On July 10, 2023 at 1:44 p.m., I landed on the other side of the world.
All I heard was, “Roll over to Barbara!” as my heavy, aching body collapsed into our doula who had just seconds before had her face right in front of mine, telling me “Girl you got this,” as I groped my way through the cruel haze of my 2 hour pushing stage.
The next moment, I had a slippery, weighted blob in my arms, his jet-black hair matted down with vernix.
The first thing I noticed were his eyes – how wide and alert they were as he calmly stared at me while I sobbed uncontrollably. It was every emotion at once – joy, disbelief, awe, but most of all, relief.
“He’s so calm, he’s so calm,” I repeated in between sobs, amazed that he could look so serene after literally having his head jammed against my pubic bone and subsequently squeezed through the birth canal, entering the world in 2 short contractions.
Peter craned his head over my shoulder as we both observed our son for a few moments before he said softly, “I think he looks like a Noah.” I nodded, my own sobs subsiding as I started to emerge from my haze into this new reality.
Noah means peaceful wanderer – for how peaceful he looked given his most recent wanderings, I couldn’t think of anything more perfect.
We operate on a different time zone here. Instead of day and night, time here is divided into 2 hour cycles of feeding, sleeping and wake time.
The morning times are my favourite, the long drawn out watches of the night fading into the relief of dawn. Noah is often snugly swaddled in his Ollie, sleeping soundly, and I feel a faint sense of accomplishment.
I stay in bed, breastfeeding on my side if he stirs and whimpers for food, while Peter toasts sourdough and tops it with mizuna fresh from our garden drizzled with balsamic over a slice of Gouda cheese.
The parents come in the late morning and Mom bustles around the kitchen, getting the ingredients for today’s tonic soup ready. She has me on a Traditional Chinese Medicine postpartum diet regimen that consists mainly of chicken, ginger and sesame oil, plus daily tonic soups packaged in pink plastic rectangular boxes.
The herbs inside each box are written in the front: polygonatum, chinese yam, codonopis, goji berries, next to the boiling instructions.
Mom video-calls Grandma and I can hear my Grandma’s voice from the other room, “Have you cooked her pig trotters yet? Remember to add more ginger!”
I am not supposed to eat anything cold, so I take fruit out of the fridge to warm up on the counter. During the next feeding, I have my first cup of the tonic of the day with a bowl of lukewarm papaya.
Noah is a strong sucker once he latches properly, but also easily gets frustrated when he can’t figure it out. Shaking his head furiously with his little red body pressed up against mine, his rage blinds him until he somehow finds what he is looking for amidst his fitful cries.
I, of course, try to tell him that his crying and shaking are in fact quite counterproductive to him finding food.
When he finally settles, I lean back amidst mounds of pillows and try to relax into the next 30 minutes of feeding.
On this side of the world, these 30 minutes in the rocking chair spread over 10-12 sessions a day are where I spend half my waking hours.
They are the new rhythm to which life happens.
For someone who likes to be productive, these 30 minutes often test my patience. I glance repeatedly at my Huckleberry app to see how long I have left on this breast, unused to this state of boredom.
But I also know that this is exactly where I have to lean in.
Treasure these moments with your newborn, everyone tells you, they fly by so fast. I too don’t want to miss a moment, but I struggle to stay in the present as my mind teeters dangerously between bored and bleary.
And so, during these feeding sessions, I am learning how to let my thoughts wander.
My next immediate things I have to do bubble to the surface: take my 2 mL herbal milk production tincture, don’t forget to pump right after feeding, our recycling box needs to be emptied the next time we go to the garage.
But I also think about how this wrinkly, floppy human once grew inside of me and how that is a marvelous thing.
I think about how we crave being in a job with impact and meaning, one where we are making the most change in people’s lives, and yet brush over these seemingly ordinary 30 minutes, even though they are literally sustaining a human life.
What could be a more tangible impact on another human than this, I wonder.
The afternoons are slow and I choose between an Epsom salt bath, a walk on the canal or a nap in the brief time windows between feedings.
I am grateful for any bit of rest I can get and my body has learned to fall asleep quickly, sometimes even dozing off during feedings.
I purposely leave my schedule open and there are few emails in my inbox. My addiction to incoming emails still makes me check on autopilot and there’s a part of my brain that keeps feeling like I’m forgetting something important.
Years of packed schedules, extracurricular activities, multiple ongoing projects and constant multi-tasking has changed the wiring of my brain and I’m feeling the withdrawal symptoms.
The slow work of mothering a child is a spiritual practice on its own, I have decided, and this year will be one of learning that practice.
When the evening rolls around, we have an early dinner, another variation of chicken, ginger and sesame oil.
We pull out an episode of “Muster Dogs” as I nurse, a kelpie training reality TV show based in Australia. Unlike the majority of TV shows out there, this one is flat and quite boring if we were honest, although we mostly choose it in protest to trashy.
Halfway into the show, I feel a wave of sadness start to well up inside of me.
I can’t pinpoint where exactly it is coming from; I can’t really even explain how it feels, the same way I can’t seem to explain what a contraction feels like.
All I know is that it starts deep inside of me, bubbling up to the surface and spilling over in silent tears.
Part of it is hormone-driven, I’m sure, because I feel this inexplicable wave of sadness over a couple of days only when the sun begins to set.
Then I think the other part is my emotions trying to catch up with all the transition my physical body has gone through.
There’s a mourning that my life will never be the same as I knew it. Peter and I no longer have long stretches of uninterrupted time in the evenings and probably won’t for a while.
There’s a hint of overwhelmed. The knowledge that you are now stewarding this little human makes you sense all the gravity of life’s fragility. And the fact that we are figuring it out as we go means that we will most definitely make mistakes along the way.
We will misunderstand his cries, not detect early signs of sickness or pain and fail to pacify him at night. Parenthood means necessarily accepting that fact.
And then there’s simply the heartache of falling in love. It hurts to feel your heart expand to love another person, to know that he’s making his way into the part of the heart you can’t close off anymore.
You know your heart will never go back to the way it was before because it has been stretched to now form around another such that losing him would mean losing a part of yourself.
If sadness was the color blue, this would be blue mixed with hues of violet, orange and pale pink, the colors mixing and blending on the edges into one messy but beautiful swash of color.
There’s no need for words as Peter pulls me up close to him and we keep watching the kelpie dogs run after cattle, our beautiful 1 week old son sleeping peacefully on a blanket beside us.
For now, this is all I need, really, all I can do.
This is beautiful Vivienne! A poetic and very real “Ode to New Motherhood”. So many emotions, so much beauty, so much weight…and such a big God to help us carry it all when we come to the end of ourselves. ❤️
Yes, so thankful that God knows what he needs so much more than I do…definitely takes a huge burden off that I cannot bear on my own. And also so grateful for His church and older mothers like you who have lots to teach me 😉 (currently reading Brian’s skipping adolescence book in fact haha..)
I’ve written 2 books in my life: one is named Ian and the other is named Peter. Your book is named Noah. 😉
Yes love that Mom!