Ann Pleshette Murphy: 'The 7 Stages of Motherhood'

Jan. 24, 2005 -- -- In "The 7 Stages of Motherhood," Ann Pleshette Murphy reveals one of her most personal experiences to explain why women should reflect on the changes they encounter at each stage of their children's lives.

For more tips from Murphy and for more on "The 7 Stages of Motherhood," go to www.annpleshettemurphy.com

Read the following excerpts from Murphy's new book.

I was thirty-one when I became pregnant with our first child. From the moment my obstetrician gave us the good news, I began to fantasize about our baby, to picture myself as a mother. The hazy sonogram image I carried in my wallet, the fetal heartbeat, those first fluttery kicks changed my sense of who I was and who I was becoming. Long before my husband, Steven, and I settled on our baby's name, Molly, I had turned a dramatic corner. Just how sharp that corner really was I would discover in an agonizing way.

Molly died two days after her birth, tearing a hole in our lives. Even though I knew that I could have done nothing to prevent her death, which was due to a highly rare form of intrauterine growth retardation, I suffered profound feelings of worthlessness and guilt. During the succeeding weeks, Steve and I held on to each other, sharing our sadness and loss. Then Steve returned to work and I recuperated at home. As the news spread, a love tide of condolence notes poured in from family and friends, colleagues, acquaintances, people we saw often and others we hardly knew. I found myself reading and rereading every word--whether a multipage letter or a treacly Hallmark card. I hoarded the notes, counted them, organized and sorted them. Opening the mail became a kind of obsession, the one pastime I craved during an otherwise desolate period.

Only when I was pregnant with Maddie the following year did I understand why the letters had meant so much.

Having planned for months to be a mother, redefining myself in terms of our baby and our new life as a family, I suddenly felt as though I had no purpose, no handle on where to go from there. I had lost not only a chance to hold and love our baby, I was deprived of my new identity. For the better part of a year, I had carried a vision of myself and of Molly that informed every minute of my day and affected my dreams at night. Losing her meant losing me--or at least an experience of myself I wanted desperately to embrace.

I hoarded the letters not because of what they said but because they reminded me that I was also a friend, cousin, employee, colleague, daughter, sister, aunt. The more letters I received, the more I was connected to these other roles and the easier it became to retrace my steps. I slowly reclaimed my old self, began to feel on solid ground again, but I never really stepped back completely from the place I had entered eight months before. Even if I had never conceived another child, I would have forever defined myself as a mother.

Most of us become mothers in our minds the minute that second pink line blooms in the plastic window or the call to the doctor's office confirms the news. We breathe a little differently, see a different reflection in the mirror long before our contours actually change. I doubt the Dalai Lama could clear his mind of thoughts of the future were he lucky enough to experience pregnancy, because being pregnant is all about the future. We may go about the mundane business of our lives--having supper with our spouse, catching a movie with friends, going to work, taking a walk in the park--but we're already acutely aware that nothing will ever be the same, that our own personal history, and that of our baby-to-be, is about to change in ways that are thrilling and terrifying.

The psychologist Daphne de Marneffe aptly describes this sense of "history in the making" as all the more awe-inspiring in the context of our day-to-day lives: "We are both part of the cycle of life and the march of history. This is an incarnation, and even as we stroll to the drugstore to pick up some toothbrushes, or maybe even partly because of the strange contrast between them, it can inspire awe. That sense of awe is often one adoptive parents express as well, in evoking the experience of joining destinies with their child."[1]

In many ways, your fantasies about the future are as important as the little cluster of cells floating inside you. Pregnancy is a three-in-one deal: There's the physical baby you're carrying, the imagined one in your dreams, and your picture of yourself as a mother. They're all important, all part of what makes pregnancy the seminal journey of any woman's life. From the minute you find out you're pregnant, you feel as though you've wandered into a totally new neighborhood. You daydream about running behind your towheaded toddler on the beach or reading Charlotte's Web to your rapt first-grader or shopping with your preteen, and you begin to reshape a sense of who you are.

Most of us don't take the time to indulge in these fantasies or to give voice to them, especially if they tip precariously toward the dark side. Heavyhearted visions of loneliness, fatigue, and unwanted fat get pushed aside whenever someone asks, "Are you excited?" or "How are you feeling?" It's far easier to assume that we can accommodate a small earthquake than to contemplate the sidewalk splitting open or giant boulders tumbling from the sky.