It Takes a (TV) Village - Post Partum in Times of Corona
I had planned on writing this article on the patio I have been threatening to fix up for the summer season for, oh, about three months now. I pictured myself sitting under the shaded arch of what will one day be our new outdoor chill zone, typing away on my laptop, a spring breeze in my hair, leisurely sipping on a spicy cup of rooibos chai, with my daughter peacefully snoozing in her pram or any of the other five thousand designated baby contraptions that now form part of our home’s décor. I’m definitely not what you would refer to as a fashionista, but I’ll gladly admit to having envisioned myself in the kind of lounge wear that could pass as office chic now that the dress code has adapted to the era of Zoom. You know, some kind of flowy, soft jumpsuit number that immediately becomes an outfit by just throwing your hair up into a messy bun and popping in some earrings.
The reality is that I am sitting here at 6AM with my daughter lying next to me wide awake and trying to coo me into reopening the milk bar I closed up just twenty minutes ago. Chances are that, by the time I reach the next paragraph of this piece, I will be trying to navigate writing with her attached to my boob. Actually, scrap that. My first prediction was wrong; five minutes after putting it out into the universe, my daughter is now draped across my lap like an accessory, fast asleep. I have created a pillow fort of sorts to keep her propped up in all the right places while I continue to write with my arms tensely stretched out in front of me to reach the laptop.
I am sat here in the dimmest light possible with just a little bedside lamp and a candle, trying to ensure she stays asleep at least long enough for me to finish this intro. Needless to say, I am not wearing anything near to resembling that pandemic-chic office-look I had in mind just as a means to feel more productive. Instead, I am wearing the kind of joggers I wouldn’t be caught dead in even to the virtual public. My bra is stained with wet milk patches, and the left sleeve of my t-shirt is covered in spit-up, the mess that is my mom bun is falling apart and an obnoxious, loose strand is dangling dangerously close to it. In fact, I think it may already look suspiciously crusty.
But you know what? I look down at my daughter’s beautiful, innocent little face, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I will gladly spend the rest of my life adapting my plans and breaking my back to (reach my laptop and) accommodate her and make her feel as safe and secure as humanly possible.
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When Lorelai Gilmore from the cult series Gilmore Girls turned a sweet and rebellious sixteen in 1984, she planned on the unplanned. She saw herself travelling Europe with her high school boo Christopher, perhaps following and/or joining The Bangles on tour. After a cheeky, unsupervised celebration of the end of midterms sponsored by Richard and Emily’s exquisitely stocked drink cart – hear, hear! – the unplanned she had been so excited to welcome upon graduating took on an entirely different direction to what she had imagined. Instead of preparing to lean into the exhilarating twists and turns of the open road, she braced herself for the moment she would have to tell her mother why no amount of jogging around the block was going to help her sweat off the curve of her belly that was preventing her from fitting into her debutante dress.
My husband and I started 2020 out with a similar kind of travel fever, albeit a little less spontaneous. We started it in costume at a roaring 20’s themed party, toasting the year ahead with a view of the Moroccan coastline, the rock of Gibraltar and a spectacular sunset, surrounded by great people. It was going to be our year of travel and culture, with tickets lined up to see Bill Bailey in Torremolinos, Patti Smith at Tollwood, a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in Munich’s oldest cinema, and Hazel Brugger in Cologne. We were finally going to go on a road trip and explore the North of Spain and spend as much time living as we did working.
And then the pandemic hit. One day we’re all having a BBQ celebrating our friend visiting from Panama, weirded out by all these people panicking over a virus wreaking havoc “all the way” in China, the next we are watching Bailey put on his best performance for a half-empty auditorium thinking, shit, this Corona malarky seems to be getting real. Exactly one week later, Spain went into full lockdown. As scary and surreal as it was, it was also bizarrely inspiring. With all the pressures of everyday life and society suddenly off, many of us got to concentrate on the things that truly matter. Contentedness through connection and creation. A concept the husband and I took to the next level because, a week after the lockdown was partially lifted, we received the greatest surprise of our lives: my body was creating what I can now say is our absolute masterpiece. Our daughter.
Granted, the timing wasn’t the best – you know, bringing a child into this world amidst a global pandemic and all. The situation didn’t leave us without our fair share of fears. There was the usual set of privileged worries – will we make good parents? Will we be able to go from selfish to selfless? Will my vagina ever feel or look the same after all this? – and a whole new series of doomsday concerns, like whether it was safe, let alone possible, to give birth at a hospital, how to keep myself protected and healthy throughout my pregnancy, etc. Whenever we found ourselves overcome by the parent-to-be anxieties, I summoned the image of Lorelai Gilmore sat in the stairway of her parents’ home telling Christopher, we’ll figure it out. Because if a sixteen year-old Lorelai could trust herself to figure it out, surely, at thirty-three years old, I could too. And that’s just one of the many little nuggets of wisdom some of my favourite TV mothers got me through pregnancy and post-partum with: as a new mama, at whatever age and under whatever circumstance, you just figure it out. Because you have to.
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Being knocked up and partially locked up came with its advantages and disadvantages. On the upside, there was no pressure for social or work engagements, so I could keep my tired, nauseous ass comfortably parked under the ceiling fan during the height of our Andalusian summer. I didn’t have to worry about random people coming up to me and patting, poking or stroking my über-sensitive belly and calling me gorda[1], and could quietly release my gigantic bubbles of involuntary gases into the air even in public sin vergüenza[2], courtesy of social distancing. I was able to get out of listening to people share their horror birth stories, warped views on the dos and don’ts of parenting, and old wives tales by texting the husband and asking him to interrupt the phone or Zoom call with some pressing, made up matter. On the downside, my husband wasn’t allowed into the room with me during our monthly scans, I didn’t get the belly rubs from the people I wanted to get them from, and I didn’t get to spend quality, cuddly, face-to-face time with the women in my life I would have liked all that no-bullshit, down-to-earth, parenting wisdom from.
As a pregnant introvert, I was mostly cool with the whole lockdown experience. But I did miss my chosen tribe. So, I turned to another – my fictional, on-screen tribe of (mostly) women who have, and continue to offer me comfort when I can’t find it elsewhere. My witches, as Broad City’s Ilana and Abby would refer to them. During the first weeks of puking until around the time the ginger remedies finally took effect, I immersed myself in the calming, twinkling lights of the Gilmore Girls hood of Stars Hollow, happy to engage in the fantasy of one day having the same kind of unstrained, freakishly close relationship to my daughter as the show’s titular characters. Becoming the Lorelai to her Rory. And once the daily pukerthon subsided to make way for super fluffy feelings that had me crying over the mental image of Ween’s Your Party or videos of beavers eating, I figured I would continue to unclog my tear ducts by turning to my favourite TV mother of all times: Sam Fox on Better Things.
I know I still have a long way to go until I will be dealing with the joys and frustrations of being the mother of a teenage daughter, but Pam Adlon’s Sam is exactly the type of role model I need right now, as the mama of a new-born. She may not come across as your classic mother type at first glance but, behind the scenes, that’s exactly who she is. The carefully marinated cooking scenes on the show are a delicious example thereof – a woman who waits “at the back of the line until everyone’s taken care of.” She is devoted to her daughters and creating a warm, cultural, nurturing and open-minded environment for them – exactly the kind I hope to build for my little girl. She doesn’t make it look easy; in fact, she is all about letting her audience in on just how hard it can be, without ever playing the martyr. Sam has accepted that being a mother is often a thankless job, one that requires you to put your own needs aside without losing yourself completely. A mammoth task, especially as a single mother.
While others constantly struggle to accept the terms stipulated in the contract that comes with motherhood, Sam’s endless patience and ability to empathize where her children can’t feel so natural one could be fooled into believing that this does, indeed, come effortlessly to her. It doesn’t, but having made peace with what it truly means to be a mother – especially to teenaged daughters – she simply isn’t dwelling on the divide between the natural evolution of the parent-child relationship and her own individuality, and that seems to be key to remaining at least partially sane. This is something her own mother, Phyllis, was never able to do. It’s like Wanuri Kahiu recently said in an Instagram post showing off the sweetest image of herself and her daughter: “My heart lives outside my body.” In other words, being a mother is an intensely wonderful experience, that is equally painful, and Better Things captures this sentiment in a raw and relatable light.
Rewatching the entire series throughout my pregnancy and part of my post-partum period has helped me understand this. I may only be two months into my own journey, but my heart is already consumed by the intensity of this love, this existence, and tuning into this series I can always find a moment of composure. During those early hours of the morning, when my eyes are burning and my body is aching for sleep but I simply cannot get myself to move that sweet little soul nestled against my bosom, during those lonely moments when she’s inconsolable and I can’t figure out the root of her distress but feel it as if it were my own, I channel Sam – I honour my own feelings but allow the spotlight to shine on my daughter’s. In a sense, this has been one of the most important practises in my post-partum recovery, because it’s so easy to let your hormonal brain talk you into pushing all those feelings down, to convince yourself they’re not justified and that next to “bouncing back”, you should just “get on with it”, too. Sam has taught me that, as mothers, we can’t always express our emotions the way we would want to, but we can tune in and acknowledge them in other ways.
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From the moment I found out I was pregnant, until the day before I was scheduled to be induced a week after my official due date, I did everything I possibly could to ensure my daughter’s and my own optimal health and happiness. I was determined to have a positive birth experience – gentle, calm, meditative and preferably in the water – so, as sceptical as I was at first, I signed up for a hypnobirthing course. Along with the daily yoga practise and long hikes with my dog, the hypnobirthing approach kept me chill all that time and was truly setting me up for the right mental frame of mind. I was genuinely looking forward to giving birth. Unfortunately, planning a birth is about as effective as it is to plan anything with a new-born in the house. It’s like trying to order a thunderstorm to hit on your day off, when you have nothing to do and all the time in the world to cosy up under the blankets; it’s far more likely to strike the day you finally decide to walk to work. I had decided I wasn’t going to let anyone rush me or my daughter – due date, shmoo-date; my baby will come when my baby is ready. But she was comfortable, the doctors were getting nervous and an induction date was set.
Out of the ten hours I spent labouring – and boy do I now know the real meaning of labour – I managed maybe two of them in a hypno-state-of-mind. I focused on my breathing, my playlist – which included audios of Gilmore Girls episodes – and moving meditations. I felt empowered and in total control. When the contractions suddenly shifted in intensity and I was being monitored – i.e., immobile – more frequently, all that control was lost. Long story short, it all ended in an emergency C-section that didn’t go according to the birth plan the husband and I had carefully written out. I didn’t get the gentle C-section I had insisted on – no husband by my side, no dim lights, no playlist, no delayed chord clamping and, worst of all, no skin-on-skin time with my daughter. They held her up to my face for long enough for me to give her a kiss and then took her away.
Two months on, I still haven’t recovered from my cesarean. Whoever decided it takes six weeks to get back to normal was obviously a man. I was more or less prepared for a long recovery period. What I didn’t anticipate was the emotional toll it would take on me, the grief I felt for not having had the birth I had planned for, that golden hour with my daughter and the husband. I still carry that with me. While I shared my feelings with the husband and my socially and physically distanced witches, I didn’t allow myself to truly admit to how much it weighed on me – not even to myself – until I was catching up on This Is Us while nursing in the early morning hours. Season Five’s In the Room was exactly what I needed to come to terms not only with my actual birth experience but the pandemic post-partum period.
In the Room follows two of the shows main characters, Kevin and Kate, as they are about to become first and second-time parents, respectively. Kevin’s fiancée Madison is expecting twins, whereas Kate and Toby are eagerly awaiting the birth of their adoptive daughter. Their nuclear family constellations may be very different, but their situations share two things in common: one, neither of their birth expectations went according to plan; and two, they are facing the same challenges mothers and fathers the world over have been facing during this pandemic. They are masked the first time they greet their new babies and the only other familiar presence during the hospital stay and the first months at home is on screen. In Kate and Toby’s case, Toby isn’t allowed into the room at all, and sets up shop in the parking lot instead. This was the first depiction of life in times of Covid I had seen on a show and it had me reeling; but it was seeing two women give birth in these times that stirred up all kinds of things for me.
When Kate waited to be handed her baby only for plans to change in the last minute, my heart grew heavy; as I watched Kevin gently kiss Madison’s forehead seconds after their first child was born, it cracked under the weight it had been carrying for two and a half months. For the first time since my daughter was born, I let the tears flow freely. I allowed myself to feel all the things I hadn’t given myself permission to feel – after all, my daughter is healthy and that is all that matters. What gave me the right to grieve a birth expectation when everything turned out OK just the way it happened? What gave me the right to feel sad about not having my husband present, about having to wait almost two hours until I could finally hold my baby girl in my arms when so many people in this world are denied so much more, not just in light of the pandemic but generally speaking? As I silently sobbed into the night, my daughter, who had been contentedly feeding with her eyes closed, suddenly paused to look up at me. She looked straight into my eyes and held my glassy gaze for a long, unforgettable moment. And just like that, the weight lifted.
That moment made me realize that, as in birth and motherhood, nothing in life is predictable. One day we’re hugging our friends goodbye after a night out, next we know it’s been a year since we’ve had any physical contact with anyone outside of our bubble. Throughout my pregnancy to this day, I still haven’t been able to hug my parents (in-law) and the rest of the family. It wasn’t until a friend ever so lightly touched my shoulder one day, that I realized how much I’d longed for it upon my homecoming. To be gifted a gentle touch, acknowledging what my body and my heart had just been through, a hug to celebrate the blessing I have brought into this world. But I can feel the love radiate from their eyes and through the video chats that have kept us connected – especially when the camera is pointed at our little girl. As much as I usually complain about the amount of time we spend staring at our screens, they have been true life-savers this year, and I don’t just mean in terms of keeping up a sense of normality by ways of WhatsApp video calls and Zoom quiz nights with our people.
On the TV screen, our chosen tribes were able to touch our hearts when we were unable to rest our tired cheeks against our partner’s chest. They reached out a metaphoric hand when we felt afraid or alone, when we were unable to grab on to the reassurance of our parents’ protective hands. They enveloped us with warmth by inviting us into their quirky little towns and welcoming homes, when we couldn’t visit our own. And they shared their maternal wisdom, letting us know that, through the hormonal mess that is post-cesarean partum, we are doing better than we give ourselves credit for when the women in our lives couldn’t be around to do so. They became our village.
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This article would have taken me a day, maybe two days to write pre-baby. This time around, it took me a full week. I used every little micro slot of time I found at the crack of dawn or just before the stroke of midnight, always wearing the latest trend in this household on my belly, my chest or my thighs: my daughter. At times it really complicated things – forcing me to type one-handedly because the other was used to keep the nipple in place, finding the perfect rhythm between typing and bouncing her to sleep and generally sitting in the worst positions just to keep the little madam comfortable. There were moments when I thought, I can’t do this. I can’t possibly write anything coherent on scattered, broken time slots, juggling what seems like a million things all at the same time.
Sure, just putting her to bed whenever she finally fell asleep on top of me mid-paragraph may have helped. But like one of the wise witches in my life likes to remind me repeatedly: she’ll only be sleeping on top of me for so long. As hard as it may be to get anything done throughout the day, as hard as it has been coming to terms with the reality of my new writing process during the course of putting together this piece, it’s going to be even harder to wake up one day only to realize I have missed out on all those snuggly moments with my baby, that it’s time to let go. So just like Sam in Shake the Cocktail, I surrender. I shake the guilt, the identity struggle and all the other devils on my back out and I surrender myself to her needs, to honouring every moment I produce (or fail to produce) a new piece of work with my baby asleep on my belly.