A friend of mine said recently that “becoming a grandmother is wonderful. One moment you’re just a mother, the next you are all-wise and prehistoric”.

For years my mum was my ‘go to person’ for all sorts of advice, from how to cook a certain meal, how to get a stain out of a shirt, how to dress, how to get my hair styled, how to deal with boyfriend issues and how to nurse a cold. She was always there – she was my rock and confidante. The one person I could rely on and reveal my inner most thoughts.

Then time marches on and you have a husband, a house and children of your own so your relationship changes with your mother. You don’t tend to rely on her so much and now that my mum is an octogenarian I feel I don’t want to bother her with trivialities or things that may upset her. She deserves to live out her life without taking onboard all of my problems.

I know as the mother of two adult children I am the first port of call when things go wrong in their lives. It can be any little mishap like a dead battery in their car, a parking fine, a crappy day at work, an argument with their partner or even a red rash on their face! I always avail myself to listen to their grievances with a sympathetic tone and the appropriate comment of “that sucks” in the right places! That is what we mothers do, don’t we?

I contemplated what advice I might give my daughter, if and when she decides to have a child, and this is what I came up with:

1. Becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a lioness protecting her cub — that an urgent call of `Mum!’ will cause her to drop whatever she is doing without a moment’s hesitation.
2. It won’t matter how many years she has invested in her career because she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. Even though she might put her baby in childcare, one day she’ll be going to work and she’ll think of her baby’s sweet smell. And she’ll have to use every ounce of her discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her baby is all right.
3. She will never feel the same about herself. Her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. She’ll also begin to hope for more years – not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish hers. I want her to know that a caesarean scar or shiny stretch marks will become badges of honour.
4. Her relationship with her husband will change, but not in the way she thinks. I wish for her to understand how much more you can love a man who gently plants a kiss on his babies head and who never hesitates to play with his child. I think she should know that she’ll fall in love with him again, but for reasons she now would find very unromantic.
5. I wish my daughter could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried to stop war, prejudice and drunk driving. And I hope she will understand why I can think rationally about most issues, but become temporarily insane when I hear about another paedophile on the news.
6. I want to describe to my daughter the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to ride a bike. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or cat for the first time. I want her to taste the joy that is so real, it actually hurts.
7. Finally I would say, “You’ll never regret it”.

I think this pretty much sums it up. You just don’t get it until you become a mother yourself!

“No language can express the power, and beauty, and heroism, and majesty of a mother’s love. It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over wastes of worldly fortunes sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star”.  ~Edwin Hubbell Chapin