The care and feeding of a new (human) mother

(A joint blog post)

AKI: True story: One night, a couple of weeks before Anno’s due date, I googled ‘Care of a new mother’. It was the first time we had begun to see past the pregnancy and into the new life we would all be entering with our second baby. On the first page of results (and isn’t that Google’s whole value proposition: most pertinent results up top?), there were only four properly responsive hits (sorry, but ABC news’ article entitled ‘Mother Sues New York for $900 Trillion For Taking Her Kids’ was not on-point). Of these four, one related to the care of cats having recently given birth. The remaining 3 were written in the manner of quasi-sassy first person self-help guides, and included such tips as ‘Get a Pedicure’. Thusly, this post!

ANNO: My second maternity leave (this time in Nairobi) has been spent largely luxuriating in the newness of our son Faris, while being in the care of my husband and nanny who allow me those precious minutes needed to bathe, check email and feel human while being a new mom.

This is in sharp contradistinction to the experience of having been a new mom in the US. As new arrivals to NYC, I spent most of my days alone, underslept and baffled at the task of making my newborn sleep, eat so that I have some brief respite. In the course of nine months of unemployment, I ended up gaining more weight than I put on during the pregnancy, endured periods of utter loneliness, and generally believed that I would never be myself again. I was sleep deprived, overwhelmed by the demands of breastfeeding and caring for a newborn and perhaps most importantly by the fact that my life had gone from one that was multi-faceted and interesting to one dominated by leaking breasts and changing diapers which few of my friends could relate to (I was one of the first to bear children). Good advice was in short supply and I found very few who were able to relate for some bizarre reason. I found myself the target of irritating platitudes… ‘ now the baby is the most important thing in your life, you have to forget about everything else’ , ‘ no one said it would be easy’, ‘try and sleep when she sleeps’. Everyone agreed that having a child was a bombshell but no one seemed to be able to provide any granular advice that helped (and yes, I was laying off the vacuuming!)

Aki would come home to a hugely relieved wife who would promptly hand off baby and run off to shower, run or whatever it was I felt needed to be done to regain sanity. In brief, it wasn’t exactly the cascade of awe and wonderment that seems to pervade women’s discussions of their first children (particularly in North America) but it wasn’t also the other end of the spectrum where I was hopelessly depressed. I simply longed for the support and care which I now firmly believe should be forthcoming for new moms but which in the US is seriously missing. New moms in the US tend to find themselves in a void upon having a new baby – if they aren’t fired , they have no maternity leave, no public health care beyond the birth and a system that takes for granted the free social and economic service that mothers provide. In addition, as a new mom in NY I felt there was even contempt in the way city services, businesses and attitudes… i.e. very few escalators or elevators in the subway and a ban on strollers on buses meant mothers of small children were very confined to where they travelled. Breastfeeding in public was still something that sparked public controversy and I had friends who were asked to leave such places as public libraries for doing as much. And I can’t even count how many times I was scolded in the subway by strangers for venturing out with a young child for exposing them to germs, not to mention by street vagrants who felt they were more qualified than I to impart advice on how my child was dressed (adequately or not ‘ put a hat on that child!’ or to let me know when she was hungry ‘ feed that child!’) It seemed to me that being a new mom in NY was to be the hidden underclass – disempowered economically and socially and preferably hidden away at home, doing the donkey work that is new motherhood. Better unseen than acknowledged. No wonder so many women have PPD and that the term was coined there and how much easier it must be for a doctor to prescribe Prozac than to fill the social void that exists for new moms!

My intention in putting pen to paper on this was simply to offer a reflection on the simple but monumentally different approach we took the second time around and why this made such a difference to my outlook, health and well-being as a new mom. I offer this simply to fill a void I felt existed when I sought this reflection and advice having my first child.

Much like our birthing experience, we were determined to have a better experience in maternity and actually feel the ‘magic’ that many had said they felt having a new child .

Not being from the US, the conditions to which pregnant women and new mothers are subjected in that country was a rude shock for me. Essentially, pregnancy is viewed (from a policy and societal perspective) as smoking: as in, you chose to do it, now deal with the consequences without any regard or help from society. I have friends that cannot even bring themselves to speak to of their delivery and post-partum experience, for fear of cracking up (or worse, being perceived to) under the pressure and loneliness of it all. I have other friends, suitably supported and plugged in socially (these persons tend to be in Canada or overseas) and they tend to gloat about how well they are doing (almost as if to say ‘what’s all the fuss about?’). In fact, I now belong to this latter group. Having been in both camps (i.e. in the US and outside now or rather unsupported and now supported), I am now writing not to crow but to draw a neat distinction between the alleged genetic weakness of women who succumb to depression/’PPD’ and the sort of post-partum environment which allows for a safe and speedy re-entry into life (wearing the new hat of ‘mother’).

Accordingly, this blog entry is essentially about what is needed to care for a new mom,. So in descending order of what I felt has been most beneficial for me – it essentially boiled down to six fairly straight-forwardmust-haves (and none of them involve a prescription):

1. The opportunity to groom, bathe, and generally recover from the sheer physicality of birthing - This requires a capable and caring someone to hold the baby – husband, fulltime nanny or mother preferably. Being able to hand off baby for even a half hour in the morning so I can have a coffee and bathe has been a wonderful part of my care routine. Likewise, being able to nap with someone else on guard of sleeping baby can also be a relief – obviously sleep is a huge factor in recovery.
   
   
2. Someone to have fun with – a husband, friend with whom to take walks, talk about other things than the baby. My husband and I walk, write, take pottery lessons together and are generally enjoying the time together. We’re new in our city so not yet plugged in socially but having a partner in crime even helps in expanding our social network.
   
   Above: F.'s first pottery class
   
   
3. Small projects to keep one’s mind busy outside of baby care – for me it was helping my husband’s business, blogging, writing, pottery and art lessons…nothing too heavy or deadline driven but gave me direction in my internet surfing and connection with others.
   
   Above: S. (kinda) getting into the whole pottery thing...
   
   4. Healthy prepared food. This helps endlessly with feeling in control of your recovery, weight gain and body image. It’s way too easy to dig into a bag of chips when you’re underslept, scattered, starving and on the baby’s schedule…
   
   5. Paid mat leave. Being given the license to check out from work for a meaningful amount of time to focus on the baby and recovery gives me the sense of being valued , of having an fixed horizon to my time off and a sense that I should make the most of this time. By contrast, in my last mat leave, I was unemployed with the prospect of doing this endlessly which for a new mother, can be a bit unnerving, particularly if you’ve been working up to that point.
   
   6. An empowered birth. See our last blog post on this but essentially, this can set the tone for your early maternity days and as such should be viewed as an essential ingredient in the health and wellbeing of a new mom.

Finally, this blog post is a raised fist in protest of the ludicrously macho nature of the whole baby industrial-military complex. We are convinced that all must be always be ok, and that we are weak if we complain, and that all other women are at all times in love with their babies and their roles as new mothers. We compete passive aggressively by telling rose-tinted stories of our deliveries and breast feeding. We retreat from engagement with the world around us, as the other pillars of our identity crumble without the nourishment of broader stimulation.

The motherhood experience has thus been parcelled, marketed and sold to us, to be consumed and regurgitated without thought. To say that one is tired, or that one feels scared, or confused is tantamount to saying that one is not grateful for the chance of having and raising a beautiful healthy baby. I, for one, reject this false duality.