Crying in the stairwell

On hospital stays and online childhoods

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

I’ve been debating how to write about this.

Back and forth in my head, in my journal, in conversation with my husband.

We are in the messy middle of diagnosis and treatment for a chronic health condition in our one-year-old.

Even if I wanted to (which I’m not entirely sure I do) I can’t share much more right now because we’re waiting on a knife-edge for test results which will likely give us more questions than answers.

Besides our current state of uncertainty, though, this has thrown up some gnarly questions for me about the ethics and consent of sharing parts of your offspring’s childhood online.

The debate around child influencers rears its ugly head every few months when the now-grown child of an original family vlogger or mommy blogger comes forward or in reports on the dangers of kidfluencing and sharenting.

I have absolutely no desire to turn my daughter into a child influencer.

But as an extremely online millennial, setting boundaries for what and how I share online about my child was as much a part of my prenatal preparation as reading the hypnobirthing book and learning to tie a moby wrap.

I write about the way I (and many others) experience motherhood — not about the details of my daughter’s upbringing and childhood. I’m conscious of the (very real) possibility that she’ll read it herself when she’s older.

The act of mothering day-to-day is hard. The transition to motherhood is hard. Being a mother whilst honouring other parts of my identity is hard.

But loving my daughter is easy and fulfilling and beautiful and joyful.

(and to be clear: I would take the hard parts a thousand times over to keep hold of even a fraction of the joy)

My tendency to overshare is something I used to be embarrassed about.

I have never once in my life been mysterious, never had even a single ounce of chill.

I process my experiences and emotions by talking and writing about them. My near-daily journaling habit gives me an outlet for some of that processing, but it’s no substitute for conversation.

Especially in these early years of motherhood, the back-and-forth of dialogue, passing familiar emotions between one another, and the comfort of being seen and known and understood by other mothers continues to be an essential part of my self-care.

The old village that would help raise our children is disappearing, but aren’t we lucky that we can connect with other mothers wherever and whenever we are, online?

That we have not only a wealth of knowledge and expertise at our fingertips, but a wealth of community, too?

If my words can reach out through a screen and hug another mother crying alone in a hospital stairwell and let her know that it’s really fucking tough, but so is she (even if she doesn’t feel like it right now)?

That’s all I want.

So no: I won’t be sharing the details of my daughter’s diagnosis or treatment online.

But I will write more about my experience of navigating the NHS as the mother of a chronically ill child. I will write more about the joy and the pain and the honour and the fear and all the other inevitable contradictions of motherhood. I will write more about the challenges of mothering in the current social and political moment.

And I hope at least a little bit of it will resonate with other mothers.

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