling quietly.

Getting support isn’t evidence that you’re failing motherhood.

Sometimes it is one of the most important ways you can care for yourself and your child.

Where We Go Next

The independent woman.

The wife.

The mother.

And next:

The Working Mother.

The chapter where motherhood’s invisible list meets a laptop.

The school WhatsApp group and the morning meeting.

The client deadline and the missing water bottle.

The guilt of working when your child wants you, followed by the equally confusing guilt of admitting that sometimes you genuinely want to work.

Two enormous identities.

One woman.

Twenty-four hours.

But before we go there, I want you to do something small.

Not for your child.

Not for your husband.

Not because the house needs it.

Not because it is productive.

Do something the woman from Chapter One would recognise.

Call somebody.

Read ten pages.

Put your headphones on.

Sit outside with your tea.

Wear something simply because you like yourself in it.

And when that tiny guilty voice asks why you’re wasting your time, remind her:

His mother lives here too.

With you in every chapter,
Anjali

If you are joining this series here, start with The Five Chapters of Her to read the journey from the beginning.

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FAQs

Is it normal to feel like I’ve lost myself after becoming a mother?

Motherhood can change your routines, body, relationships, work and sense of identity at the same time. Researchers use the term matrescence to describe this transition. Missing parts of your previous life doesn’t mean you love your child less.

What is matrescence?

Matrescence describes the transition of becoming a mother, including physical, psychological, relational, social and identity changes. Research with Indian mothers suggests that this transition can continue and evolve through different stages of motherhood rather than ending shortly after childbirth.

Why am I overwhelmed even though I have help with my child?

Practical help doesn’t always remove mental responsibility. Other people may feed, bathe or watch your child while you remain the person planning appointments, remembering supplies, noticing changes and coordinating what needs to happen next.

Is it normal to miss my life before motherhood?

Yes. Loving your child and missing independence, spontaneity, work, friendships or time alone can coexist. Complicated feelings about a major life transition are not a measure of how much you love your child.

How can I find myself again after becoming a mother?

Start smaller than trying to “find yourself.” Protect one relationship, activity, interest or responsibility that belongs to you outside motherhood. Let trusted caregivers become genuinely competent rather than only assisting under your supervision, and gradually make room for the parts of yourself that have been crowded out.

Can motherhood be important without becoming my whole identity?

Absolutely. Motherhood can become one of the deepest parts of your identity without needing to replace every other part. You can be a loving mother and still remain a partner, professional, friend, daughter and individual with ambitions and interests of your own.