A year ago, I had my first white Christmas. It was also my first hospitalized Christmas. After two days of intense labor and then an emergency C-Section, my perfect son Karsten was born, just before Christmas Eve.
And so, when the nativity church bells tolled over snow-sprinkled roads, I could hear them chiming from the ward where I was admitted. I sat in the lobby, watched the pretty lights from the hospital window, and felt all festive. The tiny bundle lay peacefully in my arms, and I looked out over the silvery-blanketed German town. Visitors of other new mothers were coming and going in the corridors, and as I waited for my husband, who was bringing over home-cooked traditional Weinachtsgans (Christmas goose) for dinner, I felt it was timely that on December, I had become a mother, too.
I reflected on past Christmases when, as the volunteer coordinator for our Christmas outreach programs, December was normally the busiest month of the year. This time, I was instead, doing nothing, but learning what it meant to be a mother: sleepless nights, painful stomach, the sluggishness of extra weight, and a brand new life which helplessly depended on me.
And my own life would never be the same again.
If you are a new mother this Christmas, or about to be one, I suggest you bask in it. Learn to let go of the usual stresses that come with the season; enjoy beginning this new journey with your little one.
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