Every woman deserves to know not just the beauty of motherhood, but the life it asks her to build
A few evenings ago, I watched a play titled Belly of the Beast. I walked in expecting a story about motherhood. I walked out thinking about choice. Not because the play argued against having children. Quite the opposite.
It reminded me that motherhood is one of the most extraordinary experiences a woman can have. Yet somewhere along the way, we have reduced it to baby showers, first birthdays and smiling family photographs. We celebrate the arrival of a child, but rarely prepare women for the arrival of an entirely new identity.
The irony is striking. We encourage people to think carefully before buying a house, changing careers or making an investment. We spend months researching schools, comparing mortgages and analysing financial decisions. Yet one of the biggest decisions of a woman’s life is often treated as something that requires remarkably little reflection. It deserves far more. Motherhood is, above all else, an investment—not of money, but of time, ambition, sleep, emotional bandwidth and, in many ways, of yourself.
The returns can be immeasurable. Ask most mothers if they would do it again and the answer is likely to be yes. Not because it was easy, but because some of life’s greatest rewards demand the greatest sacrifices. But that does not mean every woman must choose it. The freedom to become a mother is important. Equally important is the freedom not to. Neither choice makes a woman more complete than the other.
A child does not simply enter your life. The child becomes your life. Your body changes. Your sleep disappears. Your priorities shift. Your career may pause. Your relationships evolve. Your sense of freedom is redefined. And for years—often decades—someone else’s needs come before your own.
None of this is a complaint. It is simply the truth. Motherhood is perhaps the only life-changing decision we continue to romanticise instead of discussing honestly.
Actor Kalki Koechlin, who became a mother a few years ago, drew from her own journey to explore the many dimensions of motherhood through Belly of the Beast—a powerful play staged recently in New Delhi’s Kamani auditorium. The play brings together five very different experiences of motherhood. As she shared with me: “I had written a book about my own experience of motherhood, but I felt it was only touching the tip of the iceberg. Through “Belly of the Beast” we wanted to explore five different experiences of motherhood and the universal emotions that connect them—hardship, loneliness, immense responsibility and the loss of identity before you transform into a mother. I don’t think romanticising motherhood is unique to India. Much of the world puts motherhood on a pedestal as this beautiful, magical gift without really acknowledging the intense physical, emotional and psychological labour that comes with it. Of course motherhood changed me. Like all profound life experiences, it helps you grow as a person.”
She is right. We tell young women they will “figure it out.” We assume every woman is meant to become a mother. We celebrate pregnancy but remain strangely uncomfortable talking about postpartum depression, guilt, mental load, invisible labour or the quiet loneliness that can accompany raising children.
Listening to her, I found myself thinking back to my own pregnancies. I was probably the last person who looked like the glowing, radiant mother-to-be we see in advertisements. Pregnancy, for me, was hard to say the least. Really hard.
Mine was a complicated case and I was advised complete bed rest. For months, life revolved around doctor’s appointments, medicines and a long list of things I couldn’t do. Friends would ask whether I was craving something sweet or sour. I would laugh and think, Who is eating all these things? Certainly not me.
Then came labour. I spent nearly 48 exhausting hours trying for a normal delivery before it ended in an emergency Caesarean. At one point, through the unbearable pain, I remember telling my doctor, “Please just take this monster out!”
When I later shared this with friends, many mothers laughed and confessed they had said something similar. We often hear that the moment you see your baby, all the pain disappears. Perhaps for some it does. But in those final moments, however unromantic it may sound, I wasn’t thinking about the baby. I was simply trying to survive.
Little did I know that the “monster” would become the greatest love of my life. By the time my second child came along, I didn’t even pretend to be brave. I opted for an elective Caesarean. Looking back today, I barely remember the pain. What I remember is everything that came afterwards.
Motherhood changed me in ways I could never have imagined. It taught me patience, resilience and unconditional love. It made me question myself almost every day and yet somehow made me stronger with every passing year.
Today, my children are no longer ‘little’. They are blossoming into young adults, my worthy confidants, my sounding board, my fiercest critics, my biggest cheerleaders and, increasingly, my closest friends. They are the people I call at the end of a difficult day, and they remind me that years of sacrifice quietly turned into something infinitely greater than I could have imagined.
If someone asked me today whether it was all worth it, my answer would be an unequivocal yes. But I would add something I wish more women were told. It was worth it because it was a choice I wanted. Not because it was easy.
If motherhood is your dream, embrace it wholeheartedly. If it isn’t, there should be no apology attached to that decision either. Perhaps that is the conversation we need to have more often. Not whether motherhood is wonderful.
But that it is wonderful and difficult, beautiful and exhausting, joyful and lonely, life-changing and demanding. All of those things can be true at the same time. Go into it with your heart open. And your eyes open too.
