Call the Midwife is back for a fifth season and so are the faculty of the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing with a weekly guest blog. Watch the show 7 p.m. Sundays through May 22, then read the blog each Monday morning for historical and contemporary context about the previous night’s episode. SPOILER ALERT: Some posts may contain spoilers.
By Michelle Collins
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing
I love Nurse Crain (played by Linda Bassett); she is a bit like day old bread – just a little hard around the edges but nonetheless every bit as delightful on the inside. Her words are sometimes harsh, but more often than not she so clearly hits the mark. Consider her spot-on approach to Roseanne, the young woman whose reaction to her baby’s birth was so desperately opposite what she wanted/expected. When this young mother had difficulty immediately bonding with her baby because she felt undeserving and incapable of being a good mother (in part because of her less than homogenized past), Nurse Crane notes: “We like to think that something magical happens at birth and for some it does. The real magic is keeping on when all you want to do is run.”
This episode of Call the Midwife dealt with an aspect of new motherhood that is rarely spoken about: how the reality and the expectations for motherhood sometimes collide. We have such a romanticized view of what it’s like to be a new mother; think about your own vision of what you thought you’d look like in those first few days after giving birth. There you are, in a flowing frock, poised like the Madonna in a rocking chair with a babe so perfectly positioned and nursing at the breast, while nary a hair is out of place, all the while a heavenly glow subtly shining around your perfectly maternal persona… yeah right. What that picture doesn’t include are bags under your eyes from sleepless nights; your unkempt hair that has not seen a brush in many days; sweatpants worn inside out because they have already been worn for a couple of days right side out; and breast milk leaking through your shirt from engorged and painful breasts. The second vision is much closer to the reality of motherhood.
When we as mothers strive for perfection, nobody wins. Our children tend to follow suit, and as a result end up never achieving a healthy self-esteem because they feel perpetually second-rate. Family strife ensues as we feel guilty that we cannot live up to some superhuman ideal not even Wonder Woman could achieve. We feel like failures when we cannot attend to every family member’s needs, including our own. What started out as a picturesque, albeit unrealistic and unattainable, vision of ourselves crumbles into the reality of new motherhood.
Yet all is not lost; grace is a wonderful thing. Grace allows for our humanity and gives us the room to be, well, human. Accepting the gift of grace is the healthiest thing a new mother can do for herself. Giving ‒ and accepting ‒ grace for ourselves as new mommas means that scrambled eggs may be the dinner entrée five days a week (who doesn’t love breakfast for dinner?). It means laundry may be done once a week (on a good week); that others could eat off of our floors (because there are enough fallen scraps of food down there); and that some days our main accomplishment will be getting in a shower. It also means realizing that this, too, shall pass ‒ and all too fast ‒ and we will then long to go back and be that beyond-exhausted, disheveled, unshowered, overworked and under-appreciated-in-society new momma pausing in the moment to savor the sweet breath of the newborn snuggling at our neck. As Nurse Crane aptly notes, hard work makes a mother. In this month in which we honor mothers, that may well be the greatest understatement of the season.
Michelle Collins Ph.D., CNM, FACNM is a professor of nursing and director of the Nurse-Midwifery Program, at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing.