Motherhood is often painted as this serene, glowing experience where you effortlessly balance a baby on your hip whilst whipping up homemade baby food and tending to your household. The reality? It's infinitely more complex, and much of the heaviest lifting happens invisibly.

The "invisible load" of motherhood refers to all those mental tasks that nobody sees. It's the constant planning, remembering, organising, and managing that happens behind the scenes. You're tracking feeding schedules, growth milestones, vaccination dates, and sleep regressions whilst simultaneously planning meals, managing household finances, scheduling appointments, and remembering that your toddler needs new shoes because he's grown three sizes in six months. It's exhausting, and nobody gives you a medal for it.

What makes this invisible load particularly challenging is that it's often invisible even to our partners and families. They see the tangible work: changing nappies, doing laundry, preparing meals. But they don't always see the mental gymnastics required to keep a household and a child's development running smoothly. You're essentially operating an invisible project management office from inside your head, and it's draining.

Here's what I want you to know: you don't have to do this alone. Asking for help isn't a failure. It's wisdom. Whether it's asking your partner to take ownership of remembering vaccination dates, requesting that a family member handle meal planning one night a week, or simply asking your mum to watch the kids whilst you sit quietly for thirty minutes, delegating the invisible load is essential for your wellbeing.

Consider making a list of all the invisible tasks you're managing. This might seem counterintuitive, adding more to your plate, but it's actually incredibly revealing. Write down every single thing you're mentally tracking. Then, go through that list with your partner or support network and ask: "What can we redistribute here?" Some tasks might surprise them. They genuinely didn't realise you were carrying them.

Modern motherhood has created this myth that we should intuitively know how to do everything, that we should want to do everything, and that we should somehow do it all without breaking a sweat. It's nonsense. Our mothers and grandmothers had villages. They had extended family living nearby, they had less pressure to maintain a career simultaneously, and they certainly didn't have the added mental load of social media and constant comparison.

Building your own village, whether that's actual family members, close friends, a mums' group, or a combination of support, isn't a luxury. It's a necessity. Asking for help isn't admitting defeat. It's acknowledging that you're human, that you have finite mental energy, and that your wellbeing matters just as much as everyone else's in your household.

Start small. Ask for one thing today. Let someone else remember something for a change. Release the idea that you need to be the keeper of all knowledge and all tasks. Your job isn't to do everything perfectly. It's to be present, to be well, and to model for your children what healthy boundaries and self-care actually look like.