Mum guilt is so universal it inspired the name of my company

My body felt weird that 1992 day. I’d had to get out of a taxi the night before, repelled by the smell of every passenger before me. My nipples felt like they were being sliced with razor blades when my bra touched them. I wanted to sleep and wear overalls.

Surely, surely, I was pregnant. A home test. One line. Devastation. And confusion. Why, then, was I suddenly craving McDonald’s chicken burgers when I’d never eaten one before? Why was I peeing every 10 minutes?

My doctor took blood. Rang by the end of the day: no baby this month. Come back next week, we’ll work out what’s going on.

At home, a boiling bath topped up for hours until the bottle of red was gone. I sobbed my face off. Called for more wine.

The next week, another blood test. I was pregnant. Had been all along. And until my son was born 7½ months later, I was awash not with excitement but guilt.

What damage had I done to my baby that night, flooding him with cheap wine when he was just a glimmer of life? Was it possible I’d literally boiled his tiny fresh heart and brain when I should have been his fierce protector?

At his birth, I barely took in the luscious Ray Martin hair, the toes. Just tell me he’s breathing and can move. Bingo. He was fine.

I wasn’t, not really. Over the months and years and decades, the boozy bath dread was replaced by tonnes of other things I found to be guilty about as a mother. The baby spending too much time staring at his mobile, being overstimulated or underfed or fed too much or being cold or hot.

Guilt that I loved him so much I could never love another baby. Guilt when that second baby was born because I loved him so much that it was inconceivable I’d doubted I would. Guilt that they watched too much telly, ate too much cake, got too much sun.

Guilt when I got post-natal depression and lost my shit for a while. Guilt that one of them inherited my looks, guilt we had spag bol twice a week, guilt I got drunk on weekends and thus wouldn’t be able to drive to the Royal Children’s in an emergency.

Motherhood is a full-body act of faith and fear. It comes with inbuilt doubt and the antidote is compassion – for ourselves and for each other. Not hocus-pocus unfounded claims.

And the most stonking guilt of all: being a working mother. The mum guilt so universal it inspired the naming of my company.

According to the world, if you have a paid job, you’re a bad mother, the kids are second to your own interests. If you stay at home, you’re a bad mother for not role-modelling autonomy and ambition.

And now this week, Donald Trump’s people have gifted us another thing to feel crap about. Paracetamol. The boring old painkiller that vanishes pregnancy headaches and joint pain and – crucially – cuts fevers which can harm unborn babies.

Trump claims it causes autism.

Never mind that doctors worldwide denounce this as rubbish and scaremongering. Never mind that there’s bugger-all evidence for introducing more invisible weight about maternal choices.

Never mind how mothers of autistic children must feel. They’ve already asked themselves a million times why their child is neurodivergent, turned over every stone. Now they’re asking themselves if it could come down to a couple of paracetamol taken for a pregnancy backache.

Trump’s claim is not science. That’s cruelty.

Motherhood is a full-body act of faith and fear. It comes with inbuilt doubt and the antidote is compassion – for ourselves and for each other. Not hocus-pocus unfounded claims.

After surviving the boozy bath, my son kicked on to be a handy fast bowler and amateur tax expert who writes and dances like a dream. And I survived hands-on motherhood too, my big regret that I was so often weighed down by unnecessary worries.

So no, I won’t add paracetamol to the list. No other mother or future mother should either. Let’s remember that loving our children well doesn’t mean endlessly punishing ourselves.

Let’s decide one thing we shouldn’t swallow in pregnancy is more guilt.

Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.

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