Frankie Shaw Quotes

There's an identity crisis that happens when you give birth. I don't care how confident, how secure you are, how much help you have, how many kids you have. For me, it was major.

I was aware, in those early days of motherhood, that my behaviour was strange to the people who knew me well. It was as though I had been brainwashed, taken over by a cult religion. And yet this cult, motherhood, was not a place where I could actually live. Like any cult, it demanded a complete surrender of identity to belong to it.

When I had a baby, I was consumed with my body.

When I was younger, my whole sense of self-worth was based on whether or not I was working, which was awful. And I had a baby at 20 years old, so it wasn't just about me. At around the age of 30 there was a stretch where I wasn't working - certainly not on anything I liked, anyway - and I started to do other things.

Isn't it so weird the day you wake up and you're just going with the flow? And you just suddenly are a mom.

I'm a big advocate of breastfeeding.

My mom breastfed me for more than a year, and I can't imagine doing it any other way. It's cheap and much better for the environment, and you don't have to lug all that stuff around.

I have become that mother I used to dread.

It's not like I'm cooking! I'm breastfeeding - I feel like that's the best cooking I could do.

I think it's important to keep your own identity when you've got a baby.

Oh, yeah, I see the world differently now. Actually, when I first had the baby, I was breast-feeding him for two years straight. So we were together for two years of his life, every single day, all hours of the day. So I was two people, and I eventually morphed back into one.

I had a series of mini-breakdowns where the public persona - this thing, this face, this person who writes this music... I would walk past that person in the mirror or listen to that person playing guitar and I didn't know who they were.

When I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania I had a baby in one arm, a diploma in the other and I didn't know where I was going in life.

Women who choose to breastfeed should get as much education and support as possible.

You go from nobody looking at you to people taking second looks. I remember really loving it - and then feeling so guilty for loving it. Like, 'That's gross, Kristen.' Also, telling myself it could go away at any moment, and I'd be so sad.

Nobody notices me. Nobody thinks I'm me. But then I look less like me than most of the people coming to our concerts.

If you are a nurturing mother, and a good one, you can go to play groups, sit on the floor and play all the games, and have tea with the other mothers, but wouldn't you like to think that's not all there is? That you haven't hung up your high heels without knowing how to walk in them?

A babe at the breast is as much pleasure as the bearing is pain.

I breastfed both my kids for two years so, you know it was very tiring emotionally and physically.

I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.

I look at that person and I'm like, That's not Kelli White. That's not who I am, who I started out to be.

You go from thinking of yourself as primarily an individual to suddenly being a mother, first and foremost.

New motherhood is such a vulnerable and powerful time, but it's also really hard.

Listen, I had two kids - one when I was 40, one when I was 45. I breastfed for one year, which means I was breastfeeding four years ago. I'm going to move from giving birth to menopause without really realising.

My whole life turned upside down once I became a mother.