Support, a Million Little Ways

Support / Verb: 

To hold somebody or something in position; to prevent somebody or something from falling.

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It’s a few weeks to my due date and my friend Pennie cannot get over the fact that I have not done any baby shopping.  I am getting dangerously close to welcoming this baby with nothing but hand-me-downs from her sister, and Pennie will not let me forget that. After begging, threatening and pleading, she sweetens the deal by offering a Saturday to go shopping with me. I’m finally convinced.

We visit what feels like hundreds of shops and stalls, following a list I have built up over the last nine months. By the time we get to postpartum underwear, I am exhausted. I look at a number of nursing bras, unsure of how to estimate the size of my breasts once the milk comes in and I am in the trenches of breastfeeding. I decide to go by my first experience and settle for two cotton nursing bras two sizes my normal size. Unbeknownst to me, my breasts this time round would not enlarge as much as with my first, rendering the bras unsupportive.

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Support / Verb: 

To give or be ready to give help to somebody if they need it.

***

The evening progresses as usual, a slow and relaxing cadence- have tea, do some reading, eat dinner, indulge in mindless scrolling, go to bed. Nothing new, except for the discomfort my thirty nine weeks pregnant belly is causing. I shift from side to side trying to find a comfortable position to sit back and relax, but it feels like the baby is standing in my belly and I cannot seem to find the right spot. It’s finally time for bed and it’s only when I am comfortably tucked in, my stomach stretching in what seems like the baby is doing downward dogs, that it occurs to me: I could be in the early stages of labor.

By 3am, I am in full-blown labor, water broken and all. We have not had a dry run of what to do when this moment arrives, but we have a rough idea. I call my baby sister, finish packing up a suitcase I had started packing  a few days ago, and together, we drive off to the hospital fifteen minutes away.

The plan was to have my elder sister stay with me in hospital, but she is away at a work retreat, leaving my baby sister having to step in and experience childbirth vicariously through me. She sits with me in the hospital waiting area waiting for a scan to be done, settles me into my room once we are admitted, we laugh at inside jokes about maternity pads, she pauses when the contractions come in, and proceeds with chatting once they pass. She calls in at her work place and requests to work from home, talks to the nurses, asks questions, checks in, and when the nurses tell her it’s time for the baby to be born into this world, and that she can’t be in the room, she uses that time to make sure I have all I need when I leave the delivery room.

***

It’s Mother’s day and despite being ten months postpartum, I am still very much in the trenches of caring for a tiny baby. My elder sister graciously offers to take my eldest, together with my niece and nephews, for swimming, leaving me with one kid less to care for that Sunday afternoon. It is a welcome break. I have been feeling tired, the kind of tired sleep will not take away. The ‘I need a break’ kind of tired. Instead of sleeping when the baby sleeps, I make myself a cup of coffee and watch a movie. When it is time for my daughter to get back home from the swimming date, my brother, in the same way he drops her at school every morning, offers to pick her up and bring her home.

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Support / Noun:

Encouragement and help that you give to somebody or something because you approve of them and want them to be successful.

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I stare anxiously at the ticking clock. It is thirty minutes to school pick-up but I can already tell by the way the meeting is progressing that not only will I be late, it will probably be an hour before I get to my daughter’s school. As I am trying to figure out the best way to excuse myself from the meeting without drawing attention to myself, I get a call from my dad. “In a meeting. Can’t talk.” I text him. He texts me back asking if I will be able to make it in time to pick my daughter. See, it is raining heavily and only a Ugandan will understand the relationship between rain, traffic jams and my dads question. When I respond that it is highly unlikely I will ever make it on time, he asks me to please notify my daughter’s teacher that he will be the one to pick her up.