Critics say Rose Byrne gives “the performance of a lifetime” in “mum noir” film If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. She’s been nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe, best leading performance at the Berlin film festival and best actress at the New York Film Critics Circle awards. But these plaudits, and across-the-board rave reviews, are the least of what she’s achieved with this movie, hailed as a “tour de force of matriarchal fury”. Both on screen and in the promotional interviews, Byrne pulls no punches. And it’s about time. Not being honest about what motherhood is really like is the greatest disservice we do other women.
“Having a baby is like going to the moon, and nobody ever tells you that,” the actor told the Times. “But it’s hard for women to talk about. There’s a lot of shame. You don’t want to feel like you don’t love your child, but there is a grief around becoming a mother, because you lose part of yourself that you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever get back. And that’s OK. It’s OK to grieve that – in fact, we should. Because it’s a before and an after.”
At the beginning of my after, when I brought my baby home from hospital 11 years ago, I had a devastating epiphany: I’ve made a terrible mistake.
My husband had to go straight back to work, straight back to his life – being a dad was neatly added to his identity, a cherry on the cake. Being a mum became all I was. All I did, day in and day out, around the clock. The same monotonous, relentless routine that I was too frazzled and sleep deprived to realise was just a phase. This is me now, for ever and ever and ever. I fed, and changed, and winded, and rocked, in an endless cycle; I was bored and boring. It wasn’t that I didn’t know who I was any more – I knew exactly who I was. Nothing. A blank space where a person had once been. A void.
Clearly I was a monster for feeling this way instead of enjoying every precious second like you’re meant to, like everyone else does. It was such a shock. What I’d heard about, what I’d been expecting while I was expecting, was the blissful baby bubble other mums raved about, contentment and fulfilment like never before, being completely happy all the time.
I was lucky though. When I eventually tearfully confessed my deplorable secret to a close friend, she wasn’t stunned and appalled, speed-dialling social services – she was sympathetic. She remembered this bit. She told me that when she was at the same stage she’d decided she definitely didn’t love her baby enough to make the sacrifices she now understood were necessary. I breathed out for the first time in days. I was normal.
This immense relief allowed me the freedom to admit that some parts of the experience were dull, challenging and painful. Once the impossible pressure of being permitted to feel solely ecstatic was removed, I felt all kind of emotions. Including ecstatic. The only scenario better than this revelatory discovery would have been if I’d known it in advance, been prepared for it, skipped the portion where I castigated myself for being the worst mum to have ever walked the earth.
The reality of motherhood is that it’s magical, horrendous, wonderful and terrifying, often all within 30 seconds. It can be bleak and lonely. It won’t fix the parts of you that are broken, solve all your problems or alone provide enough meaning to sustain you. It will be the most thankless, rewarding, infuriating, satisfying job you’ll ever do. It can take you to the edge of sanity, show you how strong you really are, and fill you with joy and wonder. You’ll want to shout your love from the rooftops and scream into a pillow, as Byrne’s character does in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.
Motherhood is not for everyone, and that’s OK. But how can people work out if it’s for them unless they hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth of it?
• Polly Hudson is a freelance writer
• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
