A World Where Time Does Not Exist

Our darling girl, Ivy Lynne Sohn Rogers, came into the world last week. Thank you for your sweet and encouraging words after my previous post, where I shared my fears that I wouldn’t be able to love this second child as much as my first. It was love at first sight. It’s funny how that happens. We fear our hearts have capped capacities but discover our capacities to love are infinite.

Since we’ve been home, most of my days have looked like the image above—me, on my rocking chair and her either passed out on me or nursing. She nurses constantly as newborns tend to do, without rhythm or a schedule. My body is at her beck and call, be it 3 a.m. or 3 p.m. I have learned to let go of all “shoulds” during these six weeks of maternity leave. I have entered into a world where time does not exist, where there are no expectations of what I “should” be doing at this time or that, and have fully surrendered to a realm where my only task is to bond with this new child.

While this may seem obvious as that’s the primary objective of maternity leave—for a mother’s body to recover and to bond with her new infant—it’s a drastic shift from how I operated during my maternity leave with my first child. I was constantly frustrated that I wasn’t able to do more and whenever he fell asleep, I set him down so I could accomplish other chores, house-related or otherwise. I would also get frustrated whenever he woke up in the middle of the night, as if a newborn should come out of the womb sleeping 8 hours a night straight through.

I have no such expectations with this one, nor anger when she lives out of sync with our socialized hourly patterns. I move along with her in her inconsistent and sporadic ways.

She has become my greatest teacher in learning the gentle art of doing nothing and its virtues. Prior to maternity leave, I collected a long list of TV shows and movies I could watch, but I find myself preferring to simply look at her instead. I stare at her staring at things: lights, a ceiling fan, my glasses.

TV shows, movies, my iPhone even, as entertaining they are, make time pass too fast.

I don’t want this time to go fast.

I don’t want to binge watch a show for 6 hours and wonder where the time went. I want this precious time to go slow. I have witnessed the great truth many share with sadness, usually near the end of their lives, that time moves too fast. I want to be faithful to this time, no matter how boring it is. As I become present to the boredom, it circles back around where the boredom morphs into fascination and delight.

Now, I would be greatly remiss if I didn’t mention all of the support we’ve been receiving, which enables me to enter into this world where time doesn’t exist, at least for the next six weeks. Thank God for maternity leave, so I do not have to be at 9 a.m. meetings or preach coherent sermons with my sleep deprived incoherent brain.

Also, as soon as I delivered the baby, my in-laws from New Jersey flew out for a few days to prepare our meals and take care of our older child. On their first day here, I was told they would be buying a second freezer for us. I assumed this was for my husband to cook prepared meals we can easily heat up during my recovery period. I quickly realized that my in-laws themselves were going to fill that second freezer. Over their three days with us, they made tomato sauce with meatballs, pulled pork, baked goods of all sorts, and bought easy-to-freeze groceries like chicken thighs we can cook up quickly. We’ll be well fed for at least half a year! My mother-in-law also made my older child’s Halloween costume, which I was in no state to do. Check out her handiwork.

My parents have also been taking our son for the weekends and delivering a special Korean soup each week. Korean women traditionally eat this soup for several months postpartum to nourish their bodies after pregnancy.

I am grateful for the church preschool that watches our son during the weekdays, for my brother and sister-in-law who became my son's parents the day we went into the hospital and finally, my husband, who has been doing everything else—cleaning, preparing food, taking our son trick or treating, the list is endless.

I feel infinitely blessed to have this kind of support. They have given me this immense gift of doing nothing with Ivy, which, I am learning, is giving her everything.