Misadventures in Parenthood

Instincts

I

"I can't do this."

"Are you sure?"

"It's been almost three months."

Rapunzel put her hand on her crying friend's shoulder.

"I've been feeling sick and my, my chest hurts. " Cass put a hand to her breast showing what she meant. Like a hornet's nest."

"I'd say that means you're pregnant." Rapunzel agreed.

"I just can't do this."

"Of course you can," Rapunzel said with a bright smile, it wasn't any doubt in her friend that was making her smile fake, she knew that Cassandra would be a good mother, she also knew that things could be complicated.

"No, Raps, I can't I have zero, I mean zero mothering instincts. Remember when you got me to look after the twins? It was a disaster." Rapunzel tried not to flinch at the memory, tried, and failed. "i can't be responsible for a baby, I just can't. I don't even find them cute, they're all so wrinkly and weird looking and there's that thing where you have to hold their heads because their necks are so floppy, I'll forget that, I'll break it."

"They're stronger than they look."

"What am I going to do? I'm going to ruin this kid's life?"

"No, you're not."

"It's nature, my own mother abandoned me. There were no natural instincts in her and there are no natural instincts in me."

"You're nothing like her Cass."

"But I am."

"I was raised by her, Cass, I know you're not like her, and I'm a mother despite the fact that I didn't have loving caring parents until I was eighteen."

"But you have the whole, natural instincts thing. That's missing in me."

Rapunzel sighed and looked down at her hands. Natural instincts, as if parenting had just come naturally to her the moment the twins were born. As if it hadn't been hadrd work and she hadn't spent night awake looking at them and filled with self-doubt. Rapunzel was sued to hiding her own feelings, showing a happy face to the world, but a happy face wasn't going to help her friend right now, honesty might.

"I never told this to anybody but there was this time when the twins were about five weeks old, and I can just remember getting up, for the fourth time in the night to feed one of them. I was exhausted in a way I've never felt before, and I looked down at her, and I just thought, you don't even know I'm your mother, I do everything for you and you don't even smile at me. It had only been five weeks but it felt like I'd been stuck in this loop of feeding and bathing and no sleep forever. My breasts hurt, and my tailbone still hurt, and I was always hungry, and I just wanted to run away."

Cassandra was starting at her open mothed, in shock.

"But you're a good mother."

"I know, I am a good mother, and the thought really scared me, but it woke me up to how much I was struggling. I think that not leaving, that getting up every day and doing your best to look after your babies, and trying to be the best person you can be for them, that's what makes me a good mum, because at the end of the day - it's hard, it's not glamorous, and the days all run into one. But you keep going because you love them more than you ever thought you could love anything. It is all you can ever do, try your best, every day, even when some days your best is nowhere near what you'd want it to be."

Rapunzel took her friend by the shoulders.

"And the Cass I know, she never gives up, she puts her all into everything."

"I had no idea."

"I know that I could have had nannies and a whole line of help, but I thought that If I let somebody else help me then I was some kind of failure as a mother. I thought that I was their mum so I had to do it all. It took me a long time to understand that taking the time to take care of myself made me a more rested and happy parent for them. It's so important to accept help. You're going to have so much help Cassandra, you have Varian, you have us, you have your Dad, and the motherly instincts, they'll come eventually. "

"Will they?"

"Yes, because they're not instincts. They're skills."

She hugged her again.

"You need to tell Varian. You've hung onto this for too long."

"Yeah..."

"He'll be pleased."

Cassandra sighed, looking away. "Maybe."

"Cass, he will."

***

A woman randomly asked me in a shop today if I had maternal instincts before my son was born, I kinda snorted and said 'I don't have maternal instincts now', but then I told her that for some people it doesn't come right away, that having a child is such a big upheaval that it's natural to just feel lost for a while, a long while, because it will always come eventually – if you don't have the instinct then you develop it like a skill instead. – So yeah, that was my inspiration.