After my world exploded with the birth of my first child, I found solace in the friendships with my girlfriends. Times when I feel like imploding - or exploding - I run upstairs, shut the door, take deep breaths, and send a voice recording to one of my closest girlfriends. In these messages, I don’t have to censor myself. I exhale and immediately feel better.
Sara* is my Lebanese-Australian friend who is the lucky recipient of the brunt of my rage and despair. She is a mother of three children under eight and spent several years living with her elderly in-laws in Sydney while juggling a challenging job with high needs children. She is also sensory avoidant and highly sensitive like me. This means we both feel sensory input a lot more intensely than the average person and are easily overwhelmed by seemingly ordinary stimuli like large crowds, loud sounds and strong scents and textures.
Our firstborns are also both and highly sensitive. We also married the only sons. All of these factors tie us together across the different continents we live in. She listens to my recordings, eventually replies, and vice-versa. She knows that my favourite recording studio is either my bedroom (whispering while my kids are asleep) or the privacy of my car (shrieking hysterically because I’m finally alone). We make each other laugh, empathy-groan, and best of all, feel less alone.
Having a child felt like having an atom bomb split apart my life.
I first met Sara almost ten years ago, at an Islamic centre, through a dearly loved mutual friend. Sara was pregnant with her first child, and I was in my newlywed bubble. She was hilarious, compassionate, sharply intelligent, but I didn’t get closer to her until after I migrated to Malaysia and had my first baby. Suddenly, her world made so much more sense to me. With each new pregnancy, my footsteps fall ever closer to hers. My life path of childcare and eldercare is one she has also tread, and continues to.
With Sara, I feel accepted, and understood. We are wired in such similar ways, except I’m an introverted version of her bold, extroverted self. Just like me, she gets overwhelmed by the daily sensory input that comes with juggling our multiple roles. Both of us crave alone time to recharge, and never get enough of it.
I empathy-laugh when Sara describes how the only alone time she can get is at 2 am, when her kids and husband are asleep. That’s when she’ll be eating, drinking, checking her email, watching Netflix - and then end up sensory overloaded. She’ll pay for it the next day. Just like me! We know it’s not a good idea to stay up so late. But it’s so much fun.
There is something so healing about friends who are also mothers. It feels like we are all survivors from the same war.
Both of us also have small kids who take turns falling sick, making each other sick, and ending the cycle with getting us sick too. Sometimes they get hospitalised too, after breaking bones and catching gastroenteritis. After my eldest was discharged from hospital, I was so worried about her next poop. Sara was the one who reassured me that it would happen, because her own child was also hospitalised for gastro, and the first post-hospital poop “always take a while”. She was right. I have never been so happy to see my firstborn use the toilet.
At this stage of my life - with a four year old, one and half year old, and now pregnant with my third child, there is so much about motherhood which is so challenging. It is relentless, and can feel so isolating. I have felt moments of terrible loneliness as a mother of young children. I could spend an entire day with my children, and come out of it feeling utterly drained. But they’re healthy and happy! Shouldn’t I be grateful? I am. Being a mother has introduced me to the power of duality: I can be willing to jump in front of a car to save my children, and I can also want to strangle them.
Having a child felt like having an atom bomb split apart my life. Everything changed - my body, my relationship with my husband, the way I viewed my own parents, and all parents. My ability to write, This change also flowed onto my friendships. Now I value my friendships with my girlfriends even more than ever.
My girlfriends offer me something my husband doesn’t - female camaraderie and witnessing the everyday minutiae of mothering.
There is something so healing about friends who are also mothers. It feels like we are all survivors from the same war. Our losses and victories may be different, but our battlegrounds feel similar. We have the wrangling in the mornings, the bedtime battles, the tantrums. We also have the cuddles, kisses, scribbled drawings and I-love-you notes.
There is a feeling of endlessness that comes with this stage of parenting. The snotty noses from preschool, the poopy diapers and the tantrums are never fun. But Sara, as always, reminds me that it will get better - well, at least my sleep will improve. In a few short years, my kids will get more physically independent, and face different dramas of the emotional and school yard variety. In another six years, all of my kids will be in big school. In another ten years, I’ll have a tween and teens. With each progression in the timeline of my parenting, I hope I’ll still have Sara and my other girlfriends to cry to and laugh with.
My girlfriends offer me something my husband doesn’t - female camaraderie and witnessing the everyday minutiae of mothering. My marriage doesn’t provide all of my emotional needs. My husband is my lover, the father of my children, and my anchor. He’s also very human and flawed, and has his own struggles. Offloading to my girlfriends helps me feel more patient with my kids as well as my husband.
Sara and I hope that by the time we become grandmothers, we’ll still have our pelvic floors and sense of humour intact. Until then, we celebrate the small victories.
Raidah Shah Idil is a freelance writer. You can follow Raidah on Twitter