Behind every child is a woman whose health story matters
There was a time in my career when I thought I understood motherhood because I looked after children every day. Until I became a mother. Everything changed.
Not overnight, and not because I suddenly had all the answers. If anything, becoming a mother humbled me. It taught me that there is a world of difference between caring for children and carrying the weight of being someone’s mother.
These days, when a woman walks into my consulting room with her child, I still notice the things every paediatrician notices. The fever. The wheeze. The rash. The growth chart. The milestones.
But I notice something else now, too: I notice her. The woman balancing a baby on one hip while answering questions from her older child. The mother who instinctively offers her toddler the last sip of water before taking one herself. The one who apologises for arriving late, even though she has somehow managed to get two children dressed, fed and out of the house before most people have had their first cup of coffee.
Over the years, children have taught me countless lessons. Surprisingly, some of the most important have had very little to do with children at all. They have taught me about their mothers. I’ve met women who can tell me the exact dose of every medication their child takes, but can’t remember when they last had a health check themselves. Women who know every vaccination date, every follow-up appointment, and every food their child refuses to eat, yet quietly ignore headaches that won’t go away, bleeding they know isn’t normal or a tiredness that sleep never seems to fix.
When women’s health suffers: carrying invisible burdens
I’ve met mothers who carry invisible burdens with remarkable grace. Women navigating grief, financial pressure, demanding jobs, difficult relationships and endless mental lists, all while making sure the little person beside them feels safe.
And almost all of them apologise. They apologise for crying. For asking too many questions. For not breastfeeding as long as they had hoped. For going back to work; or not going back to work.
Somewhere along the way, many women were taught that motherhood should look effortless. It doesn’t.
Women today live, on average, 3.8 years longer than men. Yet those extra years are often spent in poorer health. According to the United Nations, women are more likely to experience delayed diagnoses, have their pain dismissed, and live with chronic conditions that remain under-researched or misunderstood.
– United Nations
Your wellbeing cannot wait
One of the greatest privileges of my work is that families trust me with their children. But I sometimes wonder whether we’ve unintentionally sent mothers the message that once the baby arrives, their own wellbeing can wait. It cannot. Children flourish when the people caring for them are cared for too. But even that isn’t the whole story.
Women deserve good health, not because it makes them better mothers, but because their lives matter in their own right. If there is one lesson I hope every mother takes away, it is this: please don’t keep moving yourself to the bottom of your own list. Book the appointment you’ve been putting off. Mention the symptom you’ve been explaining away. Accept help when it’s offered.
Let someone cook the meal, fetch the groceries, or watch the children for an hour. And when someone asks how you’re doing, resist the instinct to say, “I’m fine,” if you’re not. Before mothers leave my consulting room, I often ask one last question. Not about the child: about them.
“And how are you doing?”
Sometimes the answer is a smile. Sometimes it’s silence. Sometimes it’s tears that have been waiting for permission to fall. I’ve learned not to rush any of those moments. Because after all these years, perhaps the greatest lesson children have taught me is this: behind every child I have the privilege of caring for is a woman whose story matters just as much. I hope we become better at asking about both…
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