Looking back at motherhood through an Autistic lens

I’d always wanted to be a mum but my concept of motherhood was very idealised and abstract. I was wholeheartedly disconnected from the harsher realities of raising children. And perhaps it was meant to be that way because the truth is, my mothering journey has been the most life-changing and spiritually expanding path I’ve trodden. If I’d allowed myself to be better informed about the pitfalls, well, perhaps I wouldn’t have done it. Nah, reckon I still would’ve.

It was a hardwired urge for me. I was the one at family picnics playing with the toddlers and hoiking a ten month old around on my skinny little hip. We had foster kids in our home when I was sixteen and as they resembled me, I fancied people might think they were mine. I felt proud at the thought.

Anyway, it took until I was 31 to have that first baby and thank God! I was a bit of a confused mess in my twenties, got married, got divorced, moved in with my new love and got married for the second time at 29. On the study/work front, I exited a B.A. in media studies into a full-blown recession in 1991, then muddled around in office admin jobs for a couple of years before starting my psychology degree and taking six years to get through that while working.

So, when our first little bundle arrived, I’d been working as a psychologist for just four years and then wham! Motherhood. I found the sensations of pregnancy fairly intense and shockingly, ever-present. Did I mention I’m sensitive?

Is birth meant to take a whole weekend?

The birth was rough on my nervous system and now that I look back on it through an Autistic lens, it really was a lot. The sensory overload that led to a significant Autistic shutdown (no, I wasn’t focused and going inwards, I was dissociating), and the intense lack of psychological preparedness for how a very long labour ending in a C-section would impact me, is quite mind blowing. I just had no idea and no plan other than to give birth.

The shutdown meant I couldn’t communicate my wishes or needs and there were assumptions made about my choices regarding pain relief, so an epidural block wasn’t offered until about hour 32. I wish I’d had it earlier. Hubby was there with me but really, we were both pretty clueless and sideswiped by what unfolded.

The first thing I wish I’d understood better about myself going into my first birth, was that I’m extra sensitive to pain and physical sensations, and that I may find the whole experience quite overwhelming. Again, no idea. And now I see, I’m not a sook, I’m Autistic.

Let’s do it again!

When I realised baby number two was on her way, I committed to doing some healing before the birth and attended a series of kinesiology sessions to focus on healing my birth trauma and creating a new script for the next experience. I think it helped. I also attended pregnancy yoga and yeah, that didn’t help at all. I must have chosen the wrong class because all the women there seemed to have had ‘incredible’ first births or were expecting ‘orgasmic’ first births and all it did was make me cry all the way home after each stinking class. Fuck them and their blissful experiences!

Our precious second bub came the vaginal way and while it was awesome to avoid surgery and have the experience of pushing her out (said yes to an epidural on arrival), it wasn’t exactly my idea of easy or freakin’ orgasmic. It was simply, good. She was well and calm, I was fine and we were done with this child-making caper. Thank you very much, family complete.

Babies shmabies, what about two year olds!

So then comes toddlerhood and the complexity and demands ramp up, big time. Here’s my pretty big list of what I now see I needed:

• Alone time – every single day to cope with the sensory overload
• Daily exercise and creative outlets like dancing, art, writing and singing
• Permission to feel overwhelmed and receive comfort and support from loved ones
• The fucken village – but then, we all need the fucken village
• To be able to focus on my strengths which were: maintaining routines, washing, tidying, reading to kids, bedtime, baking, watching TV with kids and taking kids to the park and Playgroup, and be able to leave other tasks like, playing open-ended games, grocery shopping (especially with both kids), dinner prep, house cleaning and bath time to others. Again, impossible without the village.
• Ways to care for myself amid the sleep deprivation because I simply don’t function on less than six hours a night
• Bucket loads of self-compassion and more realistic expectations about the repetitiveness, mundanity, thanklessness and complete exhaustion
• The understanding that my mind struggles to be flexible and fluid and to give myself time throughout the day to adjust to the reality versus my expectations
• The grace to slow everything down and mother without putting pressure on myself to get back into the paid workforce asap

I certainly received some of what’s on this list but I definitely didn’t understand how much I needed the lot. What I’m here to say is, you can feel like you’re mucking it all up and you won’t. They’ll be okay as long as you’re okay. Start with that.

For insights into how being neurodivergent may impact early motherhood, click here.

Postscript: Why use the word Autistic? Prior to making my Autistic self-realisation in January 2023, I would have said I was very sensitive, intuitive, empathic, spiritually-minded and maybe, ‘different’. I’m still all of those things and I’m claiming my Autistic identity as well, because it’s absolutely who I am. I want to help create greater representation of Autism in the world, because let’s be honest, there are way more neurodivergent people than we first thought and there are many more ways of being neurodivergent than we could have imagined.

Language has power and as a member of the Autistic and neurodivergent community, I’m using my voice.