by Leslie Romney
It is clear that each pregnancy and each postpartum period is unique even for the same person, but there are definitely situations which you can totally relate to, and sometimes you can even understand exactly how a mother or a father are feeling at that moment. Here’s what I went through on the first 3 weeks after my son was born in 2019.
Preconceived ideas:
Like many mothers and fathers out there I had strong ideas about how life would be after having a child. Some of those ideas helped me big time during quite challenging moments and some of them tricked me in the evilest ways.
I was very clear about not wanting to be a perfect mother but instead, to be the best mom I could be for my little one. I was also convinced not to feel guilty at everything that didn’t go the way I wanted or expected it to be, but instead to let go and to feel proud of the good things I was doing. On the other hand, somehow I thought that the postpartum period was going to be “flowers and rainbows.” Little did I know how hard it could hit me not only physically but mostly mentally and emotionally.
The reality:
The first week was the hardest. The lack of sleep seemed like torture and due to the severe blood loss I suffered at the delivery, I had almost no breast milk, which made our nights even longer trying to figure out how to improve my milk production. When it was bedtime for me, I seemed to still have so much energy (due to the lack of iron in my blood) that I actually couldn’t fall asleep right away. This led to me sleeping around 60-30 minutes every 3-4 hours. Also, right after I gave birth something got switched off in my brain and I automatically became forgetful, distracted, could not speak proper Dutch or English or even Spanish. I did not feel like I was myself, and it seemed more like I was following a routine as if I was a zombie.
Maternity care to the rescue:
One of the great things about having a child in The Netherlands is that the first week after giving birth, a neonatal nurse comes to help you take care of your newborn. When we arrived home from the hospital she was right at our door and ready to start. She was a friendly but firm mother of 2 who made our lives so much easier every day between 8:00 and 16:00.
She made sure I had enough rest, ate and drank well, checked my wounds for a proper recovery, took care of my little one, showed my husband how to bathe him, and helped me with the challenges of breastfeeding. Many parents say the first week is the hardest, and they are not exaggerating, but I cannot imagine how hard it would have been if we were not to have that person answering all our questions and dissipating all our doubts and reassuring us.
Protective instinct:
It seemed like a dream to feel my baby sleeping on my chest and just as I loved and enjoyed those moments, I remember also thinking that that was almost the only place where he could be safe. I developed this animal feeling of overprotection which drained my energy, didn’t let me trust others with my baby, and even made me put a baby monitor on him 24/7 even when other people were taking care of him. My husband described the whole situation as me being like a hawk watching over her young, one sudden move and she was ready to eat you up alive. Deep inside I knew this protective feeling had a reason to be but it also made me feel bad for not trusting my husband and other people and making them feel less capable.
Creating awareness:
All these intense, mixed feelings I was going through made me realize how beautiful but tough motherhood was. Postpartum difficulties came as a real surprise to me because I never heard or read about those challenges before. Looking back, it would have been a bit easier for me to have had some sort of idea about it. Unfortunately, still to this time, people don’t talk openly about this topic and social media doesn’t help much either. What you mostly see is how beautiful, perfect, and happy couples seem when they go through the first weeks of having a child. I think it is important to let people know that it’s ok to feel tired and frustrated and not comfortable, after all, your life is changing big time with the arrival of this tiny person, and that old YOU will most likely be gone for quite some time and that deserves acknowledgment and value.
Despite all the difficulties I believe my husband and I were very lucky to have a newborn that almost did not cry, who even had to be woken up to eat, to have a neonatal nurse helping us the first week after the delivery, to have my mother, my grandma, and my sister also helping us and to be able to rely on my husband to take care of our baby so I could also focus on me, re-energize and be in better shape to be the best mom I could be.
So to all the new moms and dads out there, yes it is tough, maybe less tough for some and maybe even traumatic for others. So if a friend tells you what a hard time she/he is facing in those first weeks and months of having a baby, make them know you are there for them and if you are also a parent, that
you kind of understand how it feels since you have been there yourself. I assure you that is all that person will need at that time, though bringing the new parents some meals they can freeze for later will be the second great thing you can do for them.
Leslie Romney is an Account Manager who has lived in the Netherlands since 2015. She married a Dutchman and together they have a little boy. She was born and raised in Peru where she studied English Language Education and worked as a volunteer teacher in her late teens. From a very young age, she learned about the importance of having communities that support minority groups in different aspects. “My mother and my grandmother taught me every type of help you give will make an impact in somebody’s life. To them, I dedicate this exciting, voluntary work.” Leslie is responsible for the blog’s page, newsletters, and social media pages together with the rest of the team.
