Mothering is not innate
The day after my son was born, a nurse made a note in my file. ‘‘Virginia could do with lessons on all aspects of motherhood,’’ she wrote, and she was right. I’d never held a baby before my tiny, terrifying newborn was placed in my arms after a caesarean saved both our lives, and I was completely lost as to what to do with him.
He might have petrified me, but I loved him instantly; madly, and a few days later came close to hurting him.
Believe it or not, motherhood isn’t something that comes ‘‘naturally’’ to women.
The myth of the maternal instinct has society at large – and mothers themselves – believing women are somehow innately programmed to care for babies. To not have this magical ingrained knowledge is treated as shameful at best; as if we’ve failed at the very thing we were made to do. You had one job, Virginia.
While the nurse’s nasty little note recorded my ineptitude, there’s no mention of any follow-up help in said aspects of motherhood, because there wasn’t any. There wasn’t much of anything.
Other than visits from my mum and the arrival of meals, I was left entirely on my own. I saw nobody and received no help; a bit like Tom Hanks on Castaway; just swap Wilson the basketball with a screaming monster in a backwards stretch-andgrow. Later, a nurse apologised for forgetting I was there.
After the hospital noted that I knew nothing about caring for a baby then recorded I was distressed and off-kilter from the birth, I was discharged 12 hours later. I was thrilled to get out.
New Zealand’s dangerously underresourced maternity system puts mums and babies at risk. Stuff reported last week that progress in our maternity care has stagnated in many areas, and is in some cases worse than a decade ago.
The first 1000 days of life are crucial, and research is firm on the consequences of inadequate maternity care before, during and after birth.
We’re not looking after babies until we look after their mothers, and the story reminded me I am just one of countless women who have a tale of trauma about our maternity system; a system firmly based on the belief that baby-care is an innate female skill.
We need maternity care that ensures those first days of motherhood are supported by a system that recognises women’s mental and physical wellbeing is of paramount importance to their babies’ health. Until it does, we have to rely on other women who have survived the experience, and know the danger we’re in.
When my son was two weeks old I came close to hurting him. He’d been crying for hours – forever – just like I’d been. Sick with exhaustion, in pain from the caesarean and infected breasts, I was still reeling from the hospital experience: from that note most of all.
In the dark I loomed above the cot begging him to sleep. At first I whispered, then I yelled, then I put my hands tight on his tiny little shoulders and screamed for him to shut up; to give me just one break; to go to sleep, and when he wouldn’t, couldn’t, I slammed my fist into the bedroom wall.
What happened next was the smartest thing I’ve ever done; a split-second choice that – like that traumatic caesarean – undoubtedly saved two lives.
In the dead of night I phoned another woman – my mum – who came and rocked Joshua awhile in her arms. When he was asleep she did the same to me.