Pregnancy & Baby Index: Experts and Columnists: Mother Shock: Loving every (other) minute of it - Part 1
Loving every (other) minute of it - Part 1
Andi Buchanan
Imagine you have just moved to a foreign country. You have the worst case of jet lag ever. The guidebook you brought, which seemed so comprehensive before you left home, does not tell you everything you need to know. You do not yet speak the language, and everything is confusing. Your spouse or traveling companion either hasn't come with you or gets to go back home each morning, coming to visit you only at the end of the day.
In this new place, the customs are very different. Your natural ways of behaving and interacting are no longer appropriate. Despite the newness of everything, in this particular country you are expected to adapt immediately. But the rhythms of life are different here, and you are constantly sleep-deprived. You miss your old life, where everything was familiar. You miss your friends back home, who only imagine the excitement of your travels and are unable to fully understand the difficulties you describe.
This is what it feels like for many of us when we become mothers: we find we have entered into a strange new world with a language, culture, time zone and set of customs all its own. Until we become acclimated to this new, seemingly unfathomable territory, we exist in a state of culture shock. We are in mother shock.
When I became pregnant, I scoured the Web for information. I read about women trying to have babies; women who battled infertility; women who were three months pregnant, six months pregnant, nine months pregnant; women who miscarried early; women who delivered late; women who loved being pregnant; women who hated it. I tested the Chinese Conception Calendar to predict my baby's gender; I looked through the endless selections of baby names; I comparison-shopped for strollers. I signed up for e-mail newsletters detailing the rapid, invisible development of my in-utero guest. I posted on discussion boards and argued over parenting techniques with other women who were not yet mothers. I learned about Taking Charge of Your Fertility, Ferberizing and the horrors of Babywise. I discovered the bible of Baby Bargains. I enrolled in birthing class and began to watch A Baby Story. In short, I tried to do all the research I could and know everything there was to know about my biggest project to date: having a baby.
But then I had my baby, and suddenly I was in unfamiliar territory. I'd had nine months to anticipate being a mother, and then about thirty seconds to snap into being one. When I eventually left the hospital, shell-shocked by the whirlwind of sleep-deprivation, two days of pre-labor, an excruciatingly epidural-free delivery and the unbelievable reality of my baby in my arms instead of snugly lodged inside me, all I could think was: why does no one talk about this?
It wasn't just that the sun seemed so bright to me after being inside for two days, or that the cars driving past suddenly appeared to be death traps on wheels, or that the streets were full of grime and dirt I hadn't noticed before, or even that I saw the people around us as the germ-delivery systems they really were. It was that everything was fragile, everything was tenuous: I had crossed over to a strange new world, a world where another person's life literally depended on me, and everything seemed at the same time both more real and more unreal. I realized I had spent the past nine months learning how to be pregnant, not how to be a mother -- and being pregnant was the part that came naturally.
Finally, after all my wondering, after all my preparation, after all my research, I had crossed over to the other side, and instead of being happy, I was in shock. Why had no one told me about this? Why had people been talking about slings and bouncy seats instead of telling me what motherhood is really like? Why had I never bothered to ask?
I had packed my bag for the hospital, but I ended up going on a much longer trip. I felt that in becoming a mother I had been transported to a foreign country, with a whole new language, a different culture, a striking political landscape and a punishing time zone to adjust to — and this sense of being in a strange land was all the more jarring since, of course, I hadn't left home.
Suddenly I was only allowed a few non-consecutive hours of sleep a night, yet I still needed to function normally to care for a tiny, incredibly loud baby who didn't speak my language. Suddenly I had to know how to interpret my baby's cries, which in the beginning sounded merely like incessant screaming, not nuanced vocalizations full of clues as to what she needed. Suddenly I had to assume the mantle of responsibility for another human's life, despite the fact that I barely felt responsible for my own. Suddenly I had to navigate my way through baby books, parenting articles and advice from experts, grandparents, well-meaning friends and complete strangers. Suddenly I had to be the one to know which was the safest, best, most baby-friendly stroller/car seat/highchair/sling/bassinet/baby food and where to find the cheapest/most environmentally friendly/least politically offensive place to buy it. Suddenly I was supposed to be the authority on all things related to my child.
I was a new citizen in a brand-new country, and not only was I supposed to be immediately acclimated to living there, I was supposed to be the President.
But although it seemed that my entire world had shifted in the course of one exhausting, joyous, eventful day, it didn't seem as though anyone else had noticed. I waited for that mythical maternal instinct to kick in, waited for someone — a mother, my mother, any mother — to acknowledge that yes, really, everything does feel different and new and difficult, and that's okay.
But nothing kicked in, aside from sleep deprivation, fear and self-doubt, and what I heard was that newborns are easy, that mothering, at the beginning at least, is not that hard.
So I suffered my culture shock in silence, and as I began navigating my new surroundings with my daughter in the world instead of inside me, I silently wondered why I couldn't cope as easily with that transition as I had with changes in my pre-maternal life.