I interviewed my aunt who recently had her first baby, and our interview covered information related to her experience with caring for one. My first question was how she went through her first couple days after she had the baby. She truthfully replied that she didn't remember much of her first week besides the fact that she did nothing but sleep, eat, feed the baby, and sleep again. She told me that she hadn't had a normal delivery but had gone through a caesarian delivery because her water broke too early. She still felt tired, but the surgery had gone well and her husband who was with her for the first month had done much to help her.
She talked a lot about her husband helping her with cleaning, caring for the baby, making or buying her food that she craved. Mostly she talked about the different kinds of food that her husband had bought for her. Maybe it was because she was feeling particularly hungry during the interview, or maybe it was because the food and helping around the house was what she had really needed during that period and was thankful for the most. Although I am tempted to say that it was more towards the former, I also know that it is probably because she was thankful to him, especially since he did all of this after taking a paternal leave from his work. In Korea, according to my aunt, taking a leave from work was a bit looked down upon and wasn't easy unless you were a public servant or an influential person in their field of work.
After that, I asked her what her favorite part about being a mother was. She replied that it was being able to hug her child. She told me that I wouldn't understand until I became a mother myself and that this was something I had to find out for myself. I think this was the shortest reply besides the part where she talked about the frequent headaches and lethargy that she got from her broken sleeping cycle. I think she just didn't want to think about how much it had hurt. The most interesting part of our interview was when she showed me the baby and the pictures of it when it was not born yet, and pictures of after it was born as well. It had only been a month since the baby was born, and yet my aunt had a year's worth of pictures in her cell phone camera already.
No comments:
Post a Comment