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My daughter called to tell me she was pregnant. By the next phone call, I had already told her I was coming.
I said I would come stay before the baby comes and stay a while after, and she said that was fine. No back and forth about it. I have done this once already, so I am not guessing about what it takes to help after the baby’s born. I know what the days look like. I know what I will be doing at seven in the morning and what I will be doing at eight at night.
What I do not know is what it will be like with a three year old in the house.
The first time, I stayed seven months
Three years ago I moved in about two weeks before my daughter’s due date. It was her, her husband, his mother, and me under one roof. My husband was traveling for work at the time, so he came a few weeks after my granddaughter was born and moved in too. He knew I wanted to be close to my daughter and the baby, and the travel made it doable.
We stayed until the Arizona heat subsided. Seven months.
Then we moved our RV fifteen minutes from them and stayed another six. By the time we went back home to Nevada, my granddaughter was a little over a year old.
So when I say I am going to stay a while, I am not talking about the two weeks everybody pictures.
What help after the baby’s born actually looks like all day
Everyone else had work. Most weekdays it was my daughter, the baby, and me in the house from morning until evening.
I did the laundry. I kept the kitchen clean. I made breakfast and I made dinner. I picked things up as they needed picking up. I took the baby so my daughter could sleep. I drove to appointments, or I stayed home with the baby while she went to hers. Later on I started making homemade baby food, and after that, smoothies.
We took a walk most days, the three of us. That was the only thing on the list that was not work, and looking back it might be the part I remember best. A stroller, a sidewalk, my daughter next to me. We were not doing anything.
The days ran together after a while. That is what nobody warns you about with a long stay. The first two weeks feel like an event and everybody is on their best behavior. By month three it is just Tuesday, and you are running a household you do not live in.
I am a doer. I like to help wherever I can, and I don’t need to be asked twice or asked at all. Most of the help after the baby’s born that actually mattered had nothing to do with holding the baby. It was the house. I wrote about where helping stops and overstepping starts a while back, and that is the short version of what I learned: they did not need another set of hands on their daughter. They needed dinner already made.
The part nobody tells you
The house was full. Five adults and a newborn.
There were stretches where I was doing most of it, and the help did not come from the other people living there. I noticed. My daughter would help when she was up to it. I only ever said it out loud to my husband.
It did not change anything about how I helped. I kept on with my ways and I accepted it.
I have read a lot of articles about grandmothers going to help after the baby’s born, and not one of them says that part.
This time there is a three year old
My granddaughter is three. For her whole life she has had every adult in the room to herself, and she gets a lot of attention from me.
That is the piece that makes this stay different from the last one. Help after the baby’s born is one thing when the house is quiet and the baby is the first. It is another thing when there is already a child in the house who has no idea what is coming.
I expect she is going to want more of it, not less, and I expect some of that will land on me while her mother is recovering. So I am planning for one on one time. The park. Walks. Sitting down on the floor and playing, which is the part she actually wants and the part that is easiest to skip when there is laundry going.
We talk about her brother a lot. She talks back about him. I still don’t think she understands what is about to happen.
I worry she will go through a jealous period. Most kids do, and the people who study this say the acting out usually shows up in the first six months and then passes. Knowing that helps a little. It doesn’t stop me from thinking about it.
The other thing I worry about is sleep. Right now she sleeps in her own bed and gets up in the middle of the night to sleep with her parents. That works fine when there are two of them and one of her. I don’t know what it looks like with a newborn in the room. It is not my decision, and I have said that to myself more than once already.
If you want the sensible version of all this, the pediatricians have good guidance on preparing an older child for a new baby. I have read it. I will probably read it again on the drive.
What I am doing differently this time
My son in law’s mother will not be living there, so the house will be less full than it was.
The bigger change is the distance. They are ten hours away now. The first time, if I needed to go home for a few days, I could. This time I cannot. It is just too far, and that is the thing I keep turning over.
Ten hours changes what help after the baby’s born even means. There is no running home to reset. Whatever mood I am in, I am in it there, in their house, and so is everybody else.
My husband is coming a couple of weeks before the baby is born and staying about a month.
So I built a break into it. After about two months I am going home, and my husband and I are bringing our granddaughter back with us for two weeks. She gets a trip. My daughter gets a break. My daughter and her husband get some time with just the baby.
The stay runs long because of the calendar, not just the baby. It carries into winter and into my daughter’s birthday, and I like to be there for her birthday. Winter travel out of here isn’t always an option anyway. Most of my visits are two weeks minimum as it is, longer in winter. Stretching it to a few months was not really a decision so much as arithmetic.
Everything I had to do before I could leave
This is the part I did not expect the first time, and the part I have never seen written down anywhere.
Before I could go help after the baby’s born, I had to take my own life off the hook for a season.
I got my doctor appointments scheduled and done before the drive. I had lunch with my dad, because his birthday falls two weeks after I leave and I will not be here for it. I am threw my daughter a baby shower with friends and family before I went. And I packed for the end of summer and for fall at the same time, which is its own puzzle.
None of it is hard exactly. It is just quiet, and there is a lot of it, and nobody counts it as part of the trip.
If you are thinking about doing this
I would say the mental part matters more than the packing.
It sounds wonderful to go help after the baby’s born. It is wonderful. It is also leaving everything you know and building something new in somebody else’s house, and there will be hard days in there. The good outweighs them. That has been true for me both times, and I would say it plainly to anyone asking.
When it gets hard, I go back to what and who I am doing it for. The what is the bonding, and there is no price on that with either of these kids. The who is my daughter. She is a grown woman with her own house and her own husband, and she still gets to have her mother show up. Being an adult doesn’t mean nobody comes to help.
If you can go, I think it is worth giving. I have not found anything better than a mother’s love, and I have looked.
I am packing for two seasons. My winter clothes are already there.