Chimamanda Adichie has opened up about motherhood and how it affects women.
The Nigerian author spoke during an interview on BBC’s Woman’s Hour. She shared her personal experience as a mother and how motherhood affected her creativity.
She said: “Becoming a mother is a glorious gift but it comes at a cost and I think it’s important to acknowledge that, right? There is something that we… and I will say ‘lose’.”
She added: “I felt that I could probably have written two novels had I not had my child. But I think that having her also sort of opened me up to this new, almost a new phase of experience and awareness that I’m hoping will feed my fiction.
“Even before I had her, when I was pregnant, I felt as though my brain had been wrapped in gauze. So, my brain didn’t work for a long time. And just more creatively, I think I am making my way back because I am working on a novel finally. But I just wasn’t able to get into my fictional space for a long time.”
She also talks about being “horrified” at the parts of motherhood that she wasn’t prepared for, including the constipation, joint pains and more.
“I wasn’t prepared for so much, I really wasn’t,” she said.
Adichie spoke about the birth process and how women bringing in life are “reduced” to their “animal selves”. She also pointed out that women need to be prepared for these things, including knowing that in the process of pushing out a baby, a woman could also defecate.
She said childbirth should be demystified and “the gritty reality” of it should be discussed so that people are aware that it is not like in the movies where a woman is “perfectly fine” after just pushing out a baby.
She pointed out that, in reality, many women are “sinking in just awful depression” after childbirth.
