When you are giving birth to your baby, there will also be a death – a sudden and immediate end to the autonomous part of you that can get up and walk out of your house whenever you want. The minute your baby emerges from your body, however, a new part of you is also born: you are a mother.
Sometimes the sense of the ‘mother’ self is immediate and strong, and sometimes it is subtle and slow to emerge. This is true for partners as well, even to a more extreme degree. In the beginning, partners are not the ones directly responsible for feeding their babies with their bodies, and yet they are still going through the motions of sleepless nights and constant care. Without the hit of oxytocin that rushes through a woman’s body as she is breastfeeding, which helps her bond, love, and know her baby, partners may have difficulty coping and understanding what it means to be a parent.
But just like in labor when you reach a new hard place that is steep and difficult, and you eventually push through and carry on, similarly, in the challenging weeks following birth, you have to remind yourself, as a mother and a couple that the struggle is only temporary. Soon, you will know your baby and how to co-exist. For a woman, this is still a very vulnerable phase of childbearing – hormones are surging and dropping all at the same time and sleep is greatly diminished – so you will want to create a safe cocoon for you and your family, where you can be exposed and engaged with your baby without a lot of intruders or distractions. This way you will focus your attention on your baby, your milk supply will increase, you will feel more rested, and you will have a decreased chance of experiencing postpartum depression.
Honoring the postpartum time is important. You may need reminders to turn off the habitual activities and thought processes that have made you who you are today for the weeks following the birth. During that time, the typical routine of daily phone calls, emails, work, meetings, laundry, dishes, and/or Facebook should be modified to allow you to physically recover, as well as to psychologically and emotionally weave a new pattern of thinking and being as a person, a parent and a new family. That initial shock from the temporary loss of your multi-tasking, active, driven, self-sufficient self will be replaced with an understanding and appreciation of a new self that is slower-paced, patient, observant, present. Perhaps this new self has a much more manageable daily routine with simpler goals, like getting in one shower a day.
This is not to say that you cannot do it all yourself, and sometimes life is such that financial or other related constraints limit your ability to take time off. When asking for help, whether in the form of your mother, mother-in-law, friend or doula, it should be someone whom you trust and feel comfortable with, someone who can take care of you, someone who frees up your responsibilities and allows you to hone in and take care of your baby and honor the mother in you.
Happy Mother’s Day