Becoming a parent: "I've never felt more superhuman"

The first time that most people find out that they're going to be parents, they also find that there is no shortage of people in the vicinity willing to tell them how their lives are changed/over/ruined and things will never be the same again.

This is particularly the case with mothers-to-be, who can hear a lot of negative stories and unsolicited commentary about pregnancy and parenthood.

For journalist and writer Anna Barnett, her experiences while pregnant with twins led to her writing an article for Stylist magazine asking why there’s so much negativity and so little positivity about pregnancy. Anna, talking to Áine Kerr – sitting in for Claire Byrne – wonders why people don’t talk more about the joy instead of focusing on the lack of sleep and the not going out and all that sort of thing.

"There was a lot of commentary. Especially with having twins, you know, there was a lot of double trouble, as soon as we mentioned twins. We live in East London, so the Ronnie and Reggie came up quite a few times – the Kray brothers – as name suggestions. That was on repeat. Sleepless nights. Why are people obsessed with sleepless nights? That oxytocin gets you through those early sleepless nights."

Anna’s pregnancy was, she says, "quite precarious," because her twins shared a placenta. That stark medical fact helped Anna focus on the sort of information that would be helpful and try to ignore extraneous, non-helpful stuff. All that mattered during the pregnancy was getting to the point where her twins could be delivered safely.

Áine recounted how, in her experience, some women do their best to protect you from any negativity involving pregnancy, while there are others who want to take every opportunity to volunteer their experiences or opinions on how difficult and lifestyle-destroying pregnancy and parenthood are going to be. And Áine wondered how hard it was for Anna to filter out the negative stuff:

"You go in peaks and troughs. Of course you want the reality and you want to know what’s to come and, you know, for me, early on, I knew that I’d be having a C-section, so I guess, that kind of, for me, I was like, 'Okay, a lot of this information about a natural birth is probably, you know, unhelpful to me at this stage.’"

And there were the people who felt they had to impress on Anna their thoughts on the permanency of having children and everything that that entails:

"How your life will never be the same again. How you travel, how you dine out and live the life that you’re so used to and you’ve got these humans that you’re bringing into the world forever."

But Anna says she – like most parents-to-be, let’s face it – was already well aware of the life-changing nature of bringing a child (or two) into the world. The permanency, the responsibility, the enormity of it all was very apparent to her from the get-go.

That stuff is all real and true, but so few people mentioned the joy:

"The flipside is that it’s so miraculous and it’s – I’ve never felt more superhuman, you know, I grew two children. That in itself is obscure and wild and I think, you know, women are expected to just carry on as normal and to work, which of course, you know, many women do. But it is quite phenomenal what your bodies do without you doing, kind of, not so much, you know, to help it along."

Anna’s twins did arrive safely and are now about to turn two. She finds them endlessly magical and their daily antics are more than enough to counteract any residual remarks about double trouble or life being over:

"There’s all these little magical moments where, you know – the other morning one of them went over and just grabbed the other one’s hand and brought him back over to play with the toy or read the book. And you just see this kind of lovely unionship and, I don’t know, there’s just endless magical moments that override, you know, the fact that you’ve just been kicked in the face while trying to have a cosy cuddle in the morning or something."

After her article in Stylist magazine came out, Anna heard from a lot of people who told her they’d read it and were grateful to hear some positives about pregnancy and parenthood.

"You know, if you don’t focus on the positives, the struggle feels more real, I think because it is hard work and you do have to dig really deep sometimes and really be resilient."

It’s mostly a joy, Anna says, but a challenging one. That’s something that parents everywhere could no doubt agree on.

You can listen to Áine’s full chat with Anna by clicking above.