The Parental Tug of War - The Emotional Push and Pull of Being a Mother

We often hear that becoming a parent is both beautiful and exhausting. That you can love your baby deeply while feeling completely overwhelmed. But it wasn’t until I became a mother that I truly understood the magnitude of that experience.

What I hadn’t expected was the constant coexistence of opposing emotions. Feeling joy and depletion, love and loss, fulfilment and confusion, all at the same time. It felt like living in a constant emotional contradiction. I had never felt so much yet struggled to understand what I was feeling at all.

And this comes straight after one of the biggest transitions a person can go through:  pregnancy, birth, and then immediately into postpartum life. A shift so profound it’s almost impossible to prepare for.

Falling in Love While Grieving

For me, becoming a mother felt like welcoming one life while quietly saying goodbye to another.

The love I felt for my son was immediate and overwhelming. A kind of love I had never experienced before. It felt euphoric, almost indescribable in its intensity.

But alongside that love, there was grief. Before becoming a mother, I felt free and independent. My time was my own. I moved through life with ease, feeling energetic and physically strong. I enjoyed how I looked, how I dressed, and how I expressed myself. I had space for work, for hobbies, for myself. And then, almost instantly, everything changed.

I found myself sitting for hours feeding my baby, physically recovering from birth, exhausted in a way I had never known. My world became smaller, more contained. There was so much to do, yet no time or energy to do it. As the days passed, that sense of loss grew stronger. I felt overwhelmed, disconnected, and unsure of who I was anymore. And yet, at the very same time, I was completely in love.

That was the hardest part, holding both of those feelings together. Loving my baby so deeply, while quietly missing the person I had been. In that conflict, I almost lost sight of who I was becoming: a mother.

Pride and Guilt

Alongside the love and the grief came another pairing: pride and guilt.

I felt an overwhelming sense of pride in my son. I wanted to share him with the world, to show people this incredible little person I had brought into it. Becoming a family felt so significant, something I wanted to celebrate.

But running alongside that was a constant inner voice questioning everything.

Was I doing enough? Was I doing it right? Could I be better?

Having worked as a nanny, I felt like I should know what I was doing, as though there was an invisible rulebook I wasn’t quite following. But being a parent is entirely different from caring for someone else’s child, and I found myself doubting my instincts constantly.

This quiet, persistent guilt became a steady background noise, even in moments of happiness.

Nesting and Overwhelm

In the early days, the “newborn bubble” felt comforting. I wanted to stay wrapped up in our little world, focused only on my baby. There was something simple and safe about that. Responding to his needs, staying close, shutting out everything else. But slowly, the outside world began to return.

Daily life crept back in - washing, cooking, messages, plans, responsibilities. And now, all of it existed alongside caring for a baby. What once felt manageable suddenly felt overwhelming.

The house felt chaotic. The constant physical contact, the noise, the lack of space, it all became too much at times. What had felt like a safe cocoon began to feel restrictive, almost suffocating.

I wanted to step outside of it, but I was still healing, still exhausted, still trying to adjust. Some days it felt like I might either explode or completely shut down.

Finding Some Ground

This is only a small glimpse of what I felt in those early months. At the time, it felt endless, like I would always exist in that constant push and pull. But slowly, things began to shift.

The overwhelm softened. The days became a little more manageable. The intensity of those emotions eased, even if they didn’t disappear completely. Life began to take shape again, different, but more familiar.

I’m not the same person I was before, and I’m still working through many of these emotions, including in therapy. But I’m beginning to accept this version of life, this version of myself. Not the old me but not lost either. Just changed.

A Shared Experience

This is for any parent who feels pulled in different emotional directions.

If you’re holding conflicting feelings, if you feel both full of love and completely overwhelmed, if you’re unsure how you feel at all. You’re not alone.

It may feel confusing, overwhelming, and at times too much, but it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It means you’re adjusting to something life changing. Perhaps it’s not about choosing one feeling over another but learning to make space for both.