A letter to a new mother
January 25th, 2021. Lying in a hospital bed on a cocktail of drugs and barely able to move, my new baby is placed on my chest. 365 days later, as I rock her to sleep, here’s what I wish I could have told myself then.
Love comes. You aren’t one of the people to feel a sudden, giddy, overwhelming rush of love for this shrivelled, screaming new human trying frantically to work out why she is no longer in the warm and dark. You feel protective, yes. But love takes time.
And so it should. After all, you don’t know this tiny person, and she doesn’t know you. The best part is to come, when you realise that each day, as glimpses of her personality shine through, you love her a little more than you did before, until the love is so big you can’t comprehend having existed without it.
She will grow to love you too. Watching those moments when she gives you an enormous smile, when she reaches out to you for the first time, and when she puts her head on your shoulder and goes ‘aaah’ are priceless. Even when it’s 3.30am.
I want you to know that the seemingly unshakeable, heavy gloom that settled over you for the last few months of pregnancy will lift, almost like magic, once you get home with her. The guilt of not enjoying pregnancy and not feeling connected to the bump will take longer to fade, as will the fear that greyness will come back in the future.
It may not feel like it now, but you’ll recover mercifully quickly from the birth. What will take longer to come back is any sense of ownership or recognition of your body. Pregnancy and birth has made it virtually unrecognisable to you, and a year on, you will still carry the faded stretch marks, long scar and squidgy bits that you now have to accept as permanently your own.
No one will warn you about postpartum hives! But they too will pass in six itchy weeks, leaving nothing except a large bottle of prescription cream behind.
You will sleep again. Lie-ins are a thing of the past, and while breastfeeding goes well, the burden of the night feeds will fall on you. Once you’re out of the survival mode of those first few months, she’ll sleep as well as a baby of her age can. You’ll be permanently tired however much sleep you get, probably for the next twenty years.
You’re set to be in various stages of lockdown for many months yet. Covid restrictions will mean your husband’s parents have to wait months to meet her. Your own parents will bubble with you and give much needed human contact, baby cuddles and food. But a sense of sadness at being unable to share your new little bundle with anyone else will linger.
Your friends will drive miles to check in on you, bringing baskets of snacks, nipple cream and breast pads. They’ll huddle on doorsteps and do short walks round the local park in freezing temperatures just to check you’re okay (and say a sneaky hello to baby). Covid may have stripped you of your village, but your friends will find (compliant) ways to support you.
Things will improve. Baby groups will cautiously reopen as society emerges from the winter of the pandemic. You’ll share stories of partners missing scans, and giving birth under Covid restrictions with other mothers, and commiserate with fathers who have been shut out of the process on the slightest excuse.
You will also move out of the tiny flat which was only supposed to be a temporary home, just in time for baby making her first attempts at movement. She’ll love the new space she has as she learns to walk, and you’ll love decorating the nursery you wish you’d had ready six months before. The nightmares of solicitors, Covid-related delays and hours spent on the phone will fade as the last boxes are unpacked.
A year on, your little girl will still not have seen the faces of anyone at church. With a number of elderly and vulnerable people, they have chosen to play it safe with continued mask-wearing; a wise decision as winter draws on. She loves trying to pull them down. But you’ll still be hoping deep down that this isn’t a ‘new normal’ for her growing up.
But what is normal any more? Your entire experience of parenthood has been shaped and defined within the confines of the pandemic. Greeting friends with a hug is no longer the default. What is the protocol now for navigating the world with your baby?
You were so worried about your work before giving birth. 2020 had been a career-defining year. How would parenthood shape your ambitions?
It looks different, no doubt about it. You will be living a familiar juggle; that of raising your child, working in the evenings and nap times, and trying to cook and keep on top of cleaning around that. You will feel constantly guilty that you are doing none of them ‘properly’.
A year on, I don’t have an answer to that. A few mornings a week in nursery is helping. But you’re getting better at prioritising what matters; and it’s rarely the state of the kitchen.
In fact, the additional flexibility people have had to adopt during the pandemic has opened up avenues you never thought were possible. It’s not easy, but giving a guest lecture to people halfway around the world while baby naps in the next room is possible.
One wonderful thing to have come out of the pandemic is the working from home orders. It means your husband will have spent the majority of the last year in the next room; working hard, but able to keep an eye on baby napping while you shower, and be with you both minutes after finishing up for the day.
The bond he shares with your little girl is beyond words. You will be thankful to God every day for the relationship she’ll have with him growing up. And you know that where you fail, he’ll be rock solid.
The 365 days you have ahead of you will be some of the most challenging of your life. You will have to dig deep into reserves of energy and patience you didn’t know it was possible to have. You will make mistakes, lose your temper, and sometimes sit there feeling like nothing you do is right.
But at the end of each day, when that little girl puts her head on your shoulder as you carry her to bed, you know you wouldn’t change a minute of it.
