New Mom's Need Something Like Hospice

Welcome back to Mother Centered.

I wanted to create a short little episode to share about the experience I've had just this past week of...

Being with my mother-in-law while she died.

Yesterday she died, and I was with her.

So it was my husband and lots of other loving people.

And, you know, it's such an incredible privilege to get to accompany someone on that journey.

you know, tender once-in-a-lifetime journey.

And as I was spending time with her this past couple of weeks, And I became well acquainted with hospice really for the first time.

I think my grandma had hospice, but that was so long ago and I was much younger and didn't appreciate really how much a person in that position and really their family needs the extra care and wisdom and guidance that an entity like hospice provides.

And so from this vantage point, being someone now in their 50s, I got to really see, you know, from a different angle, what she needed, what we needed, and... um, what's available.

And as I was sitting with her and observing the, the humans coming and going and showing up with ideas and food and medicines and, um, to make her more comfortable and to support her passage through this incredibly intense transition, I couldn't help but reflect on early motherhood and new moms coming home from the hospital who are in a similar kind of vulnerable and dependent state, and babies too, of course.

And I was thinking, like, where is a version of hospice for new mothers? Where is our country and our government and our social support for new moms? I know when I got home from giving birth in a hospital, I It's like I walk through the door, and it's just me and my partner and the baby.

And I haven't slept, and there's no food, and there's no plan, and there's no company, and there's no one thinking about comfort and music and what the room smells like and feels like.

My mother-in-law got that on her phone.

departure from this planet but on these entries where where moms are really you know holding the life and the well-being of their new baby as well as their own incredibly sort of I mean, sometimes sort of fragmented and obviously underslept and, you know, healing from birth and oftentimes learning how to breastfeed, like all of these incredibly difficult and depleting and disorienting experiences.

There is nothing like hospice that shows up and says, how is she today? What is she needing? Is she in any pain? What can we do? Should we adjust this? We'll be back tomorrow.

And I remember feeling as a new mom like the future stretched on like an eternity.

I didn't know when I'd have another touch point.

With somebody wise who knew about this territory, I really wanted some guidance.

I wanted to lean into the confidence of... other women who had been through birth and knew what was on the other side and what I might be expecting and how I might be feeling.

But there was just a vacuum.

There was the promise of this six-week appointment where I'd go back to my midwife and have a check-in.

And it's so sad to think that I was looking forward to that six-week appointment like you wouldn't believe, like Disneyland as a child.

And six weeks is a very long time to go without being checked on.

It's an eternity.