The Silent Mode of Motherhood
By Hannah Brencher
@hannahbrencher
My daughter is less than twenty-four hours old. I am sitting in the hospital bed, basking in my first big accomplishment since giving birth: taking a shower. Though the experience was daunting, I feel like a new woman. My hair is pulled back in a wet bun. My face feels fresh. I’m wearing a robe I packed from home patterned with black dahlias and deep-red roses.
I sit on the side of the bed, and my daughter lies in front of me. She wears a tiny felt shirt from the hospital and a diaper that fits in the palm of my hand. As she moves her arms and legs, exploring mobility for the first time earthside, I catch myself staring at her tiny body—so fragile and new—and thinking to myself, “It’s us now, girl. It’s you and me. We’re going to figure this thing out together, aren’t we?”
I’m not scared in this moment, which surprises me. There’s this strange, dare I say, confidence webbing deep within me. Some feelings are too hard to describe in just one word so I’ve settled on two: quiet capability.
I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never been the most confident person in any room, and I’m more likely to read a dozen parenting articles I’ve discovered on Google at 1 am than to go with my gut. But I can’t deny this small, knowing voice that tells me, “You have what you need. You’re going to be okay.”
***
The voice doesn’t stay. Not more than a few months.
Over hours and days, the intuition that held me so firmly in the hospital started to fray at the edges. And I think I know why: I’ve been letting so much noise in. Noise about motherhood. Noise about milestones. Noise about how I need to show up for her.
I’m sucked down rabbit holes of reels that tell me I only have eighteen summers left with her, so I better make the days count. I pin unrealistic ideas for a first birthday party that seems like its sole purpose might be to rival my own wedding. I create sensory bins full of pipe cleaners and cotton balls, and I watch as those bins get dumped out all over the kitchen floor—left for dead for some shinier object.
I listen to what the internet tells me about being a good mother (which, I know now, is never a good idea) and try to measure up accordingly.
It would have been good to know that the standards of other people, especially ones you don’t know beyond a screen, are always changing. The bar is always getting higher. The measuring stick is never long enough. You’re always falling short so long as you’re trying to dance to the rhythm of public opinion.
***
When my daughter is fourteen months old, I unplug for the first time. It starts with turning my phone off on my birthday and leaving it off for nearly the entire day. I feel more myself in that one day than I have felt for ages.
The unplugging comes at a good time, at a juncture where she is starting to notice me being on my phone. I can’t help but think that every time I pick up the phone I’m telling her a story about what’s valuable to me. I’m showing her that there is something really special and important about this shiny little device in my mind, that it has the power to take me away from her at any moment. And yet, when pressed for that special and important something, I cannot tell you what I scrolled through an hour ago.
I decide to keep unplugging.
I started tracking the hours—one unplugged hour at a time. It’s a metric I can go by. It’s not daunting or unrealistic. Just one hour here or another hour there—for a meal or naptime or a walk to the park. I’m building a better life for myself without my phone in hand. I’m more aware. I’m more at peace. There seems to be more breathing space in this place.
Every time I turn off my phone, it’s as if I am learning to put my hand up to all the noise I allowed in for the first year of her life—the noise that told me I needed to do more and be more to be a better mother.
Before that noise, it was a different kind of noise.
The noise that told me to be more productive.
The noise that told me I should be wearing smaller pants.
The noise that told me my house needed to be cleaner.
The noise that told me to take every hour available to me and squeeze it tightly, like a dish towel, in order to wring out every ounce of efficiency possible.
Hour by hour, I choose where to place my attention—on the noise looming large all around me or on the task right in front of me. The meal I’m making. The diaper I’m changing. The essay I’m writing. The coffee I’m sipping. Hour by hour, I’m choosing.
***
While paring down the noise and unplugging more and more, I discovered something I wasn’t expecting. As it turns out, the loudest, most critical, most shame-inducing voice I’ve been listening to doesn’t belong to someone on the Internet. It isn’t an aunt on Facebook. It isn’t someone on the Reddit threads or an angry commenter on Instagram.
It’s me. I’m the voice—the noise—that is inflicting so much pressure on myself.
I’m surprised to find out that I’m the one sucking the joy out of the mundane moments because I feel they should be bigger, more impressive, more extravagant. I’m the one discounting the moment at hand because I feel like the pants should be smaller, or the house should be cleaner, or the hour should be more productive.
Sure, the internet is loud but I opened up the gate and let all the noise in. I ditched the deeper knowing to prioritize a more fearful voice, one that bellowed on repeat, “Be more, be more, be more. It’s not enough.”
The realization of this smacks straight into me one afternoon as I’m sitting in the carpool line waiting to pick my daughter up from preschool. It’s one of those days where the critical, fear-filled voice seems to be winning. You know the voice—the one that always manages to pinpoint yet another way you could do better as a mother, how you could manage to be more like that mom you saw on TikTok.
As I’m having this critical dialogue with myself in the silence of the empty car, my phone tucked away, an unexpected voice enters the chat. The voice sounds clear and sure as it breaks through the destructive dialogue to say, “Your daughter doesn’t need all this. She doesn’t need you to perform or try to impress her. She just needs you. That’s what she wants, Mama. Your presence.”
The more I try to measure up for her, the more I miss the joy of simply being with her.
The voice is familiar—like an old friend calling on the phone, and you’re not too busy to pick up and remember how much you love the sound of their voice. It’s that same voice from the hospital bed—that quiet capability, breaking through the noise to assure me again, “We’re okay. We’re doing okay.”
The car stills. My mind clears.
“Welcome back,” I almost want to say to the voice because I heard it that loud and that clear, stirring in the deep of me once again. “It’s been a long time, but I’m glad you’re coming back. I’m so glad you’re coming back.”
The engine idles. I watch the cars in front of me move through the pick-up circle. I pull around the bend. I see my daughter waiting for me up ahead.
Guest essay written by Hannah Brencher. Hannah is an author, writer, and online educator. She is the author of “The Unplugged Hours: Cultivating a Life of Presence in a Digitally Connected World.” She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband Lane, and daughter Novalee.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.