The Burden of Depth in Early Motherhood
When I was pregnant with my first child, I was so focused on getting through the delivery that I barely allowed myself to think about what life with a newborn would actually look like. My anxiety kept my attention fixed on the birth itself, bracing myself for the unknown. The day-to-day reality of having a baby—the relentless rhythm of feeding, soothing, sleeping, and waking—felt too abstract to prepare for.
In truth, I’m not sure it’s something anyone can fully prepare for anyway. Becoming a parent is such a powerful experience that tests you on every level: physical, mental, and emotional.
I ended up having a beautiful and healthy birth with my son, and was quickly thrown into newborn life—something I experienced as both demanding and, at times, awful, though always sprinkled with moments of magic. Because I knew nothing, I had to educate myself quickly: newborn sleep, feeding schedules, wake windows. I lived by wake windows. Thankfully, my son turned out to be an excellent sleeper after six months, which gave me a small but meaningful return of freedom.
When I was pregnant with my second child—my daughter—I was far more mentally prepared for the demands of having a newborn. I was honestly also dreading it, along with another nine months of pregnancy. But at least this time I knew what I was walking into.
What I wasn’t prepared for—and what I have been experiencing for the past ten months of my life—is the complete compression of my inner life.
When my son was born, I still had moments of space. My husband and I could take turns giving each other breaks, and once he went to bed around 6:30pm, the evening was ours. We could watch a show, talk, have a glass of wine, feel like adults again. With two children—a toddler and a baby—those pockets of space disappeared. The tasks of motherhood multiplied into an endless list: feeding, cleaning, soothing, managing tantrums, keeping tiny bodies alive and regulated. But what has surprised me most is not simply the exhaustion, it is the loss of depth. Or rather, the realization that depth has no place in early motherhood.
As a young therapist, I spent years exploring the deeper layers of my psyche. I processed the difficulty I experienced growing up with a mentally ill mother, I reclaimed parts of myself that I had to abandon in order to survive my childhood, and I built a relationship with my unconscious mind. I cultivated intuition. I did dream work, art work, years of Jungian analysis. I read, reflected, and explored different spiritual and mystical traditions.
If I’m honest, a part of me believed—perhaps arrogantly—that this deep connection to myself would give me some sort of advantage in motherhood. I knew many women experienced a complete loss of identity after having a baby. But that wasn’t my experience when my son was born. My priorities changed. My body changed. My schedule changed. But I could still feel myself there, evolving—transforming into a more mature and maternal version of the woman I had been. With the birth of my daughter, however, something else happened.
The lack of solitude, the constant stimulation of toys, tantrums, children’s songs, and the endless cycles of feeding, cleaning, soothing, and tending to two small nervous systems left almost no space for the deeper parts of my nature. In this intensely practical dimension of motherhood, my tendency to think deeply—to reflect, to make meaning, to connect patterns—has begun to feel less like a gift from years of inner work and more like a burden.
I have realized that depth requires space.
It grows in solitude, in quiet reflection, in long stretches of time where the mind is free to wander and follow its own associations. Depth-oriented people tend to spend much of their lives cultivating this inner terrain—paying attention to dreams, symbols, emotions, patterns in relationships, the subtle signals of intuition. Over time, the inner world becomes not only familiar but essential.
Early motherhood, however, removes nearly all of the conditions that allow this kind of psychological life to flourish. Instead of solitude, there is constant proximity to small children who depend on you for regulation, safety, and survival. Instead of silence, there is constant noise—songs, toys, crying, requests, interruptions. Instead of open time, there are cycles of feeding, sleeping, dressing, cleaning, comforting, and beginning again.
The mind that once had space to roam is suddenly forced into a much narrower channel: practical problem-solving and moment-to-moment responsiveness. For women whose lives have always included a rich inner dimension, this compression can feel disorienting. It is not simply exhaustion. It is the sense that an entire layer of one’s psychological life or personality has been temporarily pushed underground.
The irony is that many women who have done deep inner work assume they will be uniquely prepared for motherhood. After all, they know themselves. They understand their emotional patterns. They have cultivated self-awareness, patience, and empathy. But what I have been learning, is that depth does not necessarily make the early years of parenting easier. In some ways, it seems that it can make them harder. Because when you are accustomed to living in conversation with your inner world, the sudden loss of access to it can feel like a kind of psychological claustrophobia. The mind that was once free, creative and expansive is now occupied by two tiny nervous systems and the constant tracking of their bodily rhythms—when was the last bottle, when was the last nap, when was the last poop. For someone who once spent her time contemplating relational and cosmic patterns, searching for meaning in the symbolic layers of experience, the shift can feel completely disorienting.
The deeper parts of the psyche are still there, of course. They have not disappeared. But in this stage of life, they must wait patiently beneath the surface while the practical work of raising small humans takes precedence. This creates a particular kind of loneliness and sense of loss that is rarely spoken about. Not the loneliness of being physically alone—mothers of young children are almost never alone—but the loneliness of having no space to inhabit the deeper layers of one’s own mind.
The conversations of early motherhood tend to revolve around logistics and survival: sleep schedules, feeding methods, developmental milestones, tantrums, illnesses, childcare arrangements. These discussions are important, of course, because they are the practical realities of caring for small children. But for women who are accustomed to exploring meaning, symbolism, creativity, and emotional nuance, these conversations can begin to feel strangely flattening.
There is little room in the daily rhythm of early parenting for questions like: What is this experience asking of me psychologically? How is motherhood reshaping my identity? What deeper transformations are happening beneath the surface of this exhausting stage of life?
Instead, the mind is asked—hour after hour—to remain in the realm of the immediate and the practical. And so the deeper parts of the psyche wait. They wait through the endless repetitions of childcare, the sleepless nights, through the years when the demands of parenting are so consuming that solitude becomes almost impossible to find. For women who have spent much of their lives cultivating depth, this waiting can feel endless and at times even painful. There have been moments of grief for the parts of the self that once had time to breathe—time to read, reflect, create, think, wander mentally, and follow the threads of intuition wherever they might lead.
I do believe, and something I have been contemplating (in my very limited time to contemplate), that not only is depth still there, it is patient, and that these parts of ourselves that must go dormant will resurface in time. It does not disappear simply because it cannot be actively engaged for a season of life. The inner world remains intact beneath the surface, quietly storing experience, observing, gathering material.
If this stage of motherhood has taught me anything, it is that depth has its own rhythms. The psyche, much like the body, moves through seasons. There are times for exploration, solitude, and long interior journeys. And there are times when life calls us outward—into responsibility, care, and the practical work of sustaining other human beings.
Early motherhood is one of those outward seasons. For a period of time, much of our psychic energy must flow toward the small lives that depend on us. The inner world does not disappear, but it becomes quieter, waiting for the moment when space returns.
In Jungian psychology, individuation is often described as the lifelong process of becoming oneself—of discovering and integrating the many layers of the psyche. Many women begin this work long before they become mothers, building a relationship with their inner world through various life experiences, reflection, creativity, therapy, and spiritual exploration. But motherhood introduces a different phase of this process.
It asks something more complex: not simply discovering the self, but holding the self while caring for others. Remembering that she’s still there and knowing that she will return again. This seems to be a kind of second individuation—one that doesn’t unfold in solitude, but in the midst of noise, exhaustion, and endless practical tasks. It requires a woman to trust that the deeper parts of herself are still there, even when she cannot access them in the way she once could.
Maybe if you’re reading this, you don’t relate to the loss of depth I’ve described. But I believe every mother relates, in some way, to losing pieces of herself after having a baby—having to set aside certain aspects of who she is, or dreams she once held, in order to focus on the relentless day-to-day tasks of caring for a child. Motherhood asks us to sacrifice not only our bodies and our time, but sometimes parts of our identity that once felt essential, and in some cases, were hard-earned. We put pieces of our nature on hold so that we can focus on tending to these tiny humans. What we are often unprepared for, however (well at least I was), is just how much must be set aside.
I am hoping that one day the space will return, and that the woman who emerges on the other side of early motherhood will be able to integrate the material the psyche has been quietly gathering throughout this time where caretaking occupies the center of my life—through the love, frustration, overwhelm, exhaustion, sacrifice, and transformation. Because by then, the inner world will have been shaped by one of the most powerful initiations a human being can experience: mothering a child.