Day Six (should be Seven)

I realized this morning that I had already failed my challenge to myself to blog daily in 2011...and it's only day 7. However, rather than beat myself up about my mistakes, I will jump back on the horse and blog again. It's not like anyone's reading, anyway.

I visited with a client this afternoon who is two weeks postpartum. She is, of course, super overwhelmed with healing her own body from a very fast, unmedicated birth; nursing her growing daughter every 2-3 hours around the clock; dealing with the ups and downs of hormone levels; fighting extreme exhaustion; and still attempting to make her house and herself look like no baby has come across it's path. She is a typical American woman and she is doing relatively well, but she's on the verge of losing her shit. And I see so many women like this, day in and day out.

I was one of them. Vacuuming underneath Liam's swing when he was 5 days old. Reorganizing my bedroom to fit the co-sleeper and deciding hey! this would be a great time to wash the windows inside and out. In January. Of course, I wanted to make the most of my "time off" on maternity leave, as so many women do. We feel so much pressure to keep it all together, to do it "by the book", and to make it all look effortless.

Meanwhile, across the pond, in nations as developed as ours, new moms get 6 month to a year PAID leave to raise their infants. They have government sponsored postpartum doulas that come in twice a week and help them get adjusted for the first three months. They live in cultures where it is the norm for mom and baby to stay in bed for a month while friends and family care for the house and the other children. I know I am not alone when I say that I was doing laundry the day that I brought Grady home from the hospital...two days after his birth.

When I was leaving my client's house tonight, after going through the list of questions she had accumulated for me in the past two weeks, she said that she was so glad to have me...that I was her security blanket. Which made me feel awesome for being there for her, but kind of sad that we don't live in a culture where she could have asked her neighbor breastfeeding questions. Or felt comfortable enough to talk with friends about breast milk squirting and postpartum sex and all the other issues that plague women in the months (and potentially years) following the birth of a child.

I don't have all the answers, and as much as I wish I could, I can't solve these problems. I can just take it one mommy at a time. And that is what I'll do.