Coming Home from the Hospital - Balancing Needs

Coming home from the hospital with a toddler, my mom, husband, and baby…is all about balancing meeting everyone’s needs. It's a complex new dynamic of navigating ever-fluctuating moods, energy levels and bodily functions. 

• We all have the basic needs to sleep, eat food, drink water, use the bathroom, and do personal hygiene. 
• We all have social needs of connection, attention, and appreciation from each other and with other family and friends. 
• We all have physical needs for movement and recreation (especially our toddler). 
• The adults each have work to attend to - my husband's job and church calling, my business and church calling, mom’s writing association and insurance sales - and intellectual stimulation needs like reading news and for me, writing my thoughts. 
• My husband and I have spiritual needs to read scriptures and pray together everyday. 
• There are communal household needs like washing dishes, doing laundry, tidying up, buying and prepping food, restocking supplies, maintaining the yard, managing mail and packages, vacuuming/mopping, taking out trash and recycling. 
• I have the temporary extra medical needs of taking ibuprofen and stool softener, washing my wound and replacing pads, putting on a belly band when standing (since it hurts to sit), and guzzling a gallon of water a day to supply breastfeeding. 

Before baby boy came, I imagined it as a clear delineation of labor - husband does the housework, mom takes care of our toddler, I take care of the baby. But in reality, it’s a constant shuffling game of all the adults taking care of the children and household and each other. There have been hiccups of course but overall we’re learning to balance it pretty well. It helps that my mom is usually pretty well-rested as my husband and I are hanging on. But she's leaving soon and we'll have to readjust all over to a new balance of meeting needs. 

Our toddler is unraveling more - throwing tantrums and being more defiant - but that's to be expected. She misses spending all day everyday with me and getting my full attention. The feeling is mutual and I'm trying to figure out how to divide my attention. 

Bringing a human into the world is insanely hard and causes an incredibly unfair amount of pain and exhaustion before, during, and after birth. 

• Pregnancy: sleeplessness due to discomfort and frequent peeing, back pain 
• Birth: contractions, tearing, suturing 
• Postpartum: breastfeeding nipple pain, uterus contractions, tearing soreness, sleep deprivation, milk engorgement, hemorrhoids

I am extremely blessed to live in very comfortable circumstances and I am still having a really hard time recovering. I have - 

• A safe clean comfortable home
• Abundant nutritious food
• Unlimited clean water
• Indoor plumbing 
• Heating and cooling
• An involved active husband
• My mom here for 3 weeks
• A huge supportive network of friends near and far 
• Full healthcare and affordable medicine
• Full access to female sanitation products 

I don't take any of this for granted because I know many mothers go without many or all of these things. And they suffer much more, recovery takes longer or is never really completed. Their children suffer or even die. 

I try to imagine women in war areas under high stress, in poverty without proper nutrition, in abusive relationships fearing their safety, in hot dusty dirty huts, without any people to help them, without access to hygiene products who suffer infection and slow healing, who have to ride on animals and give birth in the wilderness! I pray for all mothers around the world. 

The months before and after birth are the most vulnerable times in a woman's life. She needs all the support she can get. Support all mothers you know.