I have so many questions about life and I love a good conversation. I like to have constructive debates and maybe see things from a different perspective. I like to have all the answers but am also wise enough to know that I never will.
I was a very inquisitive child and I remember asking why way too much, which my mother almost always replied with a “because I said so” or “because that’s just the way it is”.
I find it hard to believe that’s just the way it is, it is such a final statement.
Why can’t it be different or why can’t we create a different, a better, another way? I must admit that some of my questions don’t really even need answering, they are things that I am simply curious about.
For example, childbirth these days in comparison to, say, 100 years ago or even 50 years ago. Yes, we have had advances in technology, and the scientific fraternity has discovered lots of wonderful things about the human body.
Say 200 years ago, when a woman gave birth – her sisters, her mother and grandmother and her community gathered around to assist, and not just for the birth. She was ordered to stay in bed for at least a few weeks to allow her body to recover.
Even then, they knew that a woman’s body goes through a very traumatic experience. All the women would cook, clean, and take care of the household duties whilst she was in recovery.
100 years ago, the amount of community help had shrunk slightly but was still there. 100 years ago, babies were being born in hospitals and Mum stayed there for a week or two, then went home to regather herself and step back in where she had left things.
If she had any other children, often relatives would step in and take them on for a few weeks, and people would feel oh so sorry for the husband and make sure he had meals cooked for him.
Just over 30 years ago when my own children were born, we would spend a minimum of 3 days in the hospital, learning how to breast or bottle feed, how to wash our newborn, and make sure all the natural things in the body were healing and slowly returning to normal, make sure baby didn’t get jaundice and for a rest.
We fast forward to today, and a new mother is likely not to spend any more than 24 hours in a hospital after her birthing. There are new mums there, doing it independently with no idea and few maternal instincts.
So why have we moved so far away from the strong sense of community and helping one another, especially when we need it? Post-natal depression has been around for a long time, but it is now almost expected that every mum will get it at some point.
Are we not supporting our new mums enough or giving them the time they need to recover sufficiently, or maybe it is again to do with the media portraying the images of new mums in their active wear two weeks after birth with a huge smile on their face, pretending to love life and have it all together.
Do we feel the pressure to step up, suck it up and go forth regardless? Put on a brave face and dare let anyone see that you might be failing.
Maybe it has to do with the feelings of hopelessness, loneliness, failure and all those things through lack of a caring community and feeling connected somehow to something more than your baby. Portrayed as being weak if we feel we can not cope, and for many of us, asking for help is just not on the cards as that will mean that we have failed.
We are not failures as new mums, we are overwhelmed, tired, exhausted and bewildered. I don’t think it is that we as the community or family have stopped caring; I think it is more about us being offended if our offers of help are knocked back or that we won’t help unless they need it.
Remember, they said “I’ll call if I need you”. So, we sit back, waiting for the call that may never come and that we won’t make for fear of intruding or sticking our nose in where it isn’t wanted.
How can we change things and get back to where we were and have a compromise of some of the old and some of the new. At this time in a woman’s life we need support, rest, compassion and space as well.
I understand that back in the day, men had to work – if they didn’t there would be no food on the table that night, but as time has moved on and things have changed it is nothing for a man to take off 4 weeks from work to be with his new family and help out learning all the things with his wife/partner, bonding and learning as they go.
Once, it was no place for a man to be anywhere near a woman when she was birthing, but now it is unacceptable for him not to be there. These days are different though, as we have holiday pay and paternity leave for both parents.
Are couples supporting each other more now because society has changed and men are expected to know more about how a woman works and respect her more for knowing and understanding what she goes through?
We have most certainly lost the community spirit of supporting each other in day-to-day things, so are we only turning to our partners, the closest ones to us and not venturing outside this? Are we too scared of bad people or people with misguided intentions, scared of being stung or hurt by someone, that we have shut ourselves out of society and community?
We may have a huge circle of friends and people we know and even hang out with, but when it comes down to the hard stuff, who is our community, the ones who will stick around and help when they know it is needed and maybe not wanted, but needed?
Do we value the people in our lives like they used to all those years ago, or has society created such independent individuals that no one needs anyone anymore?
So many questions to ponder and none of the answers will make a huge difference in the day to day lives of people, but this is just one of the gazillion things I ponder over.
Maybe to have conversations about a particular topic is to get the acceptance that what I am thinking is not that far off track or maybe it’s just to start a conversation and see what we ourselves can do to change the world we live in and make it a little better.
