Losing Myself to Motherhood: Navigating an Identity Crisis as a Young Nigerian Mother

I've always envied women who wanted to be mothers; women make the conscious and thoughtful decision to step into motherhood.

When you go into motherhood like I did, young, inexperienced and unprepared, you're bound to experience some difficulties.

I was 17 when I got pregnant in my first year of uni. I thought I had my life before me. I had a 5-year plan, and I was enjoying my experience at uni till I discovered I was pregnant. What a shock.

All of my friends were in my age group, and while motherhood had been something we discussed, none of us envisioned pregnancy during uni.

In less than a year, I'd gone from a young first-year student to a mother. I didn't know who I was. That was the beginning of a long phase of an identity crisis.

What I lost

While the data on single mothers in Nigeria is scarce (as is data for everything), I find that this battle to know myself is not a unique one.

Around the world, some mothers have struggled with their sense of self after having their children. I wonder about the number in Nigeria, given that things like this are often not spoken about.

As one can imagine, Motherhood is a very consuming job. You have the life of another human being in your hands to shape and protect. There's the constant anxiety that you're doing something wrong.

It becomes very easy to lose yourself in mothering.

For me, I found that my identity crisis didn't just stem from how consuming Motherhood was but also from how lost I was.

I had a terrible pregnancy. I spent most of it depressed and locked in my room. I was no longer a carefree young adult. I was a mother. I'd just turned 18; I hadn't been an adult for a year.

We form most of our sense of self in our teens and late twenties. It is a time to make mistakes and learn from them. A time to cry, laugh and build. A time to be.

I didn't/don't have that. I grieve(d) for what I lost and what I'd never experience.

I would never just be. I'd never know what it was like to live alone and never experience the pleasure of making dumb inconsequential decisions.

Who be this?

A significant part of my loss of identity was physical. During my pregnancy, I didn't care about what I looked like. It didn't matter.

The only time I cared was to hide my pregnancy.

It came as a great shock to me when I realised that it would affect me a lot.

My once taut skin and my breasts, which were once perky, had changed. When I looked in the mirror, I felt a sense of detachment. It felt like I was looking at my body from the outside. This wasn't my body.

You would think that, having gone through puberty, I'd be used to the idea of my body changing. But puberty was different. It was expected. You were taught about it.

Nobody taught me anything about post-pregnancy bodies. I couldn't talk to anybody about how I felt.

I had a baby - a new life to care for. The last thing I should've been thinking about was my body. And yet, I was.

I cried for the body I had and lost and the body I now had. This strange body I saw in the mirror couldn't be my own.

Surely, this was a trick of the light. It wasn't that I was hideous, whatever that meant, but it was different.

It seemed like this strange body was a physical manifestation of what I felt mentally. Surely, we can fix this. I can change this body. And yet, I couldn't. I didn't.

Learning to love this body was, and still is, a full-time journey. This body is mine. It belongs to me. I have no choice but to love it.

That journey, however, wasn't a linear one.

What was going on in my head

I was a student. I loved writing. I didn't particularly enjoy partying, but I loved late-night strolls alone. I loved hanging out with my friends. I loved relating to problems with them. Suddenly, all of that was gone.

I was still a student, but I couldn't put the same hours into studying. I didn't have the time to write. I couldn't take long late-night strolls because every minute of my day was filled with mothering.

A gulf developed between myself and my friends. No amount of "I understand" would make it better because they didn't.

They couldn't relate to some of the things I said. I couldn't relate to some of what they said.

It wasn't even big things. It was things like having a sleepover or going to the market to shop for new clothes. I couldn't do those things anymore. I had little time and money to spare before the baby. After, I had none.

With my family, I suddenly felt like an outsider in my group of cousins. Well, nobody treated me that way, but I felt it regardless. It felt like I went from being me to being someone's mother.

I used to have periods where I went to school and left my baby with my parent/step-parent. It was in those times away that I felt like me.

This is not to say that motherhood is a bad thing, but it felt good to feel like me.

I slowly stopped getting invited to things because I'd turned down previous invites many times before.

I was always busy. No time for self-care. No time for friends. No time at all. I spent a lot of time wondering what life would be like if I wasn't a mother, who I'd be if I weren't a mother.

I assume, and I'm probably correct, that many single mothers feel this way, especially in Nigeria.

Who you are is a single mother, and most times, you're not allowed to be that without stigma or shame. It is expected that we'd sometimes crave who we used to be.

The load of parenting is even worse when you're doing it alone. You don't have anyone to share the responsibilities with, and finding time for yourself is a myth.

If you got pregnant as a teenager, there's a good chance you had to stop school.

Another part of yourself is gone.

Being Me

I can be pretentious and say that I have finally found myself again, and I know who I am, but it'd be a lie.

I don't. Not completely.

I know bits and pieces of who I am.

Reconciling who I was with who I am and who I must be is not easy.

I am a mother. I am a young person. I need to make time to do things I used to love; if not, I'd explode.

I still can't go on solo dates because I don't have the money to spend, but I do things I love. I can't hang out with my friends during the weekend because I lack time. I can't work full-time because I need the time.

It's a lot of things I still can't do. So I do the little things - like giving myself an unhealthy snack at night, reading a novel, and spending my time online with people who love the same artistes I do.

I do as many little things that make me feel a bit like myself.

I hope I can one day do the big things I used to love.

But for now, the little things are a step towards feeling like me. Not like a mother, but like me.