What I really want for mother's day
On hotel fantasies, "mom guilt" and insulated coffee flasks
I think all mothers have some version of the hotel fantasy. In mine the lobby is dimly lit and smells expensive; it is all sharp marble edges, velvet cushions and impractical chairs. I check in for a single night, go to the spa and get a massage. I eat steak frites for supper, then take a bath, read my book, go to bed at 8pm and sleep uninterrupted for twelve hours. In the morning, I go to a real workout class—not a gentle “mommy and me” where everyone keeps saying the words “pelvic floor”—but some devilish class where they make you do bear crawls, and you sweat profusely and can barely breathe. Afterwards I get a smoothie, take a long shower and get dressed and ready at a leisurely pace. I then return home to my darling baby boy and my husband, both of whom I cannot wait to see after a little time away.
This is what I want for mother’s day! Without reservation or equivocation, I am not sure I have ever wanted anything more in my whole life! (Except, sure, you know, the stuff that really, really matters: being hired by The Economist, getting engaged to a nice man, falling pregnant with this baby I love but would also really enjoy being away from for just, like, a single evening etc. etc.).
It is, alas, not on the cards. Not just because it would not be feasible logistically. My husband could probably manage an overnight solo, if supplied with enough milk, but I would still have to wake up and pump once or twice or risk getting mastitis (again). But the bigger issue is that I might not enjoy it, really. What the hotel fantasy is really about is not that list of things I want to do—it is about being able to do whatever it is I want to do, without thinking about or worrying about other people. It is about being able to be completely selfish. In that way it is more a memory than a fantasy: a memory of the time when I was not beholden to the all-consuming-spidey-mom-sense that now holds me in its grip.
I never really understood “mom guilt” before I became a mother. But I think I understand it now. It is this sense that whatever it is that you seek for yourself—be it time alone or a manicure—it comes at the expense of someone else. Your baby must suffer, inconsolable without you, because you wanted a haircut. (Or the other patrons at the hair salon must suffer, because you brought him with you). Your husband must suffer, unable to soothe your breastfed baby in the middle of the night with his useless nipples, because you wanted to sleep.
In a different way, the weight of this guilt bears down on fathers, too. It is somewhat easier, logistically, for them to be physically apart from the baby. (And they are often forced to be apart from the baby sooner, as they typically return to work more quickly). But when mine leaves he is acutely aware of the additional burden I carry. There is no one to hold the baby when I am fatigued in the afternoons or change his first diaper in the morning so I can rest for another precious ten minutes. There will be no one to cook me dinner and so, instead, I will sustain myself and our baby on a very-hungry-caterpillar-esque list of random fridge bits: on Wednesday mummy ate through two fromage frais, some leftover coleslaw, a babybel and a cold piece of pizza. But she was still hungry!
I confess to experiencing a pang of envy when my husband went on his first overnight work trip without me and the baby—that he got to check-in to, well, if not a plush, velvety lobby then a TownePlace Suites in midtown Manhattan. He would get the uninterrupted meal and the uninterrupted sleep (if not the massage). But the guilt he wrestled with before leaving, the way he jam packed his schedule so he would not have left us alone in vain, the insane late-night flight he booked to get back as soon as humanly possible—this is not the stuff of rest and relaxation, of selfishness. It is the stuff of responsibility, of sacrifice, of parenthood. The price of admission. He is not living my hotel fantasy and I will not get to live it this mother’s day either. I think (and hope!) that such indulgences will become a little more possible over time… once our son is sleeping through the night or in daycare, or with a nanny, and the cost of leaving him seems less dear. Maybe next year, eh.
This year I will settle for a bunch of peonies—or, if I am still living in fantasy-land, maybe one of the vintage watches I have been eyeing up after reading this superb edition of
. (This paragraph is, of course, simply a test to see if my husband actually reads my missives. I’ll keep you posted.)Still, as I do not have many bright ideas about what gift I would actually want as a new mother, I thought I would weigh in what I might have wanted last year—my expectant mother’s day. These are the little luxuries I enjoyed postpartum. They might help make the first few weeks of your favourite pregnant lady’s motherhood a little better, too.
Fellow coffee flask
It is hard to drink warm coffee as a new mother! There is a lot to run around doing! Unless you are braver than I was you will be sufficiently afraid of pouring lava-hot liquid on your baby that you probably won’t dare to drink it over his head while you are feeding him. On the days my husband poured the coffee he made me into a mug I inevitably drank room temperature coffee. Then we started using this flask! It’s clean lines are nice to look at and it is very effective at insulating coffee. I would often forget the dregs of mine somewhere around the house and it would still be warm at 4pm in the afternoon.
Ossa phone case and strap
How many times can you ask your significant other to bring you your phone “so you can start the nursing timer on Huckleberry” before it gets old? 100? 250? Well, you will hit that pretty quick if you are asking him 10 times a day! A few weeks postpartum I started looking for a new phone case with a strap and decided I wanted it to look nice, so that I didn’t mind wearing all the time. I ended up purchasing one from Ossa. These are kind of silly expensive but they also look like it. I got the metal ballchain one, which I would actually steer clear of due to how noisy it is (it makes such a racket when I set it down, which I often do near sleeping babies). But the wooden beads version, which a friend has, is much lighter and quieter and would be perfect.
Ole Henriksen moisturiser & lip balm
Back when I was young and carefree I was something of a purist about skincare products not having fragrance in them. Skincare existed to serve a function, like to hydrate or to exfoliate. I was a devotee to the smelly, French P50 exfoliating liquid, which Emily Weiss, founder of Glossier, once said gave her “trash face”. Fragrance just got in the way, potentially irritating the skin, with the only potential benefit being to make the experience “feel nice”. What base mortal would require such a thing? Well, as it turns out… Me! I do! New moms need fragrance! I can no longer tolerate any extra suffering. I want the thirty seconds I take to do something for myself in the morning to be pure pampering. I have no idea why it is called banana bright because putting this cream on is like inhaling Tropicana and I love it and I don’t care if it is doing more harm than good. It certainly does not look like it is! I think it makes me look glowy and hydrated and, perhaps, a teeny tiny bit sun-kissed. But maybe that is just the glow radiating out of my face due to the joy I experience from smelling this cream every morning. Who knows? Who cares! It is perfect. Get the lip balm, too.
Iris & Romeo Skin Cocoon
I bought this kind of on a whim, which is nuts considering it costs $58—but I have papery dry skin and I am a sucker for anything “barrier repair” adjacent. I put it on my nightstand postpartum, again, kind of on a whim, and it was literally the only nighttime skincare I did. I would fall into bed and rub this on my face when it felt like my skin was about to shed off like a snake and, overnight, this alone returned it to somewhat presentable. I think that is pretty good! Of course, the bar is low—perhaps any semi-decent moisturiser would have revived snake-skin to almost human-skin. But this was the one I used and I have nothing but good things to say about it as a result. Both my nighttime and morning routines collapsed to a single product and, frankly, I am not sure I can be bothered doing much more than that again.
Sleepy Jones Pajamas
It is impossible to go wrong gifting an expectant mother a beautiful pair of pajamas, or a chic robe—anything that opens easily in the front is a winner. I bought a couple of pairs of Sleepy Jones pajamas in their Black Friday sale while I was pregnant and they made me feel fancy and happy when I was still recovering. There is no such thing as too many pairs of pajamas postpartum. Between the baby fluids, the breastmilk and the night sweats, new mothers can be changing pajamas multiple times a night. Pro tip: I bought almost exclusively striped pajamas, because I love stripes, but get ones in solid colours. From about six weeks on high contrast stripes are so, so, so distracting for the baby! This is annoying when you go to feed them!
A subscription to “The Sculpt Society”
This might be the kind of thing you gift to yourself when you are a few weeks postpartum (at a minimum six weeks, once you have been cleared for exercise!). But I have been surprised by how effective it has been to do even just a few minutes every other day or so of dedicated core recovery. I always thought those spandex-clad "five minutes is all you need!” types, who extolled the virtues of just making a little time, were kind of full of it. But I feel so, so much stronger now that I have been doing a little core work than I did when I was off exercise entirely.
I did not (could not!) follow Megan’s somewhat ambitious suggested weekly plan for her postpartum program. I have just been doing the pelvic floor and core recovery videos, which range from seven to fifteen minutes long. I do them two or three times a week and they are perfect. I need no fancy equipment. I can do them in whatever I happen to be wearing at the time (pajamas) and do not work up a sweat worthy of needing to shower afterwards. (This is key! Naps were so crazy at six weeks I was not sure I could both do a fifteen minute video and shower). She starts off super gentle—basically just breathing and holding—and increases intensity as the weeks go by. The workouts get going as soon as you hit play, which is critical, because no one wants to listen to someone prattle on for two minutes, do a five minute warm-up and then have to stop because—time is up!—the baby is howling. I have done videos while my son is napping, next to him while he is playing on his playmat and on a blanket in the park. Even in the craziest weeks fitting in a couple of nine minute workouts was often possible—and that token gesture towards being “a person who exercises” once more was probably more important than the actual content. But the content is good, too! Give yourself this gift.
Happy Mothers Day.
Alice
P.S. again, not spon or affiliate—just good stuff I bought with my own money. The Sculpt Society link is my generic “refer a friend” one that any subscriber has because it will get you a free month (the standard free intro is a week? possibly two?). If you happen to use it before May 8th 2025 I will get a $25 amazon gift card.
My daughter is 10 months old and I slept upstairs (out of earshot) one night after he’d come back from a work trip and it was bliss. Yet I’m sure if I went to hotel I wouldn’t be able to sleep… I still give it a considerable amount of thought!