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The first night I spent away from my son should have been a celebration. It was my hen's party, organised by my best friend, with lunch, drinks and a night at a hotel.

Before we booked it all, she asked whether I'd be okay being away from my baby overnight.

At the time, I genuinely believed I would be.

But motherhood has a way of introducing emotions you simply can't predict until you're living them.

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By the time I'd left my son for eight hours, I could feel the anxiety creeping in.

As the afternoon turned into evening and bedtime approached, my chest tightened.

I'd only recently finished breastfeeding after 15 months, and this was the first night I'd ever been away from my son.

Although I knew he was safe, every instinct in me wanted to be home.

So I quietly admitted that I didn't think I could stay the night anymore.

I wasn't asking anyone to convince me to leave.

I just wanted someone to tell me that what I was feeling was normal.

Instead, my best friend looked at me and said, "Get over it. Your baby doesn't even like you."

She'd been drinking, and I genuinely believe she thought she was being funny.

But her words landed harder than she probably intended.

Because they reflected something so many mothers experience: the expectation that we're supposed to switch off our instincts for everyone else's convenience.

Looking back, I realised that what happened between us reflected something much bigger.

It was about how little we understand mothers until we become one ourselves.

Before I had children, I knew mothers loved their babies, but I didn't understand the almost physical pull to be with them and protect them.

I couldn't have imagined that spending one night apart could trigger such overwhelming anxiety.

It's not always logical, but it's incredibly real.

What hurt most was feeling like I had no space that evening to admit I was not okay.

Instead of feeling safe enough to say, "I think I need to go home," I immediately felt guilty.

I apologised repeatedly for ruining everyone's night and offered to pay for my share of the hotel because she'd organised everything for me.

I was so worried about disappointing everyone else that I barely acknowledged what I was feeling myself.

She reminded me that she'd specifically asked whether I was comfortable doing an overnight stay, and I had said yes.

The truth was, I had been. I genuinely believed I could do it.

But some parts of motherhood simply don't exist until you're living them.

Back at the apartment, things escalated.

I was visibly anxious and had stopped drinking altogether. I've never been much of a drinker, especially since becoming a mum, and my anxiety had completely taken over.

Then my best friend pushed me onto the bed, pinned me down and repeatedly said, "Your son doesn't even like you. He won't miss you."

I remember saying, "Get off me," over and over while she demanded I explain why I couldn't just stay.

Eventually, I said, "I don't know how to explain it because you don't have children."

It wasn't meant to insult her. It was simply the only explanation I had.

Some parts of motherhood can't be fully understood until you've lived them.

Yet somehow, that became the problem.

Suddenly I was the selfish one. The unreasonable one. The difficult friend who'd ruined everyone's plans on my hen's night.

For a long time afterwards, I wondered if they were right.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think what that night really exposed is how quickly we judge mothers for emotions we've never had to carry ourselves.

We celebrate women becoming mothers, but we're often deeply uncomfortable with what motherhood actually does to them.

We expect them to have children, yet remain exactly the same friend, the same partner, the same employee and the same woman they were before.

When they can't, we call them emotional. Dramatic. Selfish.

What I needed that night was someone to say, "It's okay. This is your first night away. Of course this feels hard."

Sometimes that's all a new mum needs.

Not advice.

Not judgment.

Just permission to feel exactly what motherhood has made her feel.

Before I had children, I had plenty of opinions too.

My kids will never eat junk food. I'll never hand them an iPhone at a restaurant. They'll sit politely at the table because that's how I'll raise them.

Then I became a parent.

Suddenly, that special treat or an episode of Bluey during dinner was the difference between spending an entire meal negotiating with a toddler or having twenty uninterrupted minutes to actually talk to my husband.

After years of putting someone else's needs before your own, sometimes you simply want to eat your dinner while it's still hot.

Parenthood humbles you.

It shows you how much you didn't know before you became responsible for another human being.

Even then, no two mothers experience motherhood the same way, because no two children are the same.

That night, my friend listed other mothers she knew who happily spent nights away from their children without a second thought, as though their experience somehow invalidated mine.

But motherhood isn't a competition.

Some mothers never experience separation anxiety. Others do. Neither makes someone a better mother.

What hurt was that my feelings felt like an inconvenience, as though motherhood was acceptable so long as it didn't change me too much.

But isn't that the expectation we place on so many mothers?

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We ask women to grow a baby, give birth, nurture them, love them with every fibre of their being, then expect them to return to life almost unchanged.

To slot back into friendships, careers and marriages as though nothing inside them has shifted.

Yet parenthood is transformation.

It cracks you wide open.

It leaves you more vulnerable than you've ever been before, as though your heart is walking around outside your body.

Every joy becomes bigger, but so does every fear.

At the same time, it reveals a strength you never knew you possessed, a purpose you couldn't have imagined and a depth of love that's almost impossible to describe.

Looking back now, what has stayed with me is how the people closest to me made me feel, and how quickly I apologised for it.

I apologised for needing to go home. I apologised for feeling anxious. I apologised for no longer being the woman everyone expected me to be.

I apologised for not performing as your typical bride on her hen's night.

But I wasn't becoming difficult. I wasn't becoming selfish.

I was becoming a mother.

Exactly the mother my son needed me to be.

Motherhood was always going to change me. The tragedy wasn't that I changed.

It's that I believed I had to apologise for it.

Feature Image: Getty.