If you know me, you’ll know that I love using my writing to process life and the experiences that have made it up so far. Teenage angst, moving to another country, travelling, loss, having my heart broken (or so it felt like): all of this found its way into my writing through snippets and poems I would scribble in notebooks and on my phone, and often share here on my blog too.

Initially, having a baby seemed like something else I would explore through my writing. I dutifully kept a weekly diary throughout my pregnancy which somewhat arbitrarily recorded my symptoms, how far along I was, the size of the baby compared to a fruit, etc. I think I wanted it to be this grand record of a time when not only was I physically changing so much, but my life was about to change in unimaginable ways.

However, in reality, my pregnancy was very smooth and I didn’t really have much to say apart from I’m excited and I don’t know what to expect. Also a lot of I’m too big and this is getting boring now at the end. Grand record it was not.

Then the baby arrived and I was both over- and underwhelmed with feeling. The first days were a blur of hospital checklists and newborn logistics. I was taking it one moment at a time, unable to fully process the magnitude of what had just happened. There was no time or space in my brain to think of anything other than breastfeeding and nappy changing and my own physical recovery which was harder than I’d anticipated.

We arrived home and settled into some kind of happy, delirious, timeless routine. I spoke to friends who asked if I was writing it all down. “You must keep a journal,” they said. “Record everything that you feel.” But the truth was I had no capacity to write anything down, or even to fully process how I felt. I was running on adrenaline and three to four hours of broken sleep. I was scared to stop. To look into myself and really examine all the things that had changed. My one job was to hold our baby in my arms and keep him fed. That already seemed like too overwhelming a task.

As the months passed, things changed and kept changing – that is the beauty of having a baby, I learned quickly. You get used to one thing, one routine, one way of being, and suddenly the next day everything is different again. Still I didn’t write, didn’t even think about writing.

Before getting pregnant I’d heard stories of writers who wrote whole novels on their phone while their newborn baby napped on them. Maybe in the back of my mind I’d thought that this was something I could do. Why wouldn’t I want to harness this primal, urgent time into something creative? I had created life. Could I not also create art?

No, I could not. And yet somehow when I look back at this time I still berate myself for not trying, as if I didn’t have enough to think about and do. As if the burden of keeping my baby alive wasn’t taxing enough. There was no space for creativity. There was just survival and the pure joy of watching my baby grow.

Nearly six months after my son arrived, a friend sent me a link to the Me Mother Other writing group which was taking place at the National Library in Edinburgh. I almost gasped aloud when I saw it. It seemed impossible that such a perfect opportunity could arise at the perfect time. I was starting to feel like myself again (or some new version of myself) and I’d even managed to put some first-draft words down for a new novel idea about breastfeeding and early motherhood. What serendipity that such a writing group would have started in my city when I most needed it.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I arrived for the first session, but what I found was a warm, honest and raw space where we read and tried to write while our babies distracted us, and then shared our work if we felt comfortable. Poet and Me Mother Other founder Beth Godfrey guided us through the sessions with generosity and wisdom. Each week there were prepared extracts and writing prompts, but we were encouraged to write about whatever we wanted or needed to. I think I cried in every session at the braveness of other mothers sharing their words. I laughed a lot too. There was also a lot of wrangling my son while he flailed about and fussed and later crawled around causing chaos as he tried to chew every piece of paper he could get his hands on, including – ironically – my writing.

All this to say, after so many months, the words fell out of me, and they have not stopped falling out since. I have finally been able to look back on the birth, on those hazy first weeks and months. Motherhood has changed me so inherently it took me a while to be able to put a name to all the ways I am different. All the things I have lost and gained. All the tiny moments and big feelings that have made up my life for the past year – will continue to be my life.

I wrote a poem about missing the feeling of my baby kicking me in the womb. I wrote a poem about not recognising my baby when he was first born. I wrote a poem about how I already miss all the previous versions of my child. I wrote lots of poems about the sleep deprivation and how it took me to a dark place. I’ll be sharing lots of those poems here on my blog (and you can see them all on my Instagram already).

Those first couple of sessions at the National Library turned into a full term of sessions at the end of last year which turned into a self-organised group of mothers who have found that reading and writing about motherhood together is the highlight of our weeks. There is no end to the content we can read, the themes we can discuss or the things we want to record ourselves and share with each other.

As Beth Godfrey writes: “Becoming a parent is tender and intense, complex in the light and shade of it, the shifting identity, the joy and rage. Naming it, being witness to it with each other, building powerful solidarity in isolating times.”

Nearly a year into my motherhood journey I have found myself writing more poems than ever before. Putting words to the myriad emotions and moments of my new life has allowed me to record my version of motherhood in a way that’s authentic to me. My poems aren’t perfect and I don’t want them to be overedited or overthought before I publish them. They are true reflections of my reality. They are portals to things uniquely specific to me and also universally true. They are my way of trying to hold onto my son who is already growing up too fast.

I hope my son reads my poems when he’s older. I hope he knows that he has changed me into someone completely different and also the person I always was. I hope he understands that my words are now all for him – always.

A huge thank you to Beth Godfrey and Me Mother Other for giving me the space to rediscover my writing voice at such a pivotal time in my life. As I return to work I shall desperately miss the writing sessions but know that I’ll keep in touch with the other mothers who were also brave enough to try and pin their words onto the shapeshifting winds of motherhood.

You can follow Me Mother Other on Instagram to keep up with the group and find out about future sessions if you’re based in Edinburgh. I know there are similar writing groups in other cities and earnestly hope that Me Mother Other can expand across the UK to reach new mothers all over the country. It really is a lifeline during the most transitional stage of our lives.