Two years ago, my life changed completely. “Congratulations, you are now a mother,” the midwife told me – and I had no clue what to do with this new job title. 

The old me – the one trained in cultural theory – began to examine the norms into which mothers are cast. The art historian in me thought of all the mothers before me: how they had laboured in exactly the same way in a different setting – in a modest Estonian farmhouse, in a rigid Soviet maternity ward. The mother in m…