I've been thinking about what to write next, especially as I itch to introduce Ina May Gaskin to the blog, but then this evening, as I was feeding Ruben to sleep, D (my partner) spoke in the microphone of our baby monitor: "Is everything OK?" And it hit me: I must write about D! (Or rather, about my gratitude towards him as a partner, my expectations as a mother, and the need for more support for fathers in our nuclear family system.)
While the baby monitor is designed to monitor the sounds of your baby (and with Ruben, by "sounds" I mean cries only. No, up to now our son has never woken up calmly gurgling to himself or making cute cooing noises. If he wakes up and he's alone, he's unhappy and he makes it clear), our baby monitor has a the added "Talk" feature on the receiver (which you keep on you as a parent) so that you can soothe your baby with the sounds of your voice. Soothing Ruben with the sound of our voice has actually only started to work for us, like, today. BUT, hidden perk of the Talk function: ever since we've had the monitor, D and I have been able to be in touch with each other even when we were on different floors and without screaming at the top of our lungs. Especially in the early days, this usually meant I would be in bed with Ruben and David would be downstairs in our kitchen taking some sort of food/drink order from yours truly. The baby monitor became the B and D Special Communication Device, and even though we don't use it as much these days, my heart softens a little bit whenever D checks in on Ruben and I.
In fact, in those challenging, exhausting, exhilarating early days, D didn't just bring me food and drinks. He became my primary carer. During the first week, when I wanted to calmly get to know our new baby without too many visitors and too much interference, D became our guardian. Whenever I breastfed and thirst would overcome me, I would mercilessly demand water - immediately! When I needed Ruben to relax upstairs, D would bring up the Pilates ball so that I could bounce our baby to sleep. When I cried silent tears as Ruben wailed in mysterious discomfort during the late evenings, D would sometimes just sit in the same room as me, watching me bounce up and down (a recurring theme in Ruben's life until relatively recently), smiling and telling me what a great job I was doing. In other words, when Ruben was born, all of my energies became invested in him and, in turn, I needed D's energies to support me in my new, 24/7 job. And while I don't think D was quite prepared for becoming my full time carer, he did a marvellous job of it.
All this said, the transition from 2 to 3 did not come easy! While the hormonal cocktail that I had in circulation from the pregnancy, through birth, and with breastfeeding, primed me towards wanting to take full care of Ruben, D had no such physiological predisposition towards me. About five weeks after Ruben was born, I remember an exhausted D telling me he didn't feel considered in our relationship anymore. At the time, I almost bit his head off! I remember thinking: "99% of my energies go into keeping this new baby alive, then MAYBE I can take a moment to center myself! How am I supposed to take care of YOU as well?!?! Aaaaaghhhh!" It took a lot of breathing and trying to put myself in his shoes to realise: Ruben had me, I had D, but there was no one there for D! How to deal with this lack of support in our family?
In 2013, I started training to become a Doula (a birth and post-natal informed companion to new parents), and one of the main tenants of my training is that the Mother/Baby Dyad is the most crucial relationship to protect and support after the birth. In other words, I believe in mothering the mother. Before my Doula training, I remember thinking I would want to share childcare equally with the father of my children. Yet a few books and studies later, I realised that that model wouldn't work for me, and when I became pregnant I found myself prepared to become fully dedicated to the little creature growing inside my belly. Coming from this perspective, when Ruben arrived in our lives I was pretty clear in regards to my preferences: I wanted D to be our guardian, our protector and carer, so that I may get to know our son and tune into him as much as possible. In other words, I wanted to be a Monkey Mama, my baby strapped to me, and my partner by my side helping me on my mothering quest.
Where did all this leave D? As the loving and open companion he is, D supported me in my choices and preferences surrounding pregnancy, birth and childcare, yet my learning did not prepare me to understand his new position. Unlike my mother, who was taught to take care of her husband even as she raised her daughters (this involved a lot of ironing and cooking), I expected D to do the cooking and the cleaning up as I fed, rocked, soothed, and responded to Ruben around the clock. That was that, and just as I was ready to put all of myself into our baby, I expected D to dedicate himself to me for those first few months. It turns out, it's all easier said than done. (As I recently told my sister: "It's so much work. No, really, you have no idea. So. Much. Work.")
The division of labour that D and I fell into when Ruben was born is quite a radical shift in the way parenting has been done for many generations in both of our families. Our parenting choice was made all the more challenging by the fact that we live away from our parents, so that there was no one to give D a break every now and then. Yet our situation is not unique, and more and more I encounter parents who are creating their own version of what "shared parenting" means. Inevitably, in these new family formations, fathers are playing a bigger role in the care of the baby and the mother, and this leaves me wondering: what about the Dad? Even in the traditional role as "the provider," fathers usually don't have as much support as they might need. Could it be that greater support for fathers might decrease the experience of the competition for attention and care with the newborn? And if so, what could support and care for new fathers look like?
I believe the question of how a new father gets attended to is actually quite powerful and possibly the cause for one of the oldest false competitions within traditional heterosexual families: the competition for the mother's attention between the baby and the father. In fact, although I am Italian and this perceived conflict is quite familiar to me (my father's main concern regarding co-sleeping is the detriment to the intimacy between the couple - a concern on which I see it more like this), as you saw I come from a rather radically different perspective on the whole thing. I believe that if fathers were sufficiently supported within a family unit, a baby would not have to be perceived as a threat to the relationship.
Here in Oxford, parents and carers are lucky to be surrounded by many different baby centered support groups (from Children Centres to Baby Cafes, to La Leche League meetings, NCT groups, and both free and paid for classes.) In my experience, these groups are mostly attended by mothers, and they are a wonderful way to feel less alone and to put the challenges of parenting a young baby into perspective. Yet I rarely see fathers attending, and there are probably multiple reasons why.
Alternatively to local groups, there are Dad centered websites which have a strong presence online. In just a few minutes of research, I came across several blogs that address the Dad's experience, such as Dad's Adventure and New Dad's Blog. There are plenty more, and I would love to hear if you have suggestions. Overall, however, I still wonder about how we can start to imagine ways to recognize and appreciate the challenging role that a Dad has within a family, especially a new Dad.
Today's post is an attempt to acknowledge my partner's work of love, which was shaped by my strong desire to mother and be mothered. Now that the waters have calmed a bit and that I have a little more time to be with myself, I often feel great gratitude for D's relentless support over the past year and a half (going back to the pregnancy.) I wanted to share our story (at least part of it), because I think there are many other couples out there who might be struggling with the difficulties of rearranging their relationship around a baby - I send you my heartfelt good wishes and hope you can find support in this earthquake of a transition!*
Thank you for reading and be well.
* I recently described my relationship to my son and my husband like this: "It's like the baby is a whirling dervish, so full of energy, spinning and spinning in circles, and you and your partner are holding hands, trying to move with the spinning baby, making sure he doesn't bump into anything and get hurt, but trying to allow him full range of motion. And while all that is happening, you are still trying to hold hands and hold on to each other. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes a hand slips, but if you are lucky, you just get stronger and stronger in your hold. "
PS
My good friend Ruti Levtov gave me this lovely heads up: www.men-care.org
While the baby monitor is designed to monitor the sounds of your baby (and with Ruben, by "sounds" I mean cries only. No, up to now our son has never woken up calmly gurgling to himself or making cute cooing noises. If he wakes up and he's alone, he's unhappy and he makes it clear), our baby monitor has a the added "Talk" feature on the receiver (which you keep on you as a parent) so that you can soothe your baby with the sounds of your voice. Soothing Ruben with the sound of our voice has actually only started to work for us, like, today. BUT, hidden perk of the Talk function: ever since we've had the monitor, D and I have been able to be in touch with each other even when we were on different floors and without screaming at the top of our lungs. Especially in the early days, this usually meant I would be in bed with Ruben and David would be downstairs in our kitchen taking some sort of food/drink order from yours truly. The baby monitor became the B and D Special Communication Device, and even though we don't use it as much these days, my heart softens a little bit whenever D checks in on Ruben and I.
In fact, in those challenging, exhausting, exhilarating early days, D didn't just bring me food and drinks. He became my primary carer. During the first week, when I wanted to calmly get to know our new baby without too many visitors and too much interference, D became our guardian. Whenever I breastfed and thirst would overcome me, I would mercilessly demand water - immediately! When I needed Ruben to relax upstairs, D would bring up the Pilates ball so that I could bounce our baby to sleep. When I cried silent tears as Ruben wailed in mysterious discomfort during the late evenings, D would sometimes just sit in the same room as me, watching me bounce up and down (a recurring theme in Ruben's life until relatively recently), smiling and telling me what a great job I was doing. In other words, when Ruben was born, all of my energies became invested in him and, in turn, I needed D's energies to support me in my new, 24/7 job. And while I don't think D was quite prepared for becoming my full time carer, he did a marvellous job of it.
All this said, the transition from 2 to 3 did not come easy! While the hormonal cocktail that I had in circulation from the pregnancy, through birth, and with breastfeeding, primed me towards wanting to take full care of Ruben, D had no such physiological predisposition towards me. About five weeks after Ruben was born, I remember an exhausted D telling me he didn't feel considered in our relationship anymore. At the time, I almost bit his head off! I remember thinking: "99% of my energies go into keeping this new baby alive, then MAYBE I can take a moment to center myself! How am I supposed to take care of YOU as well?!?! Aaaaaghhhh!" It took a lot of breathing and trying to put myself in his shoes to realise: Ruben had me, I had D, but there was no one there for D! How to deal with this lack of support in our family?
In 2013, I started training to become a Doula (a birth and post-natal informed companion to new parents), and one of the main tenants of my training is that the Mother/Baby Dyad is the most crucial relationship to protect and support after the birth. In other words, I believe in mothering the mother. Before my Doula training, I remember thinking I would want to share childcare equally with the father of my children. Yet a few books and studies later, I realised that that model wouldn't work for me, and when I became pregnant I found myself prepared to become fully dedicated to the little creature growing inside my belly. Coming from this perspective, when Ruben arrived in our lives I was pretty clear in regards to my preferences: I wanted D to be our guardian, our protector and carer, so that I may get to know our son and tune into him as much as possible. In other words, I wanted to be a Monkey Mama, my baby strapped to me, and my partner by my side helping me on my mothering quest.
Where did all this leave D? As the loving and open companion he is, D supported me in my choices and preferences surrounding pregnancy, birth and childcare, yet my learning did not prepare me to understand his new position. Unlike my mother, who was taught to take care of her husband even as she raised her daughters (this involved a lot of ironing and cooking), I expected D to do the cooking and the cleaning up as I fed, rocked, soothed, and responded to Ruben around the clock. That was that, and just as I was ready to put all of myself into our baby, I expected D to dedicate himself to me for those first few months. It turns out, it's all easier said than done. (As I recently told my sister: "It's so much work. No, really, you have no idea. So. Much. Work.")
The division of labour that D and I fell into when Ruben was born is quite a radical shift in the way parenting has been done for many generations in both of our families. Our parenting choice was made all the more challenging by the fact that we live away from our parents, so that there was no one to give D a break every now and then. Yet our situation is not unique, and more and more I encounter parents who are creating their own version of what "shared parenting" means. Inevitably, in these new family formations, fathers are playing a bigger role in the care of the baby and the mother, and this leaves me wondering: what about the Dad? Even in the traditional role as "the provider," fathers usually don't have as much support as they might need. Could it be that greater support for fathers might decrease the experience of the competition for attention and care with the newborn? And if so, what could support and care for new fathers look like?
I believe the question of how a new father gets attended to is actually quite powerful and possibly the cause for one of the oldest false competitions within traditional heterosexual families: the competition for the mother's attention between the baby and the father. In fact, although I am Italian and this perceived conflict is quite familiar to me (my father's main concern regarding co-sleeping is the detriment to the intimacy between the couple - a concern on which I see it more like this), as you saw I come from a rather radically different perspective on the whole thing. I believe that if fathers were sufficiently supported within a family unit, a baby would not have to be perceived as a threat to the relationship.
Here in Oxford, parents and carers are lucky to be surrounded by many different baby centered support groups (from Children Centres to Baby Cafes, to La Leche League meetings, NCT groups, and both free and paid for classes.) In my experience, these groups are mostly attended by mothers, and they are a wonderful way to feel less alone and to put the challenges of parenting a young baby into perspective. Yet I rarely see fathers attending, and there are probably multiple reasons why.
Alternatively to local groups, there are Dad centered websites which have a strong presence online. In just a few minutes of research, I came across several blogs that address the Dad's experience, such as Dad's Adventure and New Dad's Blog. There are plenty more, and I would love to hear if you have suggestions. Overall, however, I still wonder about how we can start to imagine ways to recognize and appreciate the challenging role that a Dad has within a family, especially a new Dad.
Today's post is an attempt to acknowledge my partner's work of love, which was shaped by my strong desire to mother and be mothered. Now that the waters have calmed a bit and that I have a little more time to be with myself, I often feel great gratitude for D's relentless support over the past year and a half (going back to the pregnancy.) I wanted to share our story (at least part of it), because I think there are many other couples out there who might be struggling with the difficulties of rearranging their relationship around a baby - I send you my heartfelt good wishes and hope you can find support in this earthquake of a transition!*
Thank you for reading and be well.
* I recently described my relationship to my son and my husband like this: "It's like the baby is a whirling dervish, so full of energy, spinning and spinning in circles, and you and your partner are holding hands, trying to move with the spinning baby, making sure he doesn't bump into anything and get hurt, but trying to allow him full range of motion. And while all that is happening, you are still trying to hold hands and hold on to each other. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes a hand slips, but if you are lucky, you just get stronger and stronger in your hold. "
PS
My good friend Ruti Levtov gave me this lovely heads up: www.men-care.org
We wouldn't have survived without the dad! He took care of both of us amazingly! I spent two weeks in bed recovering from birth... He changed Olivia all the time, cooked, cleaned, hugged, smiled, and still does take care of both of us nine months later. These are the partners you want in your life.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. Very interesting to read and I liked the article you referenced too.