A party after the birth? No, thank you.
After the birth, during and after which I felt the greatest happiness of my life, I still didn’t get drunk, I didn’t have a thousand people over, I didn’t throw a party, and nobody tore my shirt (in the Balkans, friends traditionally rip the new father’s shirt when they celebrate the birth).
I am deliberately speaking in the first person singular, because it is well known that it is usually the fathers who party at home (and some in a tent or in a pub), while the mothers lie in the maternity ward, with or without their baby (because in most Balkan maternity wards the baby can’t stay with the mother, and has to cope on its own with extra stress in a world that is completely unknown to it).
We knew we wouldn’t celebrate Sofka’s arrival that way. Above all, we didn’t want to waste anything: not our energy, not our time, not our attention, and not our money.
It never crossed my mind to throw some kind of get together without my girls. In those moments, what mattered most was being together, all in one place, because we needed each other most, then and now.
The experience you don’t have, the fear you do
One important thing nobody tells you before the birth is that a baby isn’t born knowing how to breastfeed, and the mother doesn’t receive divine enlightenment and suddenly know how to feed her baby. And the baby is so small and fragile that when you change her, you feel you could hurt her just by breathing on her.
Everything a person is new to and inexperienced in, parenthood included, brings uncertainty and fear. Experience is the key to feeling confident, and having your first child means you don’t have any. So of course we, too, were very unsure in those first days in the maternity ward. We were scared and used every chance to ask the nurses on duty about something.
Family = love + support from day one!
What we were certainly sure of then (and still are now), and what helped us enormously to cope, was our love. And with love comes support! It was exactly the support I wholeheartedly gave Mima the whole time she was in the maternity ward, by being there constantly, right with her in her room, that kept us both from panic, depression or anything else.
I only came home to sleep for a few hours and then rushed back to the hospital to see them as soon as possible. What I regretted most was that I couldn’t sleep there with them, but at least I could stay from morning until midnight. Because of all this, I didn’t miss the big after birth drinking session and shirt tearing at all. Instead, I gave them all the time I could and wanted to.
A few months ago we heard that where we come from, it is customary for a new mother, once she comes home from hospital, to serve the guests who come to “see” the baby and her. I couldn’t believe that anyone could expect such a thing from a woman who has just given birth. Who could be so cruel and heartless???
When we came home from the hospital, we used every free moment to get at least a little rest, and there were very few free moments in those days. At the time Mima slept about two hours a day on average, she was swollen and could barely walk 50 metres a day. Honestly, the last thing we needed was to worry about guests and refreshments as well.
Instead, we put all our energy into looking after each other, getting used to the baby and letting her get used to us. We made sure we didn’t stress ourselves for no reason over people who would come to pinch that fragile little being, and enjoyed in peace someone we had waited for so long.
We left the celebrating to the grandparents
They threw the parties, they invited the guests, and good for them. They should have. They had every reason to. I am in no way saying that people should stop celebrating the birth of their child. Whoever wants to and can, should celebrate. This is our story, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to do it this way.
Still, I believe that you shouldn’t celebrate without the “stars of the show”, and those are the mother and the newborn! If you celebrate without the people who deserve it most, and if that celebration means less attention for them or becomes a burden for them, then what is the point of it all…?
In our culture, these celebrations, the drinking and the spending are unavoidable. Because of these benders, much more important priorities often suffer, and quite often so do our nearest and dearest. Today it means nothing to me that my dad got sooooo drunk when I was born and told me about it countless times afterwards.
I would rather he had been there for me, back then and later on.
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