Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

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Lucy Jones has brought together the latest science and knowledge, and takes us on a journey into the truth of motherhood. The only thing that didn’t make sense to me was the undertone of “I had no idea that motherhood was difficult!

I would advise against reading it during pregnancy if you're someone who prefers to focus on the positive side of things.What I found instead was a boundary-pushing book that is altogether tricksier, more complex and creative, transcending even the “part-memoir, part-critical analysis” genre that has become such a commonplace format for female authors in recent years.

And those who fall in love with the world might protect it, a virtuous cycle that would make a real difference in the fight for a workable planet - Bill McKibben, author of Falter; Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?The author’s raw, honest and open memoirs gave me a sense of peace, that I wasn’t alone in many of the experiences I’ve been presented with in transitioning to motherhood.

For starters, brief passages that lay out the machinations of nature, and many of its horrors, sit around its chapters.Most importantly, it gave me a framework and vocabulary for my own experience of matrescence and the tremendous changes that pregnancy, birth, and motherhood bring. There were some I wasn’t comfortable hearing, but the criticisms were nonetheless worthy of consideration. Jones sheds a fascinating light on the plethora of issues surrounding how childbirth and mothering fits (or fails to fit) into the current social and economic systems of the modern, western world. Women who aren’t informed about what they might go through suffer more because of the shock and isolation.

Moving from the early stages of her pregnancy to her eldest child’s first day at school, she describes how the mother’s brain literally changes shape’. the connection between mental health and the natural world turns out to be strong and deep - which is good news in that it offers those feeling soul-sick the possibility that falling in love with the world around them might be remarkably helpful. How can this be, Lucy Jones asks, when it is “a transition that involves a whole spectrum of emotional and existential ruptures”?We don’t properly recognise “the psychological and physiological significance of becoming a mother: how it affects the brain, the endocrine system, cognition, immunity, the psyche, the microbiome, the sense of self”.