Rise Of The Mother

I’m standing in the hallway in my dressing gown, head pressed against the wall. It’s 3:00 A.M., I think. I cannot remember if I just went to my baby, or if I am on my way back to her. I decide to just wait in the hallway, and my eyes start to close…I drift off. She cries again and my head jerks up. My forehead is sore, and I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep standing up, my tired head pressed hard against the plaster. I go to her quickly, noting how awake I am all of a sudden, and I pick her up, anxious to soothe her cries. Careful to hold her – “don’t drop her” thoughts swirling instinctively in my brain – I sit down on the hard wooden rocking chair. I sit down and fumble to release my tingling breast (my let down is strong in the early weeks), my beautiful something-week-old baby is searching for me and, for her beloved “mummy’s milk.” Balancing her on my lap and still fumbling to lift up my top, unclip my bra, and take out the wet breast pads, and all with only two hands. I’m so uncoordinated, I fume. Why am I wearing so many clothes?” Immediately I start to compare myself with what the newspapers and magazines say I should be doing. Surely, she should be in her own room by now, and sleeping through the night. “Put her down,” the “experts” say. “Stop holding her so much.” “Just give her a bottle, she’ll sleep longer.” I feel…I don’t know how to feel right now. Maybe its guilt? Am I doing this all wrong? Am I ruining my baby by attending to her cries? So many people keep telling me to let her cry and that then she’ll sleep, but my body and my heart simply cannot do that to her. My anxiety to keep her from crying is an unrecognised early motherly instinct, and my instincts are stronger than what I am, but I don’t recognise them that way during these early months. As a new mother, I question absolutely everything. I love her so much, and I just want to do the best I can – and it seems ridiculous to let a newborn baby keep crying. Logical thinker and emotionally available person that I naturally am, I deduce that if there are tears, then there needs to be attention. This is a human baby, the most helpless species of all the species on Earth! I simply cannot let her cry without picking her up and feeding her or cuddling her. But the self-doubt intrudes on my midnight meetings with my little angel. Societal demands that I am meant to be getting a full night’s sleep are intruding on our family happiness, and questions are being raised as to why I’m still “so tired” still. But hallway sleeping was never mentioned in the hospital, and again I think to myself, “Maybe I’m doing it all wrong.” I finally release my breast from the seemingly endless amount of clothes I am wearing, and she latches on instantly…and perfectly. And then, everything disappears, and time stands still. It’s just her and I. I sigh. I forget all about the judgements, the tiredness, the confusion, and the bloody hard rocking chair, and I enjoy the breastfeeding bliss. “This. Is. Where. I. Am,” my soul reminds me. “This. Is. Who. You. Are,” my heart sings to me. “There is nowhere else you should be right now, no place on the face of the Earth except here, feeding your daughter. No one you need to please, except this tiny baby girl.” Amen to that. During that beautiful moment of clarity I take all of her in with my loving new eyes,: her perfect little face, her spiky brown hair, her tiny little fists, her tiny little feet, her innocence nurtured at my breast and in my arms, with only the simple act of feeding her to placate her and make absolutely everything in her world be OK. I realise that this is the first time in my life that all I need to do is to exist, and by the sheer action of existing, for her I am everything. I take another deep breath and enjoy the rest of the feed. Slowly, I start to take note of the bliss amongst the chaos – and not just in this instance, but over the next few months. I stop listening to everyone else and instead choose to listen to my baby – which makes me listen to myself. Her tears force me to listen to how I am as a person, and her inability to do anything for herself forces me to become someone new. I was a lost self-doubting girl who knew exactly who she wasn’t, until I had a baby, and then I realised that I was found – as a mother. A part of me was born alongside my baby, and it is the part of me that is woman, that is whole, that is wild, that is incredibly strong, and that is incredibly full of Love. I am a mother. The bond I gained with my daughter through breastfeeding was incredibly strong and incredibly nurturing. I felt as nurtured by the close contact as she did, feeding her every two hours around the clock. The constant feeding took much mental effort on my behalf, yet felt intrinsically simple to carry out physically, and I navigated the constant negative “helpful” advice from family and friends regarding her wakefulness. My insistence on living out the routine as she demanded it, eventually meant that I needed to find evidence as to why I felt that what I was doing was normal, natural, and exactly what she needed. I needed to convince objecting family that what I was doing was right for her.