Thursday, June 30, 2011

Bringing forth into the world..

It's funny how in Kenya and Africa in general, issues that surround being a new mother and the difficulties it comes are hardly ever talked about. The main focus is often the excitement of the new baby, the addition in the family, grandchild, niece, nephew, brother, sister. And it is exciting, a new person has now joined us. But two new people have also been made. Father and Mother.
Rarely do you hear about this very scary transition into parenthood.
Birth, like death, is deeply impacting. And the difference between these two events is that, while in death the community circumvents the entire family, in birth only the baby is surrounded and taken in.
The parents of the new born are left to deal with feelings of excitement and intense fear. Happiness and being overwhelmed.
Issues such as Post partum depression or 'the Baby Blues', which are a reality for most women, owing to the traumatic nature of childbirth, are not discussed. This leaves a mother reeling in the after effects of childbirth alone.
I once read somewhere that in order to embrace motherhood, one has to mourn the lose of her girlhood. And I did. I faced the fact that there were things I would no longer be able to do because I was now a mother. It was bitter sweet. I was happy to join this new club but it pushed to a very new and strange place. This was a role I had never played before and noone, not my mother, nor my husband could help me. Teach me to be a mother.
In this new place, only God lived. It was just the three of us. God, my son and myself.

Motherhood has brought me to the realization of so many things. Some I cannot even begin to express as they are far too intense and amazing to be told. Being a parent brings you right to the feet of God. Because as soon as you become a mother or a father, you realize that you are all alone and only God can help you parent.

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