The First Time I Heard You Cry

I don't know how to describe what it's like to hear your baby cry for the first time. You can read lots of books, listen to lots of people, prepare all you want, but when that cry really rings out, it still hits you. It hits you in a place you never knew you had.

Pregnant in a foreign land, with no family nearby

I was thirty-two when I got pregnant with my first child. The moment I found out, I was over the moon. But in Canada I didn't have a single relative nearby. In China, when a daughter is pregnant, her mother and mother-in-law come to look after her. Here it was just my husband and me, and we had to do everything ourselves. I was afraid the baby wouldn't get enough nutrition, so I ate and ate, and ended up with gestational diabetes. But what I worried about most wasn't myself. It was the baby in my belly whose face I hadn't seen yet. I found every parenting book I could, in Chinese and in English, and read them all, writing down how to breastfeed and how to change diapers. Looking back, it's a little funny. But back then I was dead serious.

That cry

It was a winter night in Canada. My water broke first, and we waited from evening into the middle of the night, and 高明 showed no sign of coming out. Then I started running a fever; I had an infection. The doctor looked at the monitor and said the baby was in distress and we needed to do a C-section right now. In that moment I had only one question in my heart: my baby, is he okay? They wheeled me into the operating room. My husband was outside and couldn't come in. The hallway lights slid past over my head, one, then another, then another. I lay alone on the operating table, closed my eyes, and said in my heart: baby, Mommy's here.

Just that one cry. Sharp, loud, piercing through the long wait, through that whole night of fear and agony, and landing straight in the deepest place in my heart. I trembled, and the tears came. Not because of the pain, not because I was tired, but because that cry made one thing perfectly clear: he was safe. I had really become a mother.

The father outside the glass

高明 had jaundice, and soon after he was born he was taken to the nursery for light therapy. The nurse said to my husband, "Go home and get some rest. We'll take care of him." He didn't leave. He just stood there at the glass outside the nursery, keeping watch all day and all night. 高明 needed formula, and every time, my husband mixed it himself. The nurses said afterward they'd never seen a father like that.

Watching my husband's back as he kept watch at that glass, I felt a thorn in my heart stir a little. I remembered the year I was thirteen, when my father died. After that, no one ever stood in front of me like that again, shielding me from things. I thought I'd let it go long ago, but that gap never really healed. It had only been covered over by time. I said to myself: this child is going to have a different childhood.

Beyond instinct, love has to be learned

Society tells us that a mother's love is instinct, something we're born with. But no one tells us that beyond instinct, love has to be learned too. I got anxious. I worried whether he was eating enough, whether he was sleeping well, and when he cried and fussed I didn't know what to do. He was very sensitive: as long as I held him, he slept sweetly, but the moment I put him down in bed he'd wake up with a start. So for that whole first year after 高明 was born, I often sat on the sofa holding him, and sometimes after he fell asleep I'd drift off too, leaning against the back of the sofa. Later, when I studied attachment theory, I finally understood what those nights meant: he needed me, and I was there.

But I also want to give young parents a special warning: those nights I fell asleep on the sofa holding my baby were what really happened back then, when I was exhausted and didn't know better. They're not something to copy. The Public Health Agency of Canada warns that falling asleep with a baby on a sofa or armchair is dangerous. Responding to your child's needs and letting your child sleep safely are two things you can do at the same time: when your baby cries, go pick them up and comfort them, but let them sleep in a crib that meets safety standards. If you're too tired to keep going, please ask family or friends for help, take turns looking after the baby, and get some proper rest.

In those days I often asked myself at night: do I love him enough? Am I a good mother? I'd never had a whole, well-loved childhood to compare with. Only later did I truly understand: what children need isn't perfect parents, but real ones. Really loving, really struggling, really learning from mistakes, really starting over again and again.

A child doesn't need a perfect mom.
He needs a mom who is there.