How to Support A New Mama? So They Know: Christ Cares for You

Tender. Uncertain. Alone. Every mama has felt these things, especially in those fragile first days with a newborn. But few have given those feelings a voice. Few have groped around in the darkness of postpartum and lit a match against the walls, carrying a light forward for other struggling mothers. In her debut book, Cradled: Christ’s Care for Postpartum Moms, Annie VanderHeiden does just that. With care and compassion, she reminds young mothers (as well as seasoned ones) of Jesus’s ever-present faithfulness in all of our struggles and weaknesses. It’s a joy to welcome Annie to the farm’s front porch today.

It was a pleasure to sit down with Annie in the belltower of our 1896 old stone church. Don’t miss our video conversation below…

Guest post by Annie VanderHeiden

In a dimly lit basement in the middle of the night, I sat—hunched over and hollowed out. A shell of the person I thought I was—like someone had scraped my insides clean for a jack-o’-lantern but forgotten to add any creative carvings or soft glowing lights in their place. Who am I?

I cried wordlessly in the darkness. What am I doing? I chided, fumbling with pinching, plastic parts in attempts to squeeze out minuscule drops, the pulsing drone of the pump relentless as death.

Who are you? I whispered to the swaddled stranger in my lap. She seemed to meet my gaze with equal bewilderment. Who are you, and what have you done with my life?

The fear was stifling, the discouragement deafening. It took only a few hours home from the hospital—a few questions, tears, and missteps—to send me sailing into a black cavern of hopelessness and grief. Suddenly, I felt like the most inept woman on the planet. I—who had watched children for a living and dreamed of nothing else but motherhood from the time I could carry around my first baby doll.

What was happening? How could I fix this? What was wrong with me? And perhaps the most looming worry of all: Will this be forever?

A cord had been cut.

And not just between daughter and mother but between “old me” and “new me.” In my bleary-eyed, late-night meltdown, I was starting to realize that there would be no going back. Sure, maybe if I was lucky, I could shimmy back into some prepregnancy jeans or get out of the house to have coffee with friends again . . . but my lifestyle, my daily priorities, my freedoms, and certainly my body were all fundamentally and forever changed.

Just like my baby could never squeeze back inside me, I could never truly return to being the woman on the other side of that delivery room. The umbilical link was now severed; the stump needed to be monitored and attended to for a time but then released to shrivel up and fall off, no longer needed. I was being reborn—as a mother.

I am upheld by God in all things, mother or not.

This transformation didn’t change my essential being, of course; just like my baby was fully human on both ends of the birth canal, so too was I, at the core of my being, still an image bearer—a whole woman designed to glorify God whoever I am and whatever I do. Nor did my source of sustenance change.

As an infant is sustained by the Creator (through a mom’s body) both within the womb and without, so too am I upheld by God in all things, mother or not. But my means of interacting with the world, my capacities and responsibilities, were all nakedly new and blinding. I had been pushed out of a cozy, familiar space to grow up and out now, just like my baby.

In postpartum, we wrestle through this dichotomy: carrying, on the one hand, a personhood, value, and identity far beyond motherhood but, on the other hand, grappling with its all-consuming demands. When our babies and our own bodies are weak from need and crying out for help simultaneously, how do we live as wise and faithful stewards of both?

Instead of piling more to-dos on already-sagging shoulders or bandaging struggles with shallow platitudes, I want to give you what my own heart needed so desperately in that basement season. Jesus.

As we wrestle with the constraints of embodiment, we can reach out for comfort from the One who took on his own frame of dust (Ps. 103:14) and became like us “in every respect” (Heb. 2:17). He knows suffering and need and the dependence of others to the nth degree. He has felt agonizing hunger, sleepless exhaustion, and bitter loneliness like us.

In His wisdom and grace, Jesus has given you a unique opportunity now both to parent and be parented.

But just as intimate as his human understanding of us is his divine design for postpartum and for our motherhood as a whole. One with the Father, Jesus knows both the beauties and costs of life-giving and their ultimate redemption in the story of the gospel. So, he is uniquely qualified to enter into these demanding days with us and also lift us above them. As we care for our precious little ones, he cares for us.

New mama, you can rest in the cradling care of Christ, for he will “tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young” (Isa. 40:11).

Postpartum is a uniquely raw time to be a woman, and I know well the confusion and discouragement that can burrow inside. The cord clamping right now may feel painful or take you completely by surprise, but it’s a cut made in love, friend, releasing you into God’s greater plans for your life. In his wisdom and grace, he has given you a unique opportunity now both to parent and be parented. And he wants to show you his lovingkindness—not only beyond this “fourth trimester” but right in the middle of it.

So, hold on . . . the light is coming, and new life is ahead.

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BellTower Stories

It was a joy to speak with Annie VanderHeiden all about postpartum and the reminder that new moms need. If you’re a new mama — or know one — don’t miss this conversation.  Come join us in BellTower Stories as “the bells are the voice of the church, with tones that touch and search” —Longfellow

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{Our humble thanks to P&R Publishing for their partnership in today’s devotional}