Did you hear what I said?: When I first became a mum I found it really hard to adapt to the new me and how my whole perspective on daily life had likely changed forever.

I can’t even say that I assumed having a baby would make any difference because I actually didn’t give the before and after event a thought.
I had no idea my new day-to-day life was going to be so different and vowed that when I had a little time for myself again, I would write a book about becoming a mum.
Whether you have a baby, like me, 5,000 miles from home or you have your mother next door or are rich and can afford a daily birth support, doula, these feelings and emotions are the same for women who do not adapt so readily to this natural event.
This book is for you.
My original intentions, though, wasn’t so much of a book than a therapeutic blast at all and sundry who were in the vicinity of my life with children.
You might conclude that I didn’t settle readily into my new role
– well, you’d be right.
As I began writing, my research took me far and wide to include social history from all lands and about women in general who become mothers.
I myself had felt so alone in my thoughts. Unworthy of being a mum and found the responsibility overwhelmingly so.
I spoke to many, many women during my research for this book. One very interesting fact was that not one of them gave much circumspective thinking into how having a baby would change their lives. They thought long and hard about the financial implications, the practicalities, but for the rest, they were happy to be in a state of ‘newby naivety’ for the happy event.
Moreover, I couldn’t find one publication written with any practical solutions or advice about how to deal with those deep, emotional issues a woman is faced when she does becomes a mother.
Motherhood has been coined a life changing event for good reason because in a single moment – that is the birth of your child - gone is the woman you once knew as you to be replaced by someone who is still you but no longer exclusively you.
Such a little paragraph in the grand scheme of a book but it sums up the huge changes that happen to a woman when she accepts the lifelong contract of progenitor, (creator of the next generation).
An unexceptionally normal and natural event and it could be said, the driving force behind us all.
We are blissfully unaware of just what we are about to get into and how much havoc we are about to invite into our lives.
My long hours of research included the women in my family tree who I could relate to and remember.
As I followed the family fortunes, and could put names to people and places, the book began breathe life.
It helped develop my book into one of social history which encapsulated the life and times of their day.
The research changed the course of my self-therapy literary ravings to what I hope to be a self-help book for all women who find themselves at a loss when they are given the responsibility of their own baby and find the sheer weight of the obligations too much.
Just to know it was the same for our parents and all those before them can bring enormous relief to the daunting initial phases of motherhood.

My book opens in 1979 a few years prior to the birth of my first child and my personal ‘mother’ lineage until the year 2013 (2013 being the year I began writing this book – not the end of my motherhood!) It is my recall and research of my mother’s era 1928 - 1994 about her childhood and becoming a mum and then flashes back to my grandmother’s years 1896 – 1981. It also includes facts I overturned that were absorbing, enchanting and extremely sad and I’d like to share them with You may have gathered, that it won’t be a ‘cheesy’ account of motherhood as I’m not going to wax lyrical about a baby’s charms. It is a down-to-earth account of day-to-day life and about thinking on your feet and dealing with the whole new ‘up-in-the-air’ motherhood thing while doing loads of other ‘down-to-earth things.