Watching Maia Dunphy pose for pictures for our Irish Country Living photoshoot in the Merrion Hotel in Dublin, you couldn’t help but think how is this stunning women a mammy – and a self-confessed ‘mature’ mammy at that?

However, therein lies the problem. There is no such as the typical mother. Some are young, others are a little older. Some mothers are walking around in three-inch heels balancing a baby in one hand and a laptop in the other. Others have a constant trail of drool running down their top. There is no right or wrong way to take on this life-changing role and whether you feel lost or that being a parent has now made you complete, everyone is simply doing their best.

This attitude, this mantra even, is the basis behind Maia Dunphy’s new book, The M Word. This isn’t some self-help book or a novel about her journey. Instead, it is snapshots of life, a book for women who just happen to be parents.

Honesty, the best medicine

“Don’t expect to be learning from me how to breastfeed or do a fancy baby wrap shawl thing,” laughs Maia, mother to two-year-old Tom, and oh yeah… a highly successful TV presenter. Her entertaining, straight-to-the-point attitude comes across from page one of her book and this honesty is what has attracted thousands of people to her blog and her book of the same name that followed.

“Sure I had great aspirations to write a book about motherhood when I was on maternity leave. Fast forward six months and I am sitting there with greasy hair and in my pyjamas, in floods of tears crying to my husband Johnny about deadlines when I hadn’t a word written.” When the book idea was scrapped, the pressure was off and Maia started taking to the laptop to write about her days of motherhood, which she started uploading to her blog, the M Word.

Lonely Days

“I need to start this by saying I absolutely love Tom and love being a Mum but the truth is I found motherhood overwhelming. I was 39 when I had Tom. I was very independent, in control of my life with a good career. I thought, I’ve got this, I can take it in my stride. However, becoming a mother, it’s like turning up for a job on day one and realising you don’t have a clue. You never got the qualification, you didn’t do the work experience. So I took to banging out some of my thoughts on the blog, literally writing while I was going through those moments in the first few months. So some of them are angry, and others are funny and others are emotional, but that’s just how I felt at the time. I think if you write it after, looking back, it’s never quite the same. I was writing in the here and now.”

There are stories where Maia tackles the “what do you do all day” question. Quite a lot, she emphasises. And her hilarious account of trying to make mum friends – something akin to dating – as she asks, how soon is it before you can ask the funny mama out for coffee? And there are some select hilarious reflections such as her final day in the maternity ward where the nurse wouldn’t allow her home before she went to the toilet, the result of which she unnecessarily displayed.

All this honesty stuck a chord with women across Ireland and the UK, especially the blogs where she admits to feeling quite lonely. Maia is married to the UK comedian Johnny Vegas and also has a stepson Michael, who loves being a big brother to Tom. While their marriage up to the birth of Tom was mostly long distance, maternity leave saw her move across to London.

“I was in a city with millions of people and when Johnny was away for work, I felt utterly alone. I remember there was one time when he was off filming and I realised I hadn’t spoken to another adult in person for three days. I just burst out crying. And whether in big cities or rural areas, I am not the only one affected by this loneliness.

Reaching Out

“A lot of people from rural communities have contacted me, literally three women in the last two weeks are from farms. They got swept up in the romance of it all, married a farmer and are living amongst the in-laws, having moved away from their own family and friends, their own tribe, and it’s not easy. And with the way life is now, her best friend that she grew up with might be living in Australia, Cork or Germany. Life has changed.”

This is where social media has come in. “You know, a Skype or WhatsApp with your best friend isn’t the same as a natter over a cup of tea but it’s the next best thing. And while social media has its downfalls, it can also be great to combat that loneliness and I hope what the M Word has done is it has made a community for mothers. I had one woman message me saying this is a lifeline for her at 4am – and for me it is too. It’s important to say to people you are not alone.”

Pressure to be Perfect

Social media also comes with pressures though, the pressure to be perfect. “Really it’s that people show the best side of themselves. For example, I am not going to put up a picture of me first thing in the morning looking like Hagrid from Harry Potter – because, I promise you, that is what I look like! So even I filter things, we are all guilty of it. But being honest about your feelings does help. You know I am an independent person and it is hard for me to admit to crying hysterically in my apartment but people do relate.

“Motherhood we’re told is the best thing you will ever do in your life, and it is transformative and it is all those things but it is also very hard. In those early days, you are more tired than you have ever been in your whole life and you’re getting over a pretty serious medical event, and there is that pressure. It’s hard to say that you feel like a failure, and no one wants to feel like a failure, especially when it comes to parenthood, but you are not failing if you are crying over a cup of tea or a glass of wine. The haze does lift, things get better.”

Love for Tom

When asked about what her favourite part of the book is, expecting to hear a hilarious anecdote, she goes quiet and says: “This is going to sound quite self-indulgent but the letter to Tom at the end. Look, I worked on Podge and Rodge for 10 years. I am, by nature, deeply cynical and my default setting is to say something sarcastic, but I absolutely love being a mum and I love this little guy so much that I wanted to do something really sincere for him. I thought I am just going to try it out but the letter in the book was almost the first draft, it didn’t change. It is how I genuinely feel about him and when my own Mum read it, she burst into tears. That’s when I knew I had gotten it right.” CL