The Gift I Can Never Repay

The plan was to have the baby, have family visit for a few days and then have them go away.

We wanted to be a new little family of three for a bit. Then, once my husband returned to work, my mom would come for a few weeks. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s nothing ever goes according to plan.

In a rather negative nutshell, my father had a seizure, discovered he had a brain tumor, my mom needed to tend to him, I had low milk supply, couldn’t properly nurse and had starved my baby. I think that about sums it up.

I was a complete mess; Sleep deprived, seriously sore, ridiculously hormonal and totally terrified about all of life’s sudden changes. When my parents left that morning, after being up all night, our first at home, with a jaundiced, hungry and weak baby, I broke down. I was now a mom but I needed mine.

Thankfully, I had (another) one.

My husband and I begged my mother-in-law, who was due to leave the next day, to stay.

Now, I hate to ask for help. I never want to be an imposition; I’m overly-polite to a fault. I’ve never been the friend who asks others to help her move, set up a party or drive her somewhere, it’s just not in my nature. So admitting I was in over my head and asking my mother-in-law to change all of her plans, her flight and her life for a week was hard, really hard. But I was desperate.

Not only did she stay, she was there first thing every morning until after dinner each night. She put our daughter- and us- on a schedule, showed us how to properly bottle feed, bathe (How scary is that first bath?! So fragile! So slippery!) and burp her. She sent us for naps, herself for groceries, cleaned the apartment and made us huge home cooked meals (spinach lasagna, King Ranch Chicken, etc.) for days.

She read her paper while I pumped, sitting through the hums and hisses as if it was the most soothing sound in the world. At the beginning of the week, I was in the bathroom with my Medela, by mid-week, the kitchen table as she sat with her back to me, at the end of the week, she was taking photos of me, my bare breasts and the crazy contraption attached to them as if she was capturing Madonna and her cone bra in concert. “To commemorate the occasion,” she told me.

The occasion was her daughter-in-law and her becoming closer than ever. Truly bonded. Truly grateful.

She gave us confidence and comfort and helped us laugh at ourselves when we wanted to cry.

Speaking of tears, we wept when she was going to leave, choked up when she decided to stay and sobbed when she finally left. I do not know how we could’ve gotten through that first week without her.

So, this Mother’s Day, my second, her thirty-eighth, I want to say a special thank you to my mother-in-law, Kathy.

Happy Mother’s Day! We love you.