We Prepare for Birth. But Do We Prepare for Becoming a Mother?

We spend months preparing practically for a baby. But emotional preparation for birth and motherhood can look very different — and perhaps it should start long before the baby arrives.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what happens emotionally after a woman becomes a mother. More recently, I've started wondering whether I've been starting that conversation too late.

Pregnancy is full of preparation. We research prams and car seats, think about feeding, organise the nursery, pack a hospital bag and learn what to expect during labour. There are appointments to attend, decisions to make and an extraordinary amount of information to absorb. Increasingly, women are also spending more time preparing for birth itself, understanding their options and thinking about the kind of experience they would like to have.

But there is another transition happening at the same time, and it can receive far less attention. While we are preparing for the baby, we are also becoming mothers.

The transition into motherhood starts during pregnancy

We often talk about motherhood as though it begins when a baby arrives, but I don't think the emotional transition is that clean. Pregnancy can already start changing the way you think about your body, your relationships, your work, your independence and the life you had before. There can be enormous excitement in that, but there can also be uncertainty, fear and conflicting feelings about how much life is about to change.

The term matrescence is increasingly used to describe this transition into motherhood. I think it is a useful concept because it gives some recognition to the fact that becoming a mother is not simply the addition of a baby to an otherwise unchanged life. The woman is changing too.

When I think about emotional preparation for birth and motherhood, this is what I mean. Not preparing yourself to feel a particular way, or trying to predict how you will cope, but giving yourself permission to notice what is already happening.

You might be incredibly excited about meeting your baby and frightened about giving birth. You might feel ready to become a mother while also wondering what will happen to other parts of your identity. You might be grateful for your pregnancy and still find parts of it incredibly difficult.

Those things can exist at the same time.

Emotional preparation isn't another pregnancy task

I am slightly wary of even using the phrase emotional preparation, because pregnant women already receive an exhausting amount of advice about what they should and shouldn't be doing.

The last thing I want to suggest is that there is now another thing women need to master before giving birth.

There isn't.

No amount of preparation can make birth completely predictable, just as no amount of preparation can tell you exactly how you will experience motherhood. Emotional preparation isn't about eliminating fear, achieving the right mindset or making sure you feel calm and positive all the time.

For me, it is much more about having ways to recognise and process what you're feeling.

That might mean reflecting on what you are most nervous about before birth, talking openly with your partner about what you both expect life to look like afterwards, or simply noticing the thoughts that keep resurfacing during pregnancy rather than pushing them aside.

It can also mean finding practices that help you slow down when everything starts to feel like a lot.

Finding the practices that work for you

One of the things I've become more interested in through building DearMe is the value of starting these practices before we urgently need them.

If reflection, breathing, relaxation or simply taking a few minutes to check in with yourself already feels familiar during pregnancy, you aren't trying to discover it for the first time in the middle of a difficult moment.

This is also where I think birth preparation can play an important role.

I recently connected with the team at Hypnobirthing Australia, and what interested me was the overlap in how we think about creating practices during pregnancy rather than waiting until a woman is overwhelmed.

Their resources are obviously much more focused on preparing for birth than DearMe is. Their Hypnobirthing Practice Bundle, for example, includes guided relaxation, affirmations, breathing, visualisation, self-hypnosis and resources specifically focused on fears around birth.

DearMe is an affiliate partner of Hypnobirthing Australia. If you choose to purchase through these links, DearMe may receive a commission at no additional cost to you.

For women who want more comprehensive preparation, they also offer their Positive Birth Program. But I particularly like that there are smaller resources available for women who simply want to begin practising some of these techniques during pregnancy without committing to a full course.

There is no single practice that every pregnant woman needs. Some women will connect with hypnobirthing. Others will prefer meditation, walking, talking, writing, voice notes or something entirely different. What matters to me is less about which practice you choose and more about creating opportunities to stop and notice how you are actually going.

Why I want women to find DearMe during pregnancy

When I first started building DearMe, much of my thinking was naturally informed by my own experience after becoming a mother.

I knew what it was like to have a lot going on in my head and very little uninterrupted space in which to process it. I wanted somewhere private to capture a thought before it disappeared, to acknowledge a difficult day without needing to turn it into a bigger conversation, or to record a tiny moment I knew I would eventually forget.

That experience is still fundamental to DearMe. But as I've built the product, I've increasingly realised that I don't want women to discover that kind of space only once they're already in the thick of postpartum.

There is so much happening emotionally during pregnancy that is worth making room for too.

A woman might want to reflect after an appointment, capture how she feels about an approaching birth, talk through something privately in a voice note, or simply respond to a prompt that makes her stop for two minutes and consider how she is doing rather than how the pregnancy is progressing.

There is also something practical about starting earlier. If checking in with yourself becomes familiar during pregnancy, the practice doesn't have to begin from scratch once the baby arrives. It can simply change with you.

Birth isn't where the practice has to end

This is probably the part of the pregnancy-to-postpartum transition that I find most interesting.

We spend months preparing for a specific event, and then the event happens. The birth course finishes. The hospital bag gets unpacked. The appointments change and attention shifts, very quickly, towards the baby.

But the woman who spent months preparing is still there.

The things that helped her slow down, feel grounded or make sense of what she was feeling during pregnancy don't suddenly become irrelevant because she has given birth.

This is actually why one of the Hypnobirthing Australia resources that caught my attention wasn't a birth product at all. Their Mother & Baby Relaxation Bundle is designed for after birth and includes guided audio around relaxation, sleep, breastfeeding and bonding with baby.

I like the idea of that continuity because I think we have historically treated pregnancy, birth and postpartum as quite separate stages of care, when for the woman experiencing them they are one continuous transition.

The tools may change. What she needs from them will certainly change. But the habit of making some space for herself doesn't need to disappear.

Maybe we can start earlier

A lot of maternal wellbeing support begins once a woman is already struggling. We ask how she is coping once the baby has arrived, or introduce tools when she is overwhelmed and needs help.

There will always be an important place for that support. But I also think there is room to start earlier, without assuming there needs to be a problem first.

That might be two minutes of guided reflection. It might be a relaxation track before bed. It might be talking honestly about a fear around birth or recording a voice note about something you want to remember from pregnancy.

None of these things can prepare a woman for every version of birth or motherhood, and I don't think they need to.

Perhaps emotional preparation is simply about becoming accustomed to making some room for yourself while everything around you is changing.

That can start during pregnancy.

And you can take it with you into motherhood.