Prayer and New Motherhood: Notes from the Trenches

 

"She was not asked to do anything herself, but to let something be done to her.

She was not asked to renounce anything, but to receive an incredible gift.

She was not asked to lead a special kind of life, to retire to the temple and live as a nun, to cultivate suitable virtues or claim special privileges.

She was simply to remain in the world, to go forward with her marriage to Joseph, to live the life of an artisan's wife, just what she had planned to do when she had no idea that anything out of the ordinary would ever happen to her. 

It almost seemed as if God's becoming man and being born of a woman were ordinary."

Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God

I'm now in a season I feared for a long time.

Don't get me wrong: I have dreamed of motherhood since I was scarcely more than a baby myself; longed to devote myself to tiny fingers and toes, to soothe and play and sing and rock. My sweet, beautiful daughter is the fulfilment of deep longings and is a constant source of delight.

But new motherhood has also, for me, long stood as an emblem of the end of a solid prayer life. 

Pretty much every Catholic book or podcast you consume will tell you that having babies effectively puts your contemplative life on pause for a little while, or at least radically changes what it looks like. So many women - good, holy women - try desperately hard to put Jesus at the centre, but always seem to be swimming upstream, snatching at those tiny windows of time during naps and ending up more exhausted and less spiritually fulfilled than if they had just taken a nap themselves. For many years I've heard the words "life with littles" and "in the trenches" and known that when my time came to enter into new motherhood, I was going to have to brace myself for some big changes in the ways I practiced my personal faith.

In late pregnancy I began to get so nervous: what would my spiritual life look like with an infant? Was I ever going to be able to journal again, or attend daily Mass, or sit in quiet adoration? I was so reliant on these modes of prayer that had sustained me through my single years and dating and early marriage. For a full decade of devotion, my prayer life had looked a certain way. And that season was now ending; something new had to take its place. 

And that something new wasn't necessarily going to be bad or inferior or unfulfilling - but it was going to be different. It was going to demand creativity, and openness to change, and humility. 

In many ways it was going to be a similar mindset shift to the moving beyond a 'Jesus is my boyfriend' spirituality I had to do in early dating - only this time it was the form, as well as the content, of my prayer that had to change.

Our daughter is five months old now, and looking back over these months and forward to the new chapters of life that are unfolding, I've realised I want to capture right now, 'in the trenches', what has been working (and not working) in figuring out prayer as a new mother.

The below are a somewhat motley assembly of bullet points on semi-connected themes. I don't know if they're advice, or just reminders for myself, or just working theses that I'll chuck out as the season unfolds further. I'm a work in progress and in a prolonged process of trial and error. 

But I know that we as women are stronger when we share our stories and stand in solidarity with one another through transition seasons. Maybe my little witness and wonderings will resonate with you. Maybe these notes from my early months of motherhood will bless someone else on the same journey. Maybe your advice, as someone reading and responding, will bless me. 

We need each other, and we belong to each other. I'm praying for you, mama.

~~~

1. Your baby is another Christ

"How far from [Our Lady] would it have been to say that because she loved Christ, she could love no one else: she knew the secret: there was no one else."

"It was... a withdrawing that did not separate her from other people but only brought her closer to them: for she had found her Christ in them all."

Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God

(As a side note, if you haven't read Caryll Houselander's The Reed of God, do yourself a favour and go get a copy right now. It's a perfect Advent read. It's also a perfect new mum read. The purity, simplicity and devotion of our Lady is what we all need to nourish our tired hearts and focus our gaze on Love.)

What Houselander is talking about in the above quote, is training the eyes of our hearts to see Jesus in every face. He who said "I was hungry and you gave me to eat," is present with us in the baby at our breast. Even as He says it to us in the Eucharist, we can say to Jesus revealed to us in our child, "take and eat; this is my body given for you." 

For me this great secret of Our Lady's, that there is no on else, only other faces of Christ, is paramount in the spirituality of motherhood. If we see our baby as somehow a competing interest with our spiritual life, a worldly distraction that keeps us from contemplation, we are utterly missing the point. Our baby is part of our spiritual life. 

Cardinal Basil Hume said that, "Contemplation is not just looking at God; for most of us... it consists in looking for God." Looking through life to the light of love shining behind it all. Gazing upon the face of our child and knowing that the love we are pouring into this dependent body and soul IS the love we are pouring out upon the feet of Jesus. 

God asks for our whole selves - He allures us and draws us into the desert, onto the mountain, to be with him - but in doing so He brings us closer to our realities. We withdraw into Christ and so find Christ in all. Especially the vulnerable. Especially those entrusted to us. 

Motherhood is ministry to the Body of Christ. There is no act of love or tenderness you can offer your child that in any way takes away from your prayer life. It is Jesus crying out to you for food, or comfort, or the shelter of your arms. He wants and needs you to draw close to Him not apart from, but through this baby. 

I think for me this is the most important thing I can remember every single day. Especially when I've just sat down with my bible and journal and a cup of tea, thinking my baby is fast asleep, and then hear her cry out for me: It is Jesus crying out. I am not missing out on "my prayer time". I am fully present to encounter Him in this little one He has entrusted to me. She is another Christ. I love her. I love Him.

All of the rest of this blog post, any practical strategies for 'getting prayer in', matters far less than this fundamental contemplative gaze. The more I can look through my baby to Jesus, the more my life becomes a prayer. And that is what truly nourishes and satisfies my soul, and makes it a fragrant offering to the Lord of love. 

~~~

2. Your phone is your enemy 

I wish this were less true than it is or that I could say it more nicely, but I can't soften it. It becomes clearer to me every day. 

You see, early motherhood is made up of a lot of very short windows of boredom. 

You are occupied every hour of the day, physically needed in most half-hour intervals. AND YET - you have five minutes really often. Or two minutes. You have one single free hand while your baby nurses with her eyes closed. You have six minutes while she entertains herself on the mat. You have thirty-eight minutes until she wakes up. 

And in those itty bitty short windows you can do one of three things: you could do something productive (dishes! vacuuming! fold laundry! send that email you've been avoiding for weeks!); you could do some genuine self-care (prayer time! a nap! just stare at a tree!).... or..... you could scroll.

If you're anything like me, the choice is shockingly easy. And I actually don't even feel like I choose it. Scrolling chooses me. It doesn't seem to demand anything. It's easy. It only requires one free hand and very little mental engagement. When I'm tired or overwhelmed it's just... there. 

But I don't need to tell you - I don't need to tell myself - that scrolling doesn't satisfy. It doesn't make me feel rested. It doesn't make me feel inspired. It doesn't make me feel connected to friends. It doesn't make me more convicted of my worth as a woman or my vocation as a mother. It doesn't make me love my baby more. 

It does, however, make me feel kind of stale and overstimulated and drained-hyped. It makes me resentful that I'm stuck under this baby while my friend is having a Hot Girl Summer in Europe. It makes me feel that there is never any time in a day - because the short windows of time I do have (and there are many) are whittled away in something that offers me neither real rest nor real stimulation. 

Your phone is your enemy. If you are serious about prayer as a new mother - or even just feeling rested and satisfied as a new mother - you need to detach from the screen. I'm kind of serious when I say that it is just killing your soul slowly. 

And it's not that all social media content is bad, or that beautiful prayer apps don't exist, or that messaging friends is not a great thing to do. 

But phone addiction is such a horrifically hard thing to avoid as a new mother that I think we need to be radical about cutting it off before it can take hold. 

What's working right now for me: 

• Using my phone as white noise for Percy while she naps, on do not disturb mode and plugged into its charger. The only way I can look at things is if I stand next to the charger in a darkened room with my sleeping baby, unable to access the audio content of anything and frankly kind of uncomfortable. I still scroll, but the lifespan is max about eight minutes before I realise I would just rather be elsewhere. 
• Deleting social media apps and logging out of the websites on the browser. Instagram is so ugly and clunky on the phone browser that I can only bear it for much shorter windows of time. And then I clear browser history and it makes logging back in such a hassle that I have to revisit whether I genuinely want to bother.
• Archiving all emails and all Messenger chats that are not either currently waiting on a response or one of the four people I message most days. This 'clear desk' approach helps me keep my mind clear and my priorities straight.
• Deleting most of the other interesting apps. I have very little on my phone (mostly because I'm out of storage space) and so the only thing I can really get distracted on is Photos, which I definitely do because there's a million cute pictures of my baby there. But at least that's still loving her, a little bit. 
• Having a hopelessly distractible baby who literally will not focus on nursing if I have my phone in my hand at the moment (or a book. or food. or if Daddy is in the room)

I'd be so interested to know any other ideas you have about preventing phone addiction. I honestly think it is one of the hardest battles as a 21st century mother, and something we need to talk about a lot more. 

Anyway, all this to say, if your phone is simply not an option during those little windows of free time, it is much easier to find space for the Lord. 

~~~

3. You need your husband's help 

(or partner, or mum, or whoever your closest support person in parenting is)

While this relates to absolutely every aspect of life as a new mum, I find it especially true of prayer. No woman is an island. We need the support of the people around us to facilitate our self-care and in particular our relationship with the Lord. 

And often we need to ask for this. We need to advocate for ourselves and let our support crew know what we need. Most of the time what we need is time. Just a little bit of baby-free time in which to re-centre ourselves and bring our hearts to the Lord. 

Time is possible. 

Let me say that again. Time IS possible. Someone can gift you the time you need to have the prayer you are thirsting for. It is simply a case of them stepping up a little, you trustfully surrendering care of your baby to them, and asking God to make up for whatever is lacking. 

I am incredibly blessed to have a husband who makes my prayer life his priority. Callum is constantly checking in and coming up with creative solutions for how I can have time and space for personal prayer. This continues to evolve as Percy grows and her needs change. In the early days it was simple things like Callum wearing her in the carrier through Mass so I could focus more fully on the Eucharist. It was him holding her while she napped as a newborn so I could go for a walk around the block and talk aloud to the Lord. 

More recently, it's been bigger things. A few weeks ago we went up to Launceston as a family so I could attend a retreat run by the Nashville Dominican sisters. Callum was fully in charge of Persephone for the weekend and brought her in to nurse when she was hungry, but I was otherwise able to attend the talks and go to Divine Office and have time for journalling without a baby attached to me. I still had one eye on my phone in case something went wrong, and a part of my mind always on my little one, but it was the best quality prayer time I'd had since her birth. 

At the moment we're trialling Wednesday mornings as a mum-only Mass day. Callum and Percy stay home and play while I duck down the hill to 7.30am Mass at the Cathedral on my own; the fifteen minute walk each way and the wholly undistracted celebration of the Eucharist are such a peaceful oasis for me. And I know that Percy will be totally fine for one hour with Daddy. 

Callum has also been such a champion in taking the lead in our prayer life as a couple. He instigates Lauds and Vespers every day. He gets excited about upcoming feasts in the liturgical year and helps brainstorm ways to celebrate them. He relentlessly, without fail, wants to go to Saturday morning Mass together after working all week. And while sometimes I'm still copping out of all of those things from exhaustion/sleep deprivation (or sometimes just actual laziness), he keeps inviting and encouraging, and that is such a helpful thing for my faith in this season. 

I think it's going to be such a beautiful thing for Percy to grow up seeing how much Dad cares about and priorities Mum's prayer life. I am so grateful for this particular way in which Callum loves and lays down his life for me.

Even if it doesn't come naturally, don't be afraid to ask for help from your partner or another support person to give you the gift of baby-free time for prayer. Their little sacrifice can make an incredible difference to your mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. And you'll come back a more refreshed mother ready to be present and loving to your baby.

~~~

4. Set yourself up for success (and embrace self-settling)

For me this is all about preparing the environment, and preparing your baby, for a fruitful time of personal prayer. While Persephone is still awake, I get out my little stack of prayer books / journal, get everything ready to make a cup of tea and/or breakfast, attend to any chores that are going to distract me if they're not done, and otherwise ready my space and my mind to plunge straight into personal prayer time once Percy goes down for her nap. It makes it much easier not to choose another activity, and also to not waste time getting set up once the house is quiet. 

The other part of this, self-settling, is something we are still working on but having some success with. Last week (? the week before? time is strange in babyland) we had several days in a row where Percy settled herself for every nap of the day, just babbling her way to sleep quite happily. I was astonished by how much time I had! The difference between a 50-minute sleep cycle where you spend the first fifteen minutes of sleep waiting to see that she is truly asleep and then sneaking out of the room only to the try to set up a prayer space, and a 50-minute sleep cycle PLUS fifteen extra minutes at the start while the baby self-settles, in a well-prepared environment, is absolutely crazy. I felt like I had prolonged quality journalling time for the first time in forever. I had a full luxuriant hour of personal prayer every day that week! 

Of course, it's always back and forth. We're teething now, and naps have become a bit more of a battle again. But it's nice to know what is possible!

This is also about choosing to let go of your other options. Your phone is your enemy, yes, but so are all of the Very Useful Things you could be doing right now. 

"Martha was distracted by her many tasks... but the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed - indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:40-42)

Don't do the dishes while your baby sleeps. Don't rush around getting a million things done. Rest in the Lord's arms. He longs for you - and you long for Him too. The jobs will keep. Let your soul breathe. If you are genuinely thirsting for prayer time, don't let that thirst go unheeded. Nothing else really matters.

(Except having a nap or a snack yourself. Let that not go unsaid. Resting and nourishing your body comes before resting and nourishing your soul on the mama's hierarchy of needs. If your baby did not sleep last night, you nap when that baby naps, girl!)

~~~

5. Pray with your baby

We really only started making a routine of this once Percy was about three months old, but it's becoming a lovely habit now. Once she's had a final nappy change of the day and is zipped up in her sleep sack, we have a very simple family prayer time: Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Guardian Angel prayer, 'Now I Lay me down to Sleep', Jesus I trust in you. We each say what we're thankful for from the day, and who we would like to pray for tonight. Then Callum and I each pray a blessing over Persephone, and then it's time for a feed and bed. It only takes five minutes, and it's a childlike little formula, but I find it blesses me more deeply than I expect.

There's something so mystically rich about the words of prayer handed down through generations. We don't always need to reinvent the wheel: the Church gives us beautiful language for expressing our union with God. 

I hope that those words will form some of my daughter's earliest memories. Sooner or later she'll be expressing what she's thankful for and who she wants to pray for. And those little things will be the building blocks of her eventual relationship with the Lord. 

But they are also important for me. I am His child too. I always need to come back to basics. 

Praying with our babies reminds us of how simple it is to unite our hearts with Jesus. "Let the little children come to Me." He doesn't ask for our profound wisdom or diligent excellence. He just wants us as we are, little and dependent and helpless and HIS. 

~~~

6. Today is sufficient unto itself

One of the interesting things about this season is that some of my fears about lacking prayer time really haven't eventuated, yet anyway. I think that is possibly because  'life with little' (singular) is different to 'life with littles' (multiple). 

The wise older women on the podcasts and in the books are often talking about life with six or seven children. But God in His wisdom (mostly) gives us babies one at a time. I get to start with one, and learn and grow and adapt to that before trying two or three or ten. Today is sufficient unto itself.

And today things are actually going pretty well. I have a very sweet, mellow, easygoing first baby who makes having a personal prayer life surprisingly easy. And maybe that season won't last forever - once we have a noisy multitude or a particularly high-needs child - but right now I can still be present with Jesus in some of the old familiar ways. I think He knew my heart needed that. And I'm so grateful for it. 

If you find something that works today, just do that. Maybe it will look different next week, or next year, but you can cross that bridge when you come to it. 

The future will take care of itself - I can stop worrying about what things might look like one day, and just live the present in its particular struggles and joys. 

~~~

7. He cares about your reality

I think this is the other great big Truth we need to embrace in new motherhood. He loves us and wants to meet us right where we are. Not as the women we were a year ago, or five years ago. Not in some hypothetical empty space where we don't have our current responsibilities or aren't sleep deprived or can magically live in the life of a nun while also raising babies.

He called you to THIS. He anointed you for THIS. And He wants to meet you here, in the mess and struggle and glory of it all. 

So if you are having a hard day - just tell Him. If you are enraptured and delighted - tell Him! If you are a wreck of nervous exhaustion and cannot even find the words to pray - just let Him love you. 

The Incarnation shows us that Jesus loves the life of mother and baby, the tiny seemingly-insignificant rhythms of feed-change-sleep-repeat, the beautiful monotony and beautiful unpredictability and beautiful helplessness and beautiful demandingness of all that this season is. It never looks perfect, and much as our hearts may grieve that, God doesn't. He chooses the Incarnation, and the incarnate reality of our little lives.

He cares about you as a mother. He cares about your baby. He cares about all that you are.

Motherhood is a path of everyday heroic holiness, and it is enough. You are enough. 

Your prayer life doesn't have to look a certain way for Him to love you. He just wants to love you. 

~~~~

You are not asked to do anything yourself, but to let something be done to you.

You are not asked to renounce anything, but to receive an incredible gift.

You are not asked to lead a special kind of life, to retire to the temple and live as a nun, to cultivate suitable virtues or claim special privileges.

You are simply to remain in the world, to go forward with your marriage and motherhood

to live the extraordinary ordinariness of this incarnate love. 

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. 

AMDG