Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

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Identity crisis feeling and confusing emotions- your instinct is becoming a mother is big deal (you are solely responsible, everything changes etc) but society doesn’t value motherhood role yet also advocates you ‘must do it right’ (so much guilt tripping, ‘doing it all’ concept etc) Anyone who has ever spent any time on a labour ward will know why: birth can be long, bloody and traumatic. And that is just the first step along the road to the creation of a different being, a mother. It is life-changing, it is wonderful, but for many it is also fraught with worry and feelings of inadequacy. This is illustrated by the success of Mom Power, a ground-breaking psychotherapeutic initiative in Michigan, US. It was set up in 2009 to help new mothers who were facing severe stress, or had histories of trauma. Not only did participants in the programme show reductions in depression and PTSD, their brains also showed greater activity in the circuitry involved in empathy, an essential ability for parenting.

In a landmark study published in Nature in 2016, researchers provided evidence, for the first time, that pregnancy renders pronounced changes in brain structure. Soon after, neuroscientists found that the impact of pregnancy on the brain is as significant as the impact of adolescence. This book should be a must-read for pretty much everyone. We don't talk about the hidden realities of the biological, social and psychological effects of matrescence nearly enough. Thank you, Lucy Jones, for changing that Dr Jodi PawluskiThere is no other time in a human's life course that entails such dramatic change-other than adolescence. And yet this life-altering transition has been sorely neglected by science, medicine and philosophy. Its seismic effects go largely unrepresented across literature and the arts. Speaking about motherhood as anything other than a pastel-hued dream remains, for the most part, taboo. The new science of pregnancy and motherhood is showing us just how dramatic the hormonal fluctuations are, as well as how seismic the cardiac, immunological, haematological, renal and respiratory changes – and their lifelong impacts on the body. A wild and beautiful book ... a book that will be passed among friends and will no doubt bring solace ... Reading this, I felt a jolt of recognition ... more than six years later I can still feel the searing, silencing shame. I wish someone could have handed me Matrescence -- Sophie McBain * New Statesman *

Science writer Lucy Jones had imagined this stage in her life would be soft-focused and peaceful, but she slammed into a completely different experience. Telling her story alongside interviews with medical experts and academic researchers, she has written an unvarnished, straight-talking book, Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood that should spark a debate about the way we prepare women for this huge upheaval. But it will also be treasured by any new mothers who ever felt blind-sided and lost in the first months with their babies. In the UK, as many as 20% of women develop a mental health problem in pregnancy or the first year of motherhood; these include mild and moderate to severe depression, anxiety, PTSD and psychosis. A vital, hopeful book ... to read Matrescence is to emerge chastened and ready for change Marianne Levy, i News The new science of motherhood shows us what many feel: that becoming a mother is more of a big deal than western society allows. In fact, after childhood and adolescence, there is no other time in a human’s life that entails such dramatic psychological and physical change.

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That is not this book, though, and even for mothers who found matrescence a smoother experience, there is much to be gleaned as Jones skilfully elucidates the monumental shifts it brings, from the foetal cells that remain in a mother’s body for decades to evidence that pregnancy and birth has a dramatic, long-term impact on the brain that may even be permanent. Indeed, the chapter on the maternal brain is especially fascinating and, more importantly, validating for those of us who feel society’s minimising of matrescence flies in the face of our experience of it. This feeling is neatly summarised by Jones when she writes: “The closest I had ever been to death, to birth, to growth, to the co-conscious, to rapture, to rupture – was, according to the world around me, boring.” To read these words feels affirming, even radicalising. I find myself inwardly cheering at one point when another mother describes how “insipid/idealistic portrayals of motherhood made me less interested in it as a young person. I thought it was boring when it’s one of the most extreme socio-political experiences I have ever been through.”