It won’t always rain

It’s rainy today. It rained yesterday as well. So, with postpartum recovery as a good excuse, I’ve mostly been able to stay inside and avoid the drips. I think my least favourite thing about rain isn’t the rain itself but the way it makes me feel. My hair goes frizzy and I get increasingly insecure about my appearance. My clothes get wet and I start to shiver from the cold. The sky is gloomy and often my mood turns to match it. Rain dampens the entire day.

Rain in the immediate postpartum period is both a blessing and a curse. People are less inclined to meet up when it’s raining which frees me (an introvert) from countless requests to meet the baby in a cafe or a park or somewhere else. But this also means that, other than a desperate run to Tesco Express for more ice cream, I haven’t really left the house this week.

As I sat staring at the rain come down this morning, I began to review the day so far. Lydia is wrapped up in the baby carrier, leaning her little head against me. This is seemingly her preferred mode of travel for the hours between 9am and noon. And, while many people have told me of the amazing possibilities awarded to you by baby carrying, I am yet to find full freedom in the experience. But, who am I to fight a newborn?! So, I sit and watch the rain as I decide what to do next.

I realise that Lydia is approaching four weeks old. Her ‘due date’ is this coming Monday. It simultaneously feels like we’ve had her forever and that the days with her as a newborn are already slipping away. And even though Lydia is our second child, I can’t help but notice all the ways that this feels like I’m parenting a newborn for the first time. At first, I’m not quite sure why. Then I remember what Jonny was like at three weeks old and it begins to make sense.

While Lydia sleeps peacefully on my chest, I remember that at three weeks old, Jonny didn’t have the same option. His days were spent having chest x-rays, heart scans and frequent heel pricks after a midwife noticed his breathing wasn’t quite right. After a long night in Children’s A&E, we learned he had pneumonia and were admitted to the children’s ward. I couldn’t hold him properly for a few days as he was hooked up to all kinds of monitors and needed to be constantly checked. When he wasn’t being pricked and prodded, he slept in a hospital bed that looked more like a cage than somewhere soft and cosy to sleep. And, as a new mum trying to navigate a postpartum hormonal crash and C-section recovery, I had to sit and just watch and wonder if everything was going to be okay.

As I look at the pictures on my phone from that time in the hospital, I’m acutely aware of how different my experience now is. While I can hold Lydia without being tangled up in wires, I don’t find it as peaceful as I would have thought. Every odd-sounding snuffle or heavy breath heightens my anxiety: is she okay?!

While surely triggered by the challenges Jonny faced as an infant, this sense of panic is not a sensation I’m familiar with… and that’s coming from someone with fifteen years of therapy and treatment for anxiety and depression under her belt! I’ve been trying to find ways to express how it feels. It’s not like the anxiety I experience usually, where I am hyper-conscious of what’s going on around me, because it’s not until I fully stop that I realise what’s been driving my anxiety and my actions all day.

I’ll stare at Lydia in her Moses basket, for example, just watching and counting her breathing. I don’t know what else to do with her, not because I’m lacking maternal instincts but because my frame of reference tells me watching her from a distance is the best way to protect my little baby.

She feels so fragile. Some of that is because she’s quite a bit smaller than Jonny ever was, but I also see how some of that is because my first baby was unwell. He needed to be protected. And while there wasn’t a huge risk that we would’ve lost Jonny to his pneumonia (it was caught in time and therefore still easily treatable), I still remember the fear that we would. I remember standing over his hospital bed and bursting into floods of tears when we finally found a moment alone. I spoke Psalm 23 over him, not knowing what else to say or how else to pray.

I couldn’t hold my tiny baby but I could stand at his bedside. I offered the gift of my presence, practicing what my pastoral care courses at theological college had taught me to do. It was all I could do. And so, I committed to doing it well. I remember leaping out of bed later that night, neglecting my postpartum recovery advice, to a loud beep alerting me of my son’s declining oxygen levels. The nurse told me to rest more but I think we both knew that wasn’t going to happen. Because, it was in those moments that I began to feel like a mother, understanding for the first time what people meant when they said they’d do anything to trade places with their kids when they’re struggling.

So now, I’m learning how to parent Lydia, but there’s no big crisis to catalyse my experience of motherhood. I’m having to do this the slow way. I’m holding and comforting her when she cries. That’s the wonderful part! The worst bit? I also need to trust that she’ll be okay without eyes on her at all times. When it’s just me alone with her while Andrew works, I refuse to take her out of sight. I don’t sleep or even rest really. No wonder I’m so exhausted by the end of the day!

I guess I still haven’t forgiven myself for not noticing that Jonny was struggling and so I worry that I’m missing something again. It’s difficult to admit that but I think it is true.

Don’t worry, I am in touch with a mental health team who are helping me process all these things… but I figured it was helpful to write about it here as well. I’ve written a lot about my infertility journey and what it’s been like to be pregnant after loss. So, when a dear friend asked me yesterday how that impacts my current parenting, I began to realise that the challenges of Jonny’s early life have impacted me just as much (if not more in some ways) as the many miscarriages.

Many parents have stories like ours… and so it isn’t rare to hear about how these hospital stays impact us and our kid in the moment. It’s also somewhat obvious so it doesn’t seem as taboo a topic.

But we don’t always talk about the lasting trauma. We haven’t had it as bad as many have but there’s still aftermath. Jonny wasn’t admitted for very long, but I will likely never forget the kind faces of the doctors who came and visited each morning, the cold yet gentle hands of the nurse who told me it would all be okay as I wept, or the sounds of the hospital beeps at all hours of the night. Even the taste of the hospital toast is a lingering memory. And as much as I am thrilled that Lydia never had to experience any of that, the absence of it all has made parenting her uncharted territory. We’re not navigating stormy seas anymore but it’s still difficult to travel without a map… especially when so much of the terrain looks like somewhere you’ve been before. The water just looks so different when the sun is shining.

I’ll hug Jonny a little tighter tonight. He’ll always be the little guy I had to stand over and protect, even if he’d much rather run circles around the kitchen than have his mummy hold him. And I’ll hold Lydia tight too, grateful that she’s here safely and praying for further protection over her little body. Perhaps above all, I’ll give myself more grace this evening.

The journey of parenting is hard for everyone who undertakes it, and we certainly haven’t had an easy ride! It’s okay if tears fall, it’s okay if anxieties are high, and yet it’s also okay to enjoy the tranquility of life without a storm. God is with us whatever comes our way. I guess I have to remember that Jesus walked with the disciples on ordinary days and not just when the waves rose around their boat.

So here’s to calm, slow walks with the One who loves us in all seasons.