When I got my first tattoo a few weeks ago, I knew exactly what I wanted. The outline of a crescent moon, no bigger than a penny, on the inside of my right elbow, with a triangular constellation of teeny stars bursting from it, representing the star sign Libra. It’s in honour of my one-year-old daughter, Luna, whose birth changed my life and sense of identity enough that I wanted to commemorate it in permanent ink.
My friends and family, I think, were quietly surprised. You see, I’m not the sort of person you would traditionally think of as having a tattoo, being fairly prim and proper. Yet I’m part of a growing number of women who are getting their first ink postpartum. In September, the former digital editor of Vogue France, Jennifer Neyt, had her son Gaston’s name etched in rainbow colours on her inner arm, while Connie Nam, the founder of jewellery brand Astrid & Miyu and a mother-of-two, got her first done at her Neal Street store, one of a handful of her boutiques to offer tattooing services.
“Thirty per cent of my clients are new mothers,” my tattooist, Eleanor Louise Hammond, known as Khaleesi Ink, tells me at Astrid & Miyu’s Carnaby Street outpost. “A lot of them want to get tattooed as a way to escape or take a pause from their mothering duties. In many ways, as a tattooist, you double up as a therapist.”
Many women will get either a symbol, a star sign or even a significant number related to their child, like Kylie Jenner’s 4:43 tattoo, which nods to the time of her daughter Stormi’s birth. “Many new mums ask for tattoos that commemorate the birth in some way, like their baby’s name, but some simply want a mantra to help with their mindset and to remind them to breathe,” Eleanor continues. “Others just want one for aesthetic reasons, rather than for any specific meaning.”
Of course, having a tattoo of your child’s name is certainly nothing groundbreaking. Men and women, and many celebrities, have been getting them for decades. But in the past tattoos were seen as a big commitment: the trend was for large designs that took up a lot of space and required hours of work. Now, techniques have become more refined, with the single needle process offering precision great enough that dainty, single-line drawings can be done with ease by a skilled artist. For many women, this has opened up the world of tattoos, making them more discreet and stereotypically feminine.
I had toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo for a few years, but had ummed and ahhed over the design because I felt that it needed to mean something. When somebody asked Why?, I wanted to have an answer. Then, all of a sudden, Luna was my “why”, and I knew I should get something that immortalised our close bond. After a tricky birth, postnatal depression and a shocking break-up resulting in my becoming a single mother, I wanted a permanent visual reminder of one of the hardest times in my life – and the fact that I not only survived it, but emerged from it with newfound strength.
I’m not alone. For me and for others, getting a tattoo is a way of commemorating the intense psychological and emotional transformation of becoming a mother, dubbed the “matrescence”. The jewellery designer Sabine Getty was also inspired to get her first tattoos after becoming a mother, choosing the trendy Shamrock Social Club on Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard for the occasion. She has her children’s names, Gene and Jupiter, in soft handwriting font with little stars, one on each shoulder. “It was an impulse and I’m so happy I did it,” she tells me. “I have other tattoos, but those two are the most special to me.”
For me, there was also a similarly impulsive sense of, “If not now, when?” After all, there’s something immediately ageing about becoming a mother – and not just the sleepless nights. You go from being someone’s child to someone’s parent, and there’s a sense that you’ve moved up a level on the journey of life. Simply put, you’re not getting any younger. Yet at the same time, there’s a drive to do something to reclaim your youth – not to mention the fact that you’re less afraid of pain, post-labour.
For some, it’s also a way of sticking two fingers up to the way society sees new mothers most of the time. “For me, it was that classic route away from the motherly stereotypes I thought (in my sleep-deprived state) I needed to actively shun, as my identity shifted into full-time caregiver,” explains Grace Timothy, author of Lost in Motherhood, who has her daughter’s nickname in French script on the sole of her foot. “I was so happy and so in love, but also shocked at how much motherhood changed me… A tattoo seemed like a way to wrestle back the side of me that existed outside of that, to take back control of a changing body.”
Then there are those who have been inked before and want to add to their collection to nod to their offspring. Tish Weinstock, contributing beauty editor at Vogue, has been planning new tattoos for her two children, Reuben Wolf and Phoenix Fox. “I want to get an R for Reuben on my left hand to match the heart on my right hand, and then the outline of a Phoenix or a fox for my baby girl on the inside of my arm where my husband has his wolf, which is coincidentally Reuben’s middle name,” she shares.
For Harriet Verney, co-founder of the digital agency Push Generation and mother to two-year-old Marlowe, it would also be a way of remedying the tattoos she had done when she was younger. “I would like to have some tattoos, amongst all the teen stick and pokes that I have, that actually hold some meaning and that I can’t regret,” she explains. “I was thinking of getting Marlowe’s date of birth, but I’m not sure if that’s a bit tacky. It would help me remember it though…”
