Who takes care of the mother?

The world is talking about postpartum right now.

Postpartum depression. Postpartum psychosis. Maternal mental health.

Words that, for many mothers, aren’t new at all.

They are just finally being said loudly enough for everyone else to hear them.

As conversations surrounding the Lindsey Clancy case have once again brought postpartum mental health into the national spotlight, I have found myself thinking about something I have wondered for years:

Who is taking care of the mother?

We spend nine months watching her.

We check her blood pressure. We measure her belly. We draw her blood. We ask about the baby’s movements. We schedule ultrasounds and appointments and tests. We tell her what to eat, what not to eat, what medicine she can take and what symptoms mean she should call immediately.

And then she gives birth.

Suddenly, almost everyone turns toward the baby.

Of course they do.

That baby is precious.

But so is she.

And somewhere between the hospital bracelets, the discharge papers, the sleepless nights, the bleeding, the hormones, the feeding schedules and the overwhelming responsibility of keeping another human alive, a woman who has just undergone one of the most physically and emotionally transformative experiences of her life is often sent home and expected to figure out how to become a mother.

I know what postpartum depression feels like.

I know what it is like when the person looking back at you in the mirror doesn’t quite feel like you anymore.

I know how frightening it can be when motherhood is supposed to be one of the happiest seasons of your life, yet your mind is telling you a completely different story.

And because I have lived through struggles with my mental health before, I entered this postpartum season knowing that I needed to pay attention to myself.

But this postpartum experience has been difficult from the start.

Our son was born prematurely at almost 34 weeks. He was here quickly and then whisked away to the NICU. We only met briefly for a couple minutes, but it was like time had stopped for those moments. The baby I prayed for is finally here and I heard his little cries. My body went right into mom mode, but then they had to take him away and everything felt like it was going against all of my instincts. It broke me.

I had given birth, but I had somehow gone home without the moments of afterbirth that are so full of excitement and joy. There was no holding him until my arm hurts and visitors to meet the newest little babe. My body is confused and rightfully so. I know I gave birth but my arms are empty. I still wake for him, and search for him when I walk into a room. My heart feels a little broken in this moment.

My son has now been in the NICU for two weeks.

And there is something incredibly unnatural about leaving the hospital without the baby your body just spent months creating.

Your body doesn’t understand hospital policy.

Your hormones don’t understand monitors and feeding tubes and oxygen levels.

Your maternal instincts don’t disappear because your baby requires medical care that you cannot provide yourself.

My body knows that he belongs with me.

And every part of me knows that I belong with him.

The umbilical cord may have been cut, but that connection wasn’t.

He is still a piece of me living outside of my body.

And navigating postpartum while your baby is in the NICU means learning how to mother in a place where, sometimes, it feels like everyone else knows how to care for your baby better than you do.

You are his mother.

Yet you have to ask if you can hold him.

You have to learn the monitors.

You watch other people feed him, assess him and make decisions about his care.

Then, somehow, you have to leave.

You walk out of the hospital carrying your pumping bag instead of your baby.

And you go home.

That has been one of the hardest parts of this season for me.

I didn’t need someone to tell me to be grateful that he was doing well. I was grateful. Desperately grateful. I didn’t need someone to remind me that he is exactly where he needed to be. I knew that, too. What I needed was someone to understand that two things could be true at once: my baby could be safe, and his mother could be hurting.

But then there was Jamie.

Jamie is one of my son’s NICU nurses.

She was supposed to take care of my baby.

And she did.

She advocated for him. She poured herself into his care. She paid attention to what he needed and treated him like he was more than the baby assigned to her for that shift.

But what I will remember most about Jamie is that she saw someone else in that room, too.

She saw me.

She understood something that I wish every person involved in postpartum care understood:

When you care for a newborn, you are also caring for a mother.

Jamie understood that even though my son and I are no longer physically connected by an umbilical cord, he is still part of me.

When something happens to him, I feel it.

When I don’t understand something, I need someone to explain it.

When my instincts are telling me something about my child, I need to know that my voice matters.

And when I am standing beside an incubator trying desperately to be strong, sometimes I need someone to look beyond the baby and ask if I am okay.

Jamie spoke up for me.

She made sure I was heard.

She made sure I understood.

She made me feel like his mother in an environment that can sometimes unintentionally make you feel like a visitor in your own baby’s life.

And I don’t think she will ever fully understand what that did for me.

Because technically, I wasn’t her patient.

It wasn’t her job to take care of me.

But she did.

Not medically.

Humanly.

And maybe that is where we have gotten postpartum care so terribly wrong.

We have created systems that divide the mother from the baby when, emotionally and biologically, they are still profoundly connected.

We screen mothers for postpartum depression, but a questionnaire cannot be the entirety of our maternal mental health system.

We cannot wait until a mother is drowning and then ask why she didn’t tell anyone she couldn’t swim.

Resources should be placed into a mother’s hands before she ever needs them.

Mental health support should be discussed during pregnancy—not whispered about after something has already gone wrong.

Partners and families should be taught what warning signs actually look like.

Mothers should know exactly who to call at two in the morning when their thoughts scare them.

Postpartum mental health appointments shouldn’t feel optional or secondary to physical recovery.

And NICU mothers, especially, need to be recognized as a population experiencing an extraordinary amount of stress, fear, separation and uncertainty during an already vulnerable time.

We need to stop asking mothers to prove that they are struggling enough to deserve help.

Help should already be there.

Because postpartum doesn’t always look like crying in a dark bedroom.

Sometimes it looks like a mother smiling in pictures while barely recognizing herself.

Sometimes it looks like anxiety disguised as being “extra careful.”

Sometimes it looks like rage.

Sometimes it looks like obsessive thoughts.

Sometimes it looks like a mother who appears completely put together.

Sometimes it looks like sitting beside a NICU bassinet, staring at a monitor, trying to convince yourself that your baby is exactly where he needs to be while every cell in your body is screaming that he should be home with you.

And sometimes the thing that keeps a difficult day from becoming an unbearable one is simply another human being saying:

I see you, too.

Jamie did that for me.

During one of the most vulnerable seasons of my life, she reminded me that I wasn’t just the mother standing beside the patient.

I mattered in that room, too.

I keep thinking about how different postpartum could feel if every mother had a Jamie.

Someone paying attention.

Someone listening.

Someone who understands that caring for a baby means caring about the woman who brought that baby into the world.

Someone who notices her before she has to fall apart loudly enough to be noticed.

Because maybe the question shouldn’t be:

“Why didn’t she ask for help?”

Maybe we should start asking:

“Why wasn’t help already there?”

We can do better for mothers.

We have to.

Because a healthy baby matters.

But so does a healthy mother.

And she shouldn’t have to disappear before we finally see her.