Motherhood changes you in ways that go far beyond pregnancy and postpartum body changes. Becoming a mom can affect your relationships, friendships, career, finances, priorities, freedom, home, sensory tolerance, and even the way you see other children and animals. And honestly, a lot of these changes are things nobody really tells you about before you become a mother.
I remember that after I became a mom and started experiencing all these little turmoils for myself, I suddenly started seeing Instagram reels about them everywhere. And I kept thinking, where were all these reels before I had kids?
My algorithm apparently had no interest in preparing me.
Before becoming a mom, I mostly heard about the obvious stuffāthe sleepless nights, breastfeeding, postpartum recovery, diaper changes and how difficult the first couple of years could be. I don’t remember anyone telling me that motherhood would still be changing the way I think and feel years later.
So if you’re planning to become a mom, I don’t want you to think that you only have to prepare yourself for the baby stage. There are so many changes that come later too, and some of them have nothing to do with diapers or sleepless nights.
I’m not writing this to scare you away from motherhood. Quite the opposite. Motherhood is beautiful. It has given me some of the most wonderful experiences of my life. But it can also be messy, funny, frustrating, exhausting and surprisingly confusingāand I think you can know all of that beforehand without loving motherhood any less.
These are some of the things I wish I had known.
Early Postpartum: Your Body Doesn’t Feel Like Yours Yet
The early postpartum period can be particularly strange.
If you have a baby during hot weather, you may find yourself sweating constantly, showering more than once a day, and still feeling like you need another shower five minutes later.
You’re exhausted, feeding a baby, possibly leaking milk, sweating through your clothes and wondering how you can feel both completely unwashed and completely incapable of taking care of yourself.
And then there is the hair.
You may have spent pregnancy enjoying thicker, fuller hair, only to start shedding what feels like an entire wig a few months later.
Hair on the pillow, shower, clothes…. Hair everywhere.
None of these things sounds particularly dramatic on its own. But when you’re sleep-deprived and adjusting to being responsible for another human being 24/7, even feeling clean and comfortable in your own body can feel like a luxury.
And eventually, some of it just becomes normal.
Your body changes.
Your expectations change.
And your definition of “this is fine” changes considerably.
How Motherhood Changes Your Relationship With Your Partner
Having a baby can completely change a relationship.
Before children, you can spend an entire evening talking, watching something together, going somewhere spontaneously or simply doing absolutely nothing together.
After children, conversations can sound like:
“Did you pack the extra clothes?”
“Did she eat?”
“Where is the water bottle?”
“Who is picking him up?”
“Did you see the message from school?”
You don’t necessarily stop loving each other.
You just suddenly have a very large administrative department to run.
There can be more tiredness, more interruptions and sometimes more resentment.
But there can also be a different kind of closeness.
You see your partner becoming a parent. You discover how they handle exhaustion, illness, chaos and tiny emergencies. Sometimes you appreciate them more. Sometimes you want to scream at them.
How Motherhood Changes Friendships
Some friendships become stronger after motherhood.
Others quietly disappear.
Not always because anyone did anything wrong.
Your life simply becomes different.
You may not have the energy to answer messages immediately. You may cancel plans. You may prefer talking to someone who understands why you disappeared for three days because your child had a school project, a fever or simply needed you every five minutes.
You may also discover that you miss friendships that once seemed effortless.
Before motherhood, you could say, “Let’s meet this evening.”
After motherhood, meeting someone can require planning that resembles a military operation.
And sometimes you don’t want another plan.
You just want someone to sit beside you while you complain about everything.
Your Priorities Become Confusing
Motherhood can completely rearrange your priorities.
Things that once seemed extremely important may suddenly feel ridiculous.
And things you never thought about before can become incredibly important.
You may care less about impressing people and more about having enough money in the bank.
You may care less about looking perfect and more about getting everyone out of the house on time.
You may stop dreaming about certain things.
Then, years later, you may suddenly want them again.
Motherhood doesn’t necessarily erase the person you were before children.
Sometimes she is simply buried underneath school bags, laundry, homework, appointments and someone asking for a snack.
Motherhood Can Make You Want to Quit Your Jobāand Become More Ambitious
This one surprised me.
You can look at your children and think:
Why am I working so much? Why don’t I just stay home with them?
And then, at another moment, you can think:
No. I want my career. I want my own money. I want financial independence. I want to know that I can take care of myself.
Motherhood can make some women less interested in work.
For others, it can make ambition stronger.
You may suddenly care about career security in a completely different way. Your salary isn’t just money for things you want anymore. It can represent independence, your children’s future and the ability to handle an emergency without depending entirely on someone else.
So yes, you can desperately want to quit your job at 9 a.m. and become incredibly ambitious again by 3 p.m.
Apparently motherhood does not come with consistent opinions.
Your Relationship With Money Changes
Before children, money can feel like freedom.
You think about travel, clothes, restaurants, gadgets, hobbies and the things you want.
After children, money can start feeling like security.
School.
Medical expenses.
Emergencies.
A house.
Savings.
Opportunities.
The ability to say no to something because you don’t depend on someone else for every financial decision.
You start thinking about the future in a much longer timeline.
And sometimes this can make spending money on yourself feel strangely difficult.
You can spend money on something for your child without thinking twice and then stare at the price of something you want for yourself for twenty minutes.
Your Empathy Can Become Almost Painful
One of the biggest emotional changes after becoming a mother can be the way you see other children.
A child with cancer isn’t just a sad story anymore.
A child in a hospital isn’t just a child you feel sorry for.
Somewhere in your mind, there is suddenly a connection:
That could be my child.
You think about the parents too.
What must it feel like to sit there?
How do they sleep?
How do they continue doing ordinary things when their child is suffering?
Your heart can become much bigger after motherhood.
Unfortunately, your resources don’t automatically become bigger with it.
You may want to help everyone. You can’t.
And learning to live with that helplessness can be one of the harder emotional parts of becoming a mother.
How Motherhood Changes the Way You See Other Children
After having children, you start noticing other children differently. You notice how they talk, what they’re wearing, whether they’re shy, how they behave, and you notice their mothers too. Sometimes you make eye contact with another mother in the middle of a meltdown and there’s an instant I know understanding.
But you also start noticing when another child is better at something your child is doing.
The neighbour’s kid dances better. Someone else’s child reads faster. Another one is better at maths.
And yes, you notice.
I am not a comparing mom. I am not a comparing mom.
Your child doesn’t have to be the best at everything. Sometimes you just have to notice the difference, accept it, and move on without turning it into something your child needs to fix.
Your Relationship With Family Can Change After Having a Baby
One of the stranger things about motherhood is that you really do need your village, but sometimes the very people you need can also drive you crazy. You need your parents, your in-laws, your partner, relatives, friendsābecause there are days when you genuinely cannot do everything yourself. But when you’re exhausted and protective of your baby, even help can feel like interference. Someone can be doing something with the best intentions and you’re still thinking, please don’t do that.
Accepting help doesn’t mean surrendering your parenting. But having a village also means accepting that other people may not do everything exactly the way you would.
Sometimes you have to decide which things actually matter.
Sometimes you need help more than you need things done your way.
And sometimes you really do need to say, “No, this is a boundary.”
Motherhood can teach you that needing people and needing boundaries are not opposites.
How Motherhood Can Change Your Sensory Tolerance
I don’t remember being bothered this much by noise before having kids.
Now, after a whole day of someone talking, asking questions, crying, calling “Mom” from another room, a TV playing, toys making sounds and everyone generally needing something from me, there are times when I just want the house to be quiet.
And it’s not even always the big things. Sometimes it’s the constant little noises that get to me. Someone tapping something. A toy making the same sound over and over. Sticky hands touching me. Things under my feet. Being touched when I have already been touched approximately 400 times that day.
I also started noticing how much sensory overload can affect parenting. When you’re already overwhelmed by noise and stimulation, a child’s crying can feel completely different. You know they’re not doing anything wrong, but your own brain is getting overloaded at the same time.
I’ve written more about this in my guide to sensory overload in children and parents, because sometimes we focus so much on helping children regulate that we forget that parents have nervous systems too.
I sometimes use earplugs during my kids’ crying fits. It sounds strange until you’ve been in one of those situations where the crying is getting to you so badly that you can feel yourself becoming less patient.
The earplugs don’t mean I don’t care that my child is crying. Sometimes they just take the edge off the noise enough for me to think properly and respond instead of getting completely overwhelmed by it.
I think that’s another thing motherhood changes that nobody really talks about. You learn much more about what your own brain can and can’t handle.
And sometimes what you need isn’t to be a better mother.
You just need five minutes without somebody making a noise..
How Motherhood Changes Your Relationship With Your Home and Possessions
I used to like cute stationery. I still do, actually. That’s the annoying part.
Because now there are pens, crayons, pencils, markers and bits of paper everywhere, and somehow, with approximately 400 writing instruments in the house, nobody can find a pencil when they actually need one.
Things get thrown on the floor, broken, moved around and stepped on. The same thing happens with makeup and other little things I used to enjoy having around.
I don’t want to put everything away in cupboards either. I want to live in my house. I want to see my things and use them. But apparently anything within a child’s reach is considered community property.
And then there is the rest of the house. Broken crayons, springs, dead batteries, plastic pieces, one mysterious wheel and toys that haven’t worked in years. Sometimes I look around and wonder why we have so many objects that don’t seem to belong to anything.
You clean, they make a mess, you clean again. They may even help, although “helping” can sometimes involve washing one plate and emptying half the dishwashing liquid bottle.
So it’s not that I stopped liking beautiful things or having a nice, clean house.
I just didn’t realize how much work would be involved in keeping things that way once I had children.
You May Become Protective of Empty Surfaces
There was probably a time when an empty table was just an empty table.
Now an empty table can feel like an achievement.
An empty countertop?
Beautiful.
A clear floor?
Luxury.
A sofa without toys on it?
Museum-worthy.
You begin to appreciate surfaces that don’t have seventeen objects sitting on them.
And when you finally clear one, you know exactly how long it will remain that way.
Approximately four minutes.
Even Your Cute Pictures Disappear
Before children, taking a nice picture could be as simple as seeing something pretty and taking a photograph.
After children, daily life is not always particularly photogenic.
There are school uniforms.
Messy hair.
Half-eaten breakfasts.
Random objects in the background.
Someone refusing to cooperate.
Someone blinking.
Someone crying.
Someone asking for a snack immediately after you took the picture.
These days, vacations may be the only time you naturally get those cute pictures you imagined having.
Of course, travelling with children is its own adventure.
A two-hour journey is no longer a two-hour journey.
You may need to stop at three restaurants, several restrooms and, naturally, a teddy shop.
Because apparently no family trip is complete without acquiring one more piece of plastic that you will eventually find under the sofa.
Travel Stops Being Spontaneous
I still love travelling, but travelling with children is a completely different thing.
Before kids, you could decide to go somewhere and just go. Now even a short trip needs some planning. You have to think about what they’re going to eat, what they might need, whether you packed a change of clothes, whether someone is going to need the bathroom halfway there, and what you’re going to do if they suddenly get bored.
Even a two-hour journey can turn into a whole expedition. You stop at one restaurant, then someone needs the bathroom, then somebody else is hungry, and somehow you end up at a teddy shop buying another thing you absolutely did not plan to bring home.
I do miss being able to just say, “Let’s go,” and leave.
But then you get there and see how excited the kids are, and you remember why you bothered with all the planning in the first place.
Until, of course, someone asks, “When are we going home?”
Motherhood Makes You Realize What Freedom Actually Means
This may be one of the strangest changes.
You can feel completely trapped by motherhood while knowing that, if you were completely free right now, you might just lie in your bedroom and do absolutely nothing.
So what exactly are you missing?
Maybe it isn’t parties.
Maybe it isn’t travel.
Maybe it isn’t going out every evening.
Maybe you just miss choice.
Choosing to stay in bed because you want to.
Choosing when to shower.
Choosing what to eat.
Choosing when to leave the house without calculating who needs to come with you.
Choosing to do nothing without someone immediately needing something.
There is a huge difference between choosing to do nothing and being unable to choose.
Sometimes what you miss isn’t your old life.
It’s ownership of your time.
The Mental Load of Motherhood Is More Than Doing Things
Sometimes the exhausting part isn’t doing something.
It’s remembering that it needs to be done.
The school app sends a message.
You read it.
You think you’ll deal with it later.
Ten days pass.
Suddenly the homework is due tomorrow.
And you’re standing there wondering how a message you read ten days ago has managed to become your emergency.
It’s not just homework.
It’s uniforms.
Projects.
Appointments.
Birthdays.
School supplies.
Payments.
Forms.
What needs to be packed.
What needs to be washed.
What needs to be bought.
What someone mentioned three weeks ago and will definitely need tomorrow.
Motherhood can turn your brain into a constantly running background application.
Even when you’re sitting down, part of your brain is still working.
You Become a Cleaner, Scheduler, Teacher, Nurse and Somehow Still Get Criticized
One of the funniest things about motherhood is that the people you do the most for can sometimes be the least impressed by your efforts.
You can spend the entire morning getting everyone ready and then hear:
“You never dress us.”
On the busiest school morning imaginable.
You may have spent twenty minutes looking for someone’s missing sock, packed their bag, filled their water bottle, found their shoes and reminded them seventeen times to brush their teeth.
But apparently you never dress them.
Motherhood can involve doing an enormous amount of invisible work while receiving absolutely no performance review.
And sometimes the performance review is negative.
Your Children Can Become Your Cleaning Supervisors
You clean the house.
They create another mess.
You clean again.
They help you clean.
Then they look around and tell you that you’re lazy.
There is something deeply humbling about being judged by people who believe putting one toy into a box counts as completing a major household project.
But you pretend you’re alright.
Because what else are you going to do?
You keep cleaning.
You keep working.
You keep remembering things.
You keep showing up.
Motherhood Can Change the Way You Feel About Animals
A lot of people say they start liking pets less after having children. I can understand that. When you’re already exhausted from looking after a child, the thought of taking care of another animal can feel like one more responsibility you don’t need.
For me, it actually went the other way, although not in the way you might think. I didn’t suddenly want a house full of pets. If anything, I became more particular about keeping that boundary. I was quite happy to feed and care for stray cats outside, as long as they didn’t decide that my house was their house too.
Maybe having a child made me more aware of how completely dependent small, vulnerable beings can be on the people around them. Once you’ve spent years worrying about whether your own child has eaten, slept, is comfortable or is okay, it’s probably not that surprising that you start noticing those things in other living creatures too.
I still didn’t want them inside my house, though. I had my limits.
You Start Wanting Things to Be Easier, Not Necessarily Better
This may be one of the quieter changes.
You don’t always want more.
Sometimes you just want fewer things to manage.
Fewer appointments.
Fewer bags.
Fewer messages.
Fewer objects on the floor.
Fewer people needing something from you simultaneously.
You may become much more attracted to convenience.
Easy meals.
Simple clothes.
Low-maintenance possessions.
Plans that don’t require seventeen steps.
It isn’t laziness.
Sometimes you’re just tired of carrying invisible complexity.
You Can Love Your Life and Still Miss Your Old Life
This is probably the contradiction that explains motherhood best.
You can love your children so much that imagining life without them feels impossible.
And still miss who you were before them.
You can miss sleeping late.
You can miss spontaneous travel.
You can miss having a clean house for more than five minutes.
You can miss being alone.
You can miss being able to finish a thought.
None of that means you don’t love your children.
It means you are still a person.
And people can miss things even when they wouldn’t trade what they have for those things.
Motherhood Doesn’t Make You a Completely Different Person
People sometimes talk about motherhood as though you become a new person.
I don’t think it is quite that simple.
Some parts of you change.
Some parts become stronger.
Some become softer.
Some become more exhausted.
Some become surprisingly ambitious.
Some become completely intolerant of repetitive toy sounds.
And some parts of the old you are still sitting there quietly waiting for an opportunity to come back.
You may still love cute stationery.
You may still want a beautiful home.
You may still want a career.
You may still want to travel.
You may still want time alone.
You may still want to lie in bed and do absolutely nothing.
You can be a mother and still be all of those things.
Maybe motherhood isn’t about losing yourself and becoming someone else.
Maybe it is about becoming a much more complicated version of yourself.
One who can love fiercely, worry constantly, laugh at ridiculous things, resent being needed, feel grateful, feel trapped, want help, want everyone to leave, want to quit, want to succeed, and somehow get up the next morning and do it all again.
Motherhood changes your body. But it also changes your relationships, priorities, ambitions, boundaries, empathy, tolerance, home, finances and your understanding of freedom.
And perhaps the strangest part is that you can experience all of these changes without ever feeling like you have completely figured motherhood out.
Maybe nobody does.
Maybe we’re all just pretending we’re alright while looking for the missing pencil.
Iāve shared more gentle, real-life reflections on motherhood, emotions, and everything that comes with it inside my Motherhood & Emotional Wellbeing pillar. You donāt have to carry it all quietly.
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