In the enchanted kingdom of motherhood, it’s easy to see why the arrival of a newborn is cause for celebration. Soft, tiny, wrinkled creatures who must take on the Herculean task of adapting to our world, babies are truly magical beings. They are the chosen ones, wholly deserving of the best that Hogwarts has to offer.
Naturally, then, new mothers are the Hagrids of this kingdom.
Moody in mind and appearance, loved by children but a tad bit feared by adults (particularly men); with hearts of gold but considered outcasts amongst their more ‘esteemed’ peers for having to perform manual labor as part of their syllabus. Misunderstood misfits (except when in the rare company of other Hagrids), they are mostly left to themselves, tending to the needs of the wildlings in their care.
Two years ago I had the privilege of becoming Hagrid the Hormonal to not one but two little magical beings. Here are my thoughts on motherhood, disguised as a list of movies, TV shows, and books that have helped me make sense of my new reality as a twin mom, safeguarding my sanity through this wild ride.
They aren’t recommendations in the traditional sense because everyone’s motherhood journey presents unique challenges and emotions. So please watch/read only as much as your gut permits during the specific stage of your journey!
1. The Letdown
This Australian mini series comes as close to the real deal as it gets! Screenwriter Sarah Scheller and Actress Alison Bell fling you headfirst into the confusing, kaleidoscopic world of new motherhood, which can often feel like you’re trying to cross the Atlantic in a dinky little dinghy being steered by a blind captain, only to encounter a deep sea storm with no life jackets on board. For real.
Whether you used sound machines, long drives, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein or sleep-trained your child, whether you stuck with breastfeeding or wallowed in (unnecessary) guilt for using a bottle, used formula or not, whether your partner was involved or off on a never-ending work trip, and what owning a postpartum body feels and not looks like; from weeding through new age parenting advice on Instagram reels, while wondering when the #stayathomemom hashtag became a badge of honor, as you watch your ‘promising’ career sail past you into a glorious Mediterranean sunset; this show serves it all up – clear-eyed, without an ounce of judgment and most importantly with a side of witty, unapologetic humor – what more could you ask for after 846*!41*$890 hours of no sleep…
2. Swallow
Before you are swamped by the sweet sights, scents, and sounds of new life, high on happiness and hormones, there is the question of the body; the biologically engineered vessel you inhabit that is miraculously capable of creating life without any direction from you. So long as you don’t actively sabotage its affairs. In this harrowing portrayal of a woman taking her physical autonomy into her own hands, we watch Hunter, pregnant but stuck in a loveless marriage, give in to a curious new impulse – to consume dangerous inanimate objects – knowingly running obvious risks for her unborn child.
As fascinating as it is to watch your seemingly subservient body of 30-odd years suddenly start making its own decisions, the physical transformation has many uncomfortable implications for its owner. The ‘limits’ of the body clock, the sacrifice of your independence, the changes in your appearance and image, and having your heart be forever split in two (or three) is a lot to grapple with. And although real life is more complicated than Swallow’s neatly knotted solution, the film spoke to me at a time when simply asking my restless mind these questions seemed impossible, wrong. Well, it’s not. It is every woman’s birthright, and shouldn’t require the emergency pumping of a semi-digested battery from your stomach to be voiced.
3. Juno
A couple months after my delivery, a friend calling to congratulate me asks – “So what’s it like to become a real adult?” I had spent the morning mooing and baaing and barking and squawking, a barn full of animals on steroids; essential battle armor if you’re diapering and changing two perpetually unwilling babies multiple times a day. But not exactly adult behavior. The truth is – no matter how prepared you think you are for motherhood, that wide-eyed, clueless teenage girl buried deep inside you will emerge at some point. And if you’re lucky she’ll arrive at that crucial moment when you’re expected to be your most adult self.
She may also just never leave. Not a bad thing if you can harness just a tiny bit of Juno for your resurrected teen self. Juno’s nonplussed acceptance of circumstances beyond her control, her cool shedding of shame for putting herself first. Throw in her fantastic sense of humor, and I suspect it may still be possible to raise a child while you’re trying to raise yourself in an unforgiving world of adults.
4. Maid
The bit that I was completely blindsided by was the sheer manual labor of motherhood; that daily, at times dreary, always exhausting physical effort of actually turning the little bundles of joy I had spent countless hours conceptualizing into tangible, huggable human beings.
In the Netflix miniseries Maid, single mother Alex escapes an emotionally abusive relationship whose trauma is not taken seriously because of its lack of physical evidence. She secures a job cleaning houses and the series follows her setbacks and wins in a system pitted against single women attempting to make it on their own. In addition to Margaret Qualley’s incredible performance, the overwhelming sensation that stays with you is the tenderness she infuses into the hardship. Certainly, the daily exertions of motherhood are far more rewarding than those involved in cleaning an adult toilet, but the empathy that Alex brings to both is astounding.
Qualley brings delicate, naive Alex to life with a barely visible tenacity that completely defies her helpless appeal. It’s not that Alex is picture-perfect; she makes many mistakes, both at work and as a mother. But eventually, she steps out of her cocoon and learns to trust her instincts, only to realize that it’s these very instincts that will carry her through. After spending years learning to suppress them so we can be the ‘good girls’ society needs more of, watching Alex protect her newfound self from the world’s cynical eyes, might just be that extra motivation you need to ditch your 3 day old clothes and take a shower.
5. Roma
Inspired by Alfonso Cuaron’s own childhood in 1970’s Mexico City, Roma is simply sublime; its vast, expansive frames a balm for fraught nerves of all kinds, bountifully active in the postpartum mind. In Roma, we meet Cleo, an indigenous Mexican maid to an upper-middle-class household with four children – Pepe, Sofi, Toño, and Paco – the mother, Sofia, and the perpetually away-on-business father, Antonio.
While Sofia suspects her husband’s fidelity, Cleo suspects she might be pregnant. It is within these two stories, divided by culture, class, and privilege, that the film locates its elegant exploration of sisterhood in motherhood. The respectful way in which Cuaron depicts the interactions between Sofia and Cleo, giving each character the screen time and personal space needed for their relationship to evolve beyond its capitalist framework is a vindication of the communal notion of ‘shared motherhood’ and its capacity to overcome systemic inequalities; a breath of fresh air at a time when you’re probably hearing that somewhat exasperating maxime “it takes a village to raise a child” a little too often. Because, let’s be real – for a new mom trying to ‘make it’ in our disconnected, performative society, does this village even exist?
Unsuspectingly, the film becomes just the sort of bittersweet, wholesome respite you need; not too self-indulgent or blindly validating, but a ruminatory reality check, like a warm hug from your grandmother as she lovingly but very firmly denies your bawling seven-year-old self another fistful of Cadbury eclairs.
6. Blue Valentine
One afternoon, in the midst of an unexpected downpour, my husband and I gave a fellow parent and his daughter a lift home from daycare. He sheepishly explained that although he lived in the next lane, he hadn’t brought an umbrella and didn’t want to disturb his wife who was napping with their newborn twins. “Difficult time!” I exclaimed as memories of that intense period flashed before my eyes. He chuckled and said, “yea, but it’s ok.” “Tough for your wife though,” I persisted. After a few seconds of reflection, he replied, “for nuclear families, all of it is tough.” It struck a chord. Urban living, or rather, migrant living, by its very nature requires new parents to woo and gather and very often pay our way into this modern-day “village,” a community whose membership is not something one can rely on, but must earn.
Blue Valentine tells the story of Cindy and Dean, a married couple on the brink of breaking up, living with their young daughter Frankie in a tight economic situation without much support. As the film flits between past and present, you see that once upon a time, they were hopelessly in love, having fallen for each other at first sight. The tender depiction of their courtship and the chemistry between Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling is so pure, that you don’t expect anything but a happily ever after. But parenthood has a way of testing even the make-believe.
To be compassionate to a newborn nearly 20 hours a day, every single day makes it really difficult to hold those feelings for your fully grown partner as well. The physical exhaustion, the emotional insecurity, the resentment attached to the imbalanced responsibilities once a baby arrives (no matter how well-intentioned your partner is); Blue Valentine is a soul-crushing portrayal of the hardships of this transition – a couple’s worst nightmare.
Cindy and Dean however, are immortal. They remain incredibly potent characters because although their love has dwindled to a pinpoint, the affection they once felt is heartbreakingly visible beneath all the fighting. And so despite having just watched their love curdle into a toxic, sticky slime, as the credits rolled, I found myself sighing “if only,” just so they could stay together, so their little family could have had a chance, so the people they were when they fell in love could have endured.
And yet, the practical part of my brain emerged victorious, simply grateful to have a partner who pulls above his weight in our parenting journey together; one who is steadfastly accepting as our definitions of ourselves and our relationship have changed in this whirlwind period, despite the nuclear living and wailing babies.
7. Lamb
Indian mothers have earned the reputation of being obsessed with feeding their children; “khana khaya kya?” the eternal tune ringing through most Desi households with kids. It’s only after becoming a mother myself that I’ve understood where the obsession comes from. Over time, we women (and society at large) tend to forget the first phase of a newborn’s life where a mother’s body isn’t busy preparing dinner in the kitchen, but rather is the kitchen and the meal; breakfast, lunch, and dinner and all the snacks, bites and sips in between.
And more often than not, the insecurity and shame that is a truly unfortunate byproduct of the breastfeeding experience becomes embedded so deep, it’s as if a genetic rewiring has taken place to keep the fear tucked away in a corner of your heart forever. I can safely say that checking the twins’ tiffins post daycare is a habit that isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
Are we good mothers? Can we keep our children safe? Can we protect them from calamities – those intentionally inflicted by society, nature or by something more sinister? Living as a mom is making peace with such questions haunting you for life.
The bizarre, brilliant Icelandic film Lamb by Valdimar Johannsson strikes at the heart of many such child-rearing worries and debates, tying them into explorations of parental authorship of a child’s fate, grief and guilt, the raw power of nature and the supremacy of biology. In it, a farmer couple living in far-flung rural Iceland receives a second chance at raising a child when a mysterious new creature is birthed in their barn. The film is also a meditative study of possession in the context of parent-child relationships and the violent beginnings of new life, the opening scene of the film an unexpected, unsettling tryst with this last theme. Though not quite “horror” in the mainstream sense of the genre, Lamb is not for the faint-hearted, with its mysteries unraveling slowly in a peekaboo-styled visual language, where you spend every moment immersed in the mundane, yet craning your neck over each frame wondering what to expect next – much like the first year of motherhood!
8. Nightbitch
Rachel Yoder’s words are as weird as they are relatable and as terrifying as they are validating. This page-turning book (now also a motion picture!) finally gave me a fitting word to describe an emotion that had consumed me during those first postpartum months – an emotion I was so ashamed of feeling, that until I read her sentences on the page, I had refused to acknowledge it, even to myself.
MOTHER-RAGE.
Because how can you not be pissed after becoming a mother?
Yoder tells the story of how the unnamed protagonist – an artist and new mother – slowly but surely turns into ‘Nightbitch,’ a howling prowling, unconditionally loving dog-mother; a woman for whom the only way to tap into her maternal instincts, trapped and buried beneath generations of patriarchal conditioning and societal expectations, is by giving in to her ‘primitive’ canine self; that is by turning into a dog. A bitch to be precise.
There is very little place in our society for celebrating an ambitious woman who chooses motherhood. Why would we? It’s her own doing after all – how dare she, to try and Have. It. All. On the other hand, an ambitious man giving up his career or choosing to go part time, doing nights and bath-time, or even just holding the baby without looking terrified warrants shocked compliments, applause, a spree of photos and sometimes even tears, with word of this precious ‘hands on’ father spreading like wildfire through the extended family.
Yoder addresses these gross inequalities of our gender expectations with wry, dry and biting prose. In a society that puts motherhood on a pedestal primarily to avoid dealing with its toll on the mother, Nightbitch catalogs the vast, uncharted emotional and mental distance working mothers must travel to be able to sustain their choices. It points out the hypocrisy that millennial mothers have been sold all our lives; that if we get good college educations and jobs, compete mano-a-mano with the men in our class, we can escape the trappings of modern misogyny.
But instead of villainising the associated emotions, the book harnesses the anger, the self-doubt and the isolation to create a wildly sparkling, wholly relatable anti-hero mother; one who leaves her house and son a mess, who did not sleep train the baby and now regrets it, who has a ‘rich internal life’ and thinks she is a notch above motherly moms; a woman for whom having a child can never be her life’s singular purpose because she’s a multifaceted human being who misses her work, having her own space and simply having adult conversation. So sue her.
