When my daughter was three weeks old, we tried to go for a walk to the shops, my mother and daughter and I. The traffic was too heavy. I didn’t have the mettle to brave the roaring trucks that hurtled off the motorway and raged up the road into the city. I wanted to get to the shops so badly. My mother and I both cried. We were both overwhelmed with how unfair it was that we just wanted to cross the road with our respective daughter and know that she was safe.
When my daughter was four weeks old, I nervously went to my first mother and baby group. It was held in a local preschool. Mum and I walked there together on a late autumn day, with my tiny daughter strapped to me in the front pack. My mother walked me to the gate of the preschool, and said she would be back to meet us there after the group had finished.
I felt like a child stepping out on her first day of school, nervously going out in the world alone again.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to be away from the comfort of my mother, to be so utterly responsible for my daughter and her only protector against the world around us. My daughter slept the whole first session of the baby group, her tiny ear resting on my breast and listening to the beating of my heart; the sound she knew before she knew life.
Those first weeks with my daughter were the hardest and most precious of my life. I needed my mother for survival in a way I hadn’t since I was a child. I needed my mother to help me rebuild myself into a mother. When I thanked her for her help, she said “Of course. You’re my baby. I wanted to help my baby.”
Freya lives in Auckland with her partner and young daughter. She writes about her life experiences, particularly her early parenting experiences, on her website. She enjoys getting out for walks and outdoor adventures with her family.
