I became a mother at twenty.
Two months later, I was pregnant again.
That sentence alone should tell you something about how fast my life moved before I understood myself, before I had language for fear, overwhelm, or support needs. I wanted my children. I never doubted that. But wanting is not the same as coping.
My first baby arrived full term but too small, her body marked by intrauterine growth restriction. She looked like a premature baby despite not being one. She was taken to neonatal care and stayed there for just over a week. I visited every day, but I could not stay with her. The responsibility was too big, too sharp, too terrifying. I didn’t know then that this was autism — that being alone with something so fragile could overload my nervous system to the point of shutdown. I only knew that I was afraid.
She wouldn’t breastfeed. She needed specialist formula, high in sugar, to stabilise her. I remember watching other mothers feed their babies with an ease I couldn’t replicate. I had a baby. I wanted her. But the connection people talked about didn’t arrive. I assumed it would come later, like a delayed parcel.
Then my second baby arrived.
I was overwhelmed in ways I didn’t have words for. The connection still didn’t come. I believed I loved my children — and I still do — but love didn’t feel like what everyone else described. There was no rush, no instinctive certainty. I now know that autistic parents can experience attachment differently. At the time, I thought something was wrong with me as a person.
Two babies, eleven months apart.
The baby wanted to do what the toddler could do and screamed when he couldn’t. I was exhausted beyond anything I knew how to explain. Parenting two toddlers felt relentless. Interaction didn’t come naturally; it felt like performance. I showed them toys, demonstrated what they were for, narrated play instead of inhabiting it. Every interaction drained me. I grew weaker, thinner, quieter inside.
I loved language. Words made sense when people didn’t. So I leaned into that. Flashcards. Letters. Sounds. Vocabulary. I gave my children what I understood. Even that exhausted me — not normal tiredness, but a hollow, dead-inside exhaustion, the kind that doesn’t improve with sleep.
I married their father and became pregnant again.
This time, breastfeeding was easy. I enjoyed the stillness of it, the closeness, the quiet purpose. I still don’t know if the connection people describe ever came, but I stopped chasing it. I stayed where I was.
Routines mattered to me in those early years in a way I couldn’t explain at the time. I needed the days to be structured, the order fixed, the plan unbroken. Deviating from it made me anxious and unsettled, like something vital had been knocked out of alignment. Even dressing the children followed rules my brain required: nappy, vest, socks, trousers, then top — trousers always before tops, even with pyjamas. There were timeslots for everything. Breakfast at seven. Lunch at eleven. Dinner at four. If we went out, we had to be home in time for dinner. I believed I needed that structure because I was trying to control things, but I see now that it wasn’t control at all. It was certainty. It was the only way I knew how to feel like I was doing it right. If I followed the plan, the day could be survived.
My eldest was nearly four and still in nappies, still using bottles and dummies. Potty training felt impossible. Everyone around me told me she was too old, that I was doing it wrong. No one offered help. I felt exposed, judged, out of my depth.
Her siblings were different. Dry by three. Dry by two and a half. Development doesn’t follow a single script, but at the time it felt like another failure stamped with my name.
When my eldest was three and a half, she became seriously ill. Exploratory surgery. A leaking appendix. A week in hospital. Her father stayed with her. I couldn’t. I was too afraid. Too overwhelmed. I loved her, but love didn’t translate into capacity. He coped better. She was closer to him. That hurt, but it also felt inevitable.
When my third child was eighteen months old, I left the relationship.
I had already been parenting alone inside it, but being alone-alone was something else entirely. Terrifying. I didn’t function well on my own. I leaned heavily on a friend who showed up every day and kept me upright. I was exhausted, depressed, frightened of everything. I didn’t know how to take my children to the doctor by myself. I didn’t know how to manage crises. I only knew one thing: I had to keep us alive.
So I did.
I survived.
Later, I met my current partner. He was five years younger than me — only twenty-one — and he stepped into the role of stepfather without hesitation. I had never experienced support like that. He saw where I struggled without needing me to explain. He carried the weight I couldn’t. His age mattered. His maturity mattered. His compassion changed everything.
I became pregnant again.
I lost the baby in the second trimester.
That night still exists in fragments: adrenaline instead of fear, the sound of metal instruments clanking on a tray, the brightness of hospital lights, a nurse’s voice telling me it was alright. Contractions that were real but weak. My waters breaking. A&E. My partner and his grandmother sitting nearby, watching.
The contractions stopped. The baby still had to come out. I was given an injection. A doctor pressed hard on my stomach, manually guiding my baby into the birth canal. It was uncomfortable, but I wasn’t fully there. Dissociation wrapped around me like cotton wool.
She was born with a few pushes. I wasn’t allowed to see her. The birth had bruised her translucent skin too badly. They took her away with the placenta.
I felt nothing. Or maybe I felt something but didn’t recognise it.
I went into emergency surgery to remove what remained of the pregnancy.
When I woke, my partner was there. He sounded sad. That made me sad too. We held each other. He left to sleep.
The next morning, I was told to go to the communal dining room for breakfast.
I was still on the maternity ward.
There were newborn babies everywhere. Crying. Mothers feeding them. Mine had died. I couldn’t understand why I was being asked to join them. I refused and stayed alone in my side room.
Later, a nurse told me I needed to make funeral arrangements.
I was six hours post-surgery. Still under anaesthetic. My partner wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to do. She told me I had to decide quickly because they needed to deal with “the remains.”
Private burial. Private cremation. Communal cremation.
The communal option was free.
I said yes.
It is my greatest regret. Knowing now that I am autistic and ADHD, I understand how profoundly unsupported I was in that moment — cognitively, emotionally, neurologically. I should never have been asked to make that decision alone. I would give anything to have my baby in a private grave. But what’s done is done. I didn’t know any better.
I became pregnant again a month later.
I didn’t grieve in the way people expect. I don’t understand grief. I was sad. Sometimes I cried. But it didn’t arrive as a whole experience. It came in pieces I couldn’t assemble.
My final baby was born healthy. A girl. She breastfed easily. I felt confident for the first time. Supported. This time, I didn’t chase connection — I built one. I learned how to show love in ways that worked for me. What mattered was that my children felt loved, even if my internal experience didn’t match the stories people tell.
Later, we realised one of my sons was struggling. He didn’t sleep. He cried about clothes and seams and socks. He clung to me and feared unfamiliar people. He was prescribed melatonin. Autism was dismissed. The terminology had changed. The assessment never came.
We fought for years. Referrals were delayed. Paperwork sat untouched during COVID. Time passed.
Then my eldest daughter nearly lost her life.
At sixteen, she was fast-tracked and diagnosed autistic with ADHD. I cried — not because the diagnosis was sad, but because someone finally saw it. Believed it. I felt relief and guilt intertwined. I had missed it in her while fighting for it in my son and myself. But she had language now. Support. A chance not to spend her life surviving blindly as I had.
My children are growing up.
They are leaving school. Going to university. Entering the world.
I am losing roles I built my entire identity around. I am facing transitions without a map. It’s terrifying — but this time, I know why. Parenting has always required more support than I had. Now I have the words for that. I expect change to dismantle me. And I plan for it.
One of my children lives away at university. This has been one of my greatest social challenges. I struggle to feel connection across absence. I feel shame about that. I set reminders to message him. I follow routines. I work around my limits. I talk to him about cars — because that’s where we meet.
I am always looking for ways to show my children I love them, because my feelings don’t always surface in ways people recognise.
This is not a lack of love.
This is autism. This is ADHD. This is parenting without a diagnosis — and then parenting again with one.
I did not fail my children.
I survived with them.
—Frost ❄️
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