I Didn’t Realise How Much Motherhood Would Pull Me Out of My Body - A personal reflection
Busy Mum Summary
If you only have a minute, here’s it all in a nutshell:
Motherhood can pull you out of your body from the very beginning, especially after medicalised or traumatic birth experiences
Sleep deprivation, hormonal shifts, and caring for a newborn (or twins) can keep your nervous system in constant survival mode
Feeling foggy, hypervigilant, disconnected or not like yourself is a nervous system response
You don’t lose yourself in motherhood, but your identity, creativity and sense of self deeply transform
The spiritual and meaningful moments of early motherhood often live in small, ordinary, very real moments
Coming back into your body happens slowly, through gentleness, nature, breath, movement and time
Many mothers feel deep loneliness and shame around survival responses, especially those who “know better” or try to parent consciously
I didn’t realise how completely motherhood would pull me out of my body from the very beginning.
From the minute I gave birth to my babies, something in me shifted. Not just emotionally, but physically, neurologically, existentially. The birth itself involved medical interventions. While it was a vaginal birth, it was also traumatic. One of my babies was taken for observation, I lost a lot of blood and I needed surgery afterwards. As a result of the surgery I was on strong medication during and afterward. My body barely had a moment to land before it was asked to keep going.
And then there were my beloved twins.
Breastfeeding issues. Latching struggles. Milk supply concerns. Pumping. Bottles. Formula. Feeding, washing, sterilising, feeding again. Nap schedules that never quite aligned. A constant cycle that left no pause. And don’t forget needing to “nourish yourself” so you can make enough milk - I don’t even remember what I ate or how I managed to sleep! I moved straight into survival mode, and in that place, I lost contact with my body almost entirely.
I remember feeling like the ground had shifted underneath me. Like who I was before had disappeared. I remember thinking, I don’t know who I am anymore. But even more unsettling than that was the realisation that I didn’t know what I felt. The sensations were too much and not enough at the same time.
Sleep deprivation surprised me more than anything. Not just the exhaustion, but how profoundly it pulled me out of myself. I felt foggy, disoriented, unreal. And at the same time, my system was intensely switched on. Hormones surged. My nervous system stayed on high alert. I was vigilant, hypersensitive, constantly scanning. I couldn’t turn that off, and in many ways, it made sense. I had tiny humans to keep alive.
So there I was, deeply fatigued and completely wired. Oh and did I mention I was in the final stages of completing my Clinical SomaSoul Somatic Therapy training (which was actually my saviour in all of this!)? So yeah, I was functioning almost entirely from a sympathetic nervous system state. Activated. Alert. On edge. Living from my head and my instincts, but not from a felt sense of being at home in myself.
Motherhood did something else too. It connected me more deeply to my intuition than I realised was possible. And at the same time, it transformed my sense of concepts like creativity and spaciousness. I didn’t lose those parts of me, but they changed shape. What used to feel expansive and expressive became quieter. There was a calling into presence that felt spiritual in a very raw, grounded way.
The sacred wasn’t found in long practices or wide open time. It lived in micro moments. In the pure realness of being with my children. In feeding, holding, watching breath rise and fall. Life became very small and very deep all at once.
Coming back into my body didn’t happen all at once. It happened slowly and imperfectly.
Nature was a lifeline for me too. Feeling the earth under my feet. Walking, even for ten minutes, helped remind my nervous system that there was more than the four walls and the constant demands. Movement wasn’t about exercise. It was about remembering I had a body at all.
Breathing and meditation found their way in through unexpected doors. Sometimes while breastfeeding or when I couldn’t sleep despite the babies being asleep - a key sign of an activated nervous system. These weren’t formal practices but they helped anchor me.
There’s something about early motherhood that I don’t think we speak about enough. The loneliness.
Especially the kind of loneliness that comes with strong, primal nervous system responses. The kind that feel messy, uncontained, even unhinged at times. These experiences often come layered with shame. And shame isolates.
This can be particularly intense if you are a mother who is reading the books, listening to the podcasts, committed to conscious parenting. Or if you are a therapist, a meditation teacher, someone who feels like they should know better. That belief alone can create so much internal pressure.
You hold so much in. You tell yourself to regulate, to be present, to soften. And when your body does something else entirely, when survival energy takes over, it can feel deeply confusing and very lonely.
Motherhood has a way of humbling us. Of stripping away identities and revealing places in our nervous system that we didn’t even know were there. It’s an initiation!
Coming back into the body after birth, after trauma, after sleep deprivation and survival mode is really about kindness. About understanding that your body has been doing exactly what it needed to do to get you through.
If you are a mother reading this and recognising yourself, I want to remind you that your amazing body has wisdom, even in its dysregulation.
Perhaps the invitation is not to force your way back into yourself, but to arrive gently and imperfectly. Moment by moment.
Coming back to yourself in motherhood happens slowly and in layers. And often, it begins with simply knowing that you are not alone in the experience.
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