Radiant Motherhood/Chapter 4

THE intermingling of the physical, the mental and the spiritual is so subtle, intricate and inexplicable that, in describing the states of the bride who is about to be a mother, it is difficult to know with which first to deal.

In an Appendix, p. 239, I put in compact form one or two of the obvious physical phenomena with which it may be necessary for the bride and bridegroom to acquaint themselves. Although generally known to their elders, my many correspondents have shown me that even such simple ​and direct facts are often unknown to young people, who are frequently so shy that they do not like to consult a medical practitioner or an older friend. Assuming then that the simple physical facts are known, there still remain innumerable subtleties which may cause heart searching, perhaps to both bride and bridegroom.

It is almost as though the bearing of a child were a function so primitive in its origin that it tends, to some extent, to dissociate the ordinary coherence of the mother's life, and to result in a weakening of the sub-conscious control over her emotions to which she had all her life grown accustomed. Thus she enters upon a complex state in which primitive instincts and feelings may be at variance with the conscious thoughts and aspirations of highly civilized and sensitive humanity.

This complexity of her instincts and her conscious feelings may lead the young wife to find an apparently inexplicable conflict in her attitude towards her husband. Consciously she desires ardently, with all that is best in her nature, to bear the child of their love. She adores her husband and is full of tender emotions towards him as the coming father, and experiences a form of gratitude that he should be the means of fulfilling her dreams; but possibly, at the same time, she may be amazed to ​find in herself an intense and active antagonism to his personal presence, an antagonism which she has to fight against revealing. She may realize that it is utterly at variance with her real feelings, and she may know that it would be the acme of cruelty to allow him to become aware of it, particularly when he is full of deep concern and love for her, and is doing all that a loving consideration can do for her happiness and welfare.

Such a complex diversity of mental states existing perhaps co-incidently at the same hour in the mind of a girl may, if acute, lead to an outwardly recognizable form of hysteria and even to an unbalanced mind. Of such, however, I am not speaking, but am now describing the outwardly controllable, but nevertheless inwardly felt effervescing conflict of instinctive emotions, which is far more frequent than is generally recognized, and which the best balanced and most loving women are amazed to experience in themselves.

From women whom I know to be exceptionally happy wives and mothers, I have evidence on this theme. With, of course, personal variations, they tell me that they have never confided this bewildering experience to their husbands, their doctors or their relatives, but, in essence, they say what is said in the following words by one of my correspondents:—

​In the first few months of coming motherhood she had a feeling of antagonism so strong "that it amounted to actual dislike of my husband's presence, and a desire to be right away from him. This distressed me very much at first as I thought I must be losing my love for my husband, and could not understand such a sudden reversal of feeling as I loved him very deeply. . . . At the end of the first three months, I found that my feeling of love returned in full strength, and with it a feeling of intense devotion and tenderness towards my husband as the father of my coming child."

Some such experience, generally and fortunately limited to comparatively short though different periods, is not infrequently felt and is often a source of secret distress and anguish to the young wife whose sense of loyalty to the man she loves and married bars her from the relief of talking of these feelings. As is now beginning to be realized, emotions deeply experienced which are deliberately suppressed, may have far reaching effects even on the health. It is, therefore, well that she should know what is, I am sure, the truth, that this physical repugnance, which sometimes even amounts to a detestation of sharing the same house with the husband, and a desire to escape even from the superficial contact of eating in the same room ​with him, is a temporary phase, possibly phylogenetic^[1] in its origin.

This passing phase, whether it lasts a few days or months, is neither necessary nor absolutely universal, but so far as I can ascertain it appears to be a common occurrence in the lives of the more sensitive and tenderly loving of wives. Where the coming child has not been desired by both parents, and where the mother resents her coming maternity, there is, of course, a totally different problem for which there is a very obvious reason. I am speaking now only of the mother-to-be who deeply desires her child, who is physically healthy and well formed, living under comfortable, protected and happy conditions, and who ardently loves and is loved by her husband; it is she who may and most frequently does feel this passing phase of intense physical antagonism. That she loves, and consciously loves, gives her an outward control so that this under-current of inherent antagonism is not allowed to show, and is gallantly concealed from the whole world. She would feel it an intense disloyalty to speak of it to any living soul, but it is there and it is so often a source ​of distress and strain upon the nervous system that it should be openly faced instead of being as it now is a repressed feeling. This repression tends to result in one of the greatest difficulties of the healthy woman who is carrying a child; namely sleeplessness. The complex balance of her nervous control is strained by her surprise at herself, and perhaps by her self-reproaches, and thus she has an unnecessary burden in addition to the one of the coming child. This phase, therefore, is not a fact to be ignored or. treated too lightly, and while it lasts it should be respected so far as is compatible with the circumstances of the two and with due regard for the mother. It is not a thing either to fear or to be ashamed of. It is perhaps best openly faced as a fact of rather curious interest as an ancient survival in oneself of racial history. If possible it should form the object of innocently playful laughter between the girl and her husband; this would do much to prevent its suppression taking a serious root.

Aware of the existence of this phase and its probable meaning and treating it in this simple sensible way, neither the young mother nor the father-to-be need fear this brief physical antagonism. Where its danger lies, however, is in the possibility that unrecognized, it will, with those who live a shade less perfectly, result in the beginning of a habit of irritation, and ​perhaps in the setting up of some form of verbal bickering on the part of those who cannot lead as secluded and separate lives as would be possible in a spacious country or in a large establishment. When once the pair have broken the sweet custom of speaking only in love to each other, then, even after the temporary phase of antagonism has passed, they may find themselves with a habit of verbal bickering which is intensely corrosive, ultimately perhaps more than any other thing tending to destroy the outward beauty of a mutual life.

There is another and reverse aspect of the mental phases through which a young mother-to-be may pass, in which she has an intense and added passion for her husband, and, as this leads to a subject of great importance, and a subject which has never been adequately handled, I will defer its consideration Chapter XII.