Your baby is crying and you're frozen. Or raging. Or completely numb.

Maybe you have no idea what a loving response looks like because you never saw one modelled.

Or maybe you do know - and you're horrified because you just snapped at your baby exactly the way your mother snapped at you. The words came out of your mouth before you could stop them. Her tone. Her face. You swore you'd never be like her. But here you are.

Or maybe you're here, present, doing all the "right" things... but feeling absolutely nothing. Everyone expects you to be glowing with maternal love, but inside there's just emptiness. You love your baby - you'd die for them - but you can't feel it the way you thought you would.

However your mother wounds are showing up, you know something is deeply wrong. And you're terrified because your baby is absorbing all of it, right now, whilst their brain is building the neural pathways that will shape their entire life.

And here's the part that's keeping you up at night:

Your daughter will be 13 one day.

She'll shut her bedroom door, and you'll stand outside it desperately wanting to connect - but you'll have no idea how. Or she'll look at you with that teenager defiance and you'll hear your mother's words coming out of your mouth again. Or she won't come to you at all when she's hurting because somewhere in these early months, she learnt that mum can't hold hard feelings.

You'll see your mother's legacy living in her - not because you didn't love her enough, but because you never learnt what the alternative looked like.

You have no template. You never saw what good mothering looks like, so you're Googling at 3am, asking strangers on mother's groups on social media, copying other mums at the park because you genuinely don't know if what you're doing is right. You're terrified of being a black hole where a mother should be - present but empty, loving fiercely but having no idea how to show it.

Or you're becoming her. You catch yourself snapping at your baby with your mother's tone, her words, her face. You swore you'd never be like her, but the patterns are spilling out when you're exhausted and triggered. Every time it happens, you're horrified. You see the confusion in your baby's eyes and you hate yourself.

Or you can't feel anything. You love your baby - you'd die for them - but there's this emptiness you can't explain. Everyone expects you to be glowing with maternal love, but you feel disconnected from your body, numb, like you're watching yourself mother from outside your own skin.

Or you're constantly triggered. Your baby's crying sends you into rage or panic or complete shutdown. You need constant validation but feel guilty for asking. Small things overwhelm you in ways that feel completely out of proportion.

You're exhausted from pretending you're okay when everyone expects you to be grateful and glowing. You desperately want to break generational patterns but you don't know where to start. You lie awake at night terrified you're already damaging them. That by the time you figure this out, it'll be too late.

You're not alone. And you're not broken.

What you're experiencing has a name: mother wounds - the invisible pain from missing essential maternal provisions of nurturance, protection and guidance.

Here's the truth nobody tells you: becoming a mother awakens our deepest mother wounds. You need mothering more than ever, yet you're expected to give it constantly. And however your wounds are showing up - whether you have no template, or you're repeating patterns, or you're emotionally shut down, or you're constantly overwhelmed - they're all pointing to the same thing.

You never learnt what secure, attuned mothering looks like. Not in your bones. Not in a way that your nervous system can access when you're stressed and your baby is crying and you're running on two hours of sleep.

But here's what else nobody tells you:

You can learn. And you need to learn it NOW, whilst it matters most.