A few days ago a friend posted an illustration of Maurice Sendak of difficult interpretation for adults on Facebook. I leave it below for you to see and think about, but it made me think and made me think about how fatherhood, and especially motherhood, makes people change to a point that is sometimes totally devoted, even the point that you feel your life is erased, that escapes you at times, that your identity is blurred between your new and irreplaceable responsibilities.
The postpartum that nobody explains to you, that nobody talks about because it seems like a taboo, the postpartum that everyone denies because it seems that being children should be eminently wonderful and always special. That postpartum that hurts and can disorient even the strongest woman: why no recent mother should spend a lot of time alone (or feel lonely).
Sendak's illustration
Hard to know what the author meant, right? Apparently he was a very controversial illustrator who liked adults little, but much that was his audience, children. So knowing this we could interpret this series of illustrations as the children's desire to love their mother in such a way that they would even be able to eat it, even if that meant losing it, and precisely for not taking that into account. And is that children do not do things thinking about the future consequence, but to meet their need for the present.
But I interpreted it in another way, even though the mother's face does not match my hypothesis: the motherhood of which I have spoken a few paragraphs above, when the baby's needs gradually end with the needs of the mother and woman and they are making it disappear every day a little, until the moment when she stops being the woman, to be only the mother.
That moment in which the mother seeks to satisfy her basic needs when the baby gives her a break, or even with him in her arms: eat with the baby in her arms or on the tit, make her needs with the baby in her arms or on the tit , and showering without him just because showering with him would be really annoying for the son.
The sad and bitter denial of reality
I have commented on several occasions and today I say it once again: it is unfortunate that as a society we deny what it means to be a mother or to be a father, and it is unfortunate that society has become a place where babies and children have little place. Everything is going at a pace in which children do not enter, and their mothers and fathers do the impossible to navigate between two clocks: that of their lives and that of their children's lives, which hardly fit.
The denial of which I speak is that lie, or that half truth, in which they tell you that having a baby is a wonderful thing, but they do not explain how hard it can be. The beautiful announcement of pregnancy, a surprise for the whole family, "children are the engine of adult life", "they are beautiful", the family crying in excitement when they learn that you will have a baby and once the baby is born you get along a slap of reality It hurts, and a lot.
It is not a precious baby that smiles at you as soon as it is born and that adapts to your rhythms so that you are all happy, but an animal baby that is programmed in the most selfish way possible to enable its survival: it cries during the day and cries at night , and sometimes in a way that makes you lose your temper; He doesn't let you do anything that might seem a bit like having a life and he doesn't care what your obligations are; they eat on demand, theirs, when they are hungry, and if it takes a few minutes they cry more and more; and there are a lot of things that annoy them, to the point that sometimes you don't know what to do so that they are well, making you feel useless that doesn't know how to be a mother (or a useless complete that doesn't know how to be a father, that we also happens to us), destroying your self-esteem of mother and caretaker, making you feel unable to do something that every woman is supposed to do because everyone has a mother.
Nobody talks to you about all this, I guess because people think that if they tell you, you won't have children, and in this society it seems that there is nothing worse than a couple living without procreating, because of course: what people will say! But they are wrong to deny it, not to explain it, because young people should (should) have the information and then decide what to do. That way we would know when it is a good time to be parents and that way we would know that motherhood and fatherhood is very hard and that it requires a lot of dedication, affection, affection, dedication and patience. Knowing this, everything would be easier and who knows, even people would have more children. Or at least they would have those who are better able to have them and raise them and not so much those who are not so prepared and then have serious problems with their children (and is not a criticism, but an evidence ... there are people who then criticize them and he tells them about "not having had children if you were going to treat them like that").
And then there is, as I say, the clash of "cultures." That of the society we have created among all, that everything is going at a dizzying pace and the one of the infantile culture, in which everything goes to another rate. It is an incredible shock in which parents have to decide, whether to try to adapt children to society (very hard for children, who suffer in that attempt) or try to adapt to the baby, which is certainly better for children. children and, in the long run, better for parents, who discover that children often come to give us a second chance, to live life in a calmer way, savoring the little things, the details, the time, and giving value to the love, the relationships, the dialogue, and not so much to what you have or do not have in possession.
That's why a mother shouldn't spend much time alone
All this to say that as the truth continues to be told halfway, the biggest reality slap is taken by the mothers in the silence of their homes, enclosed by a baby who is phagocyting them little by little. Once you are at that point, or to prevent it and not suffer, do not cry in the corners and do not feel alone, other adults should be with her. To support her, to tell him he's doing well, who is not alone, to tell us what we can do to make her feel better, to give her conversation, to explain anecdotes from the "outside", to let off steam, to make her food, to have her house picked up, so that we become your support network, because nobody should raise a lonely baby.
And I am not only talking about the loneliness of being physically and alone with her, but about the one in which there are people around her who are not aware of the situation or who hide and continue to deny that this is very hard, and that instead of say "I know how hard it is, ask me what you want", they say "well, they have all had children and get ahead" (because of ignorance or because, as they suffered without complaining, they do not conceive that they have the right to complain and receive help ), which only plunges her further into her sorrows and her sense of worthlessness.
Friends, mothers, grandmothers, companions, and also friends, parents, grandparents and partners. And dad, of course. That network of people who remember the woman who is dedicating all her energies to being a mother and who they shouldn't let me feel that it disappears. That network of people that every mother needs and few have. That network.
So if you are a mother who feels alone, or who is alone, look for her! And if you know any recent mother, call her as soon as you can and ask her when you can stop by to see her, that since she is a mother you don't know about her and you want to spend time with her; and once you're there, just let yourself go, lend yourself to whatever you want: talk if you want to listen and listen if you want to talkand tell him, as soon as you have a moment, that he is doing very well and that for whatever you need, there you will be.
Surely she will thank you always and surely, when you are in her situation, with a baby in your arms, near the disappearance as a person, she will appear through the door to smile at you, hug you and listen to you. This is how support networks are woven, so children are raised. So yes.
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | Not everyone has to like being a father: couples who have children and then repent, It takes a tribe to educate a child and I am only a father, The hypocrisy of pushing you to have children and then asking you to hide your motherhood (and your children)
