Two months ago, deep in the midst of another relentless heatwave, I stood gazing upon the sandy, sun-scorched grass of my local park, just one still lit cigarette away from being set ablaze, my 3-month-old baby strapped to my chest. In that moment, I came to the decision that what we face as a collective is comparable to life with a newborn. The trenches. A phase of life that nobody can prepare you for, except this time, there won’t be anybody to tell us, “It gets better.”.
Because with a newborn, it does get better. The person I was at 3 weeks postpartum is entirely different to the person I am a few months later. The midwives who tried to reassure me were not wrong, even if my body rejected the belief every time I heard it. I am no longer entirely wrecked and broken to my core from learning how to feed my baby, in ways I never imagined I would have to. I am no longer questioning how I will ever leave the house again and how for the most part, I have time to shower and clothe myself properly everyday.
To be entirely truthful, my newborn experience was its own version of hell. Yes, everybody tells you it will be hard. There is the old adage of, “Just wait!” said with a knowing laugh from those who know what’s to come. It’s common knowledge that you will have sleepless nights and no time for yourself, but it is an experience you truly cannot understand until you are in the depths of it. There was no blissful bubble for me – something which I now grieve – but a feeling of being thrown off into the deep end with no idea how far I’d be flung until I landed. Maybe we were naïve or maybe it’s that everybody hides it so well; what it’s really like. The times I’ve visited family after a new baby’s arrival had me deceived with the soft cuddles and the quiet passing to Mum and Dad when it was time to feed or change a nappy. There were no signs of the anxiety and the constant struggle to figure things out. It looked natural and effortless.
I cried everyday for three weeks straight and was often inconsolable. The overwhelm of a new life, both the one asleep in my arms and the one I had to adjust to, felt unbearable.
Five months later and I’ve adjusted. I cry on occasion but more often than not, I smile. Yet five months later there are still some things I haven’t adjusted to.
The sticky, sweaty heat. The red glow of the GroEgg in our bedroom, which didn’t drop below 25°c for months. The baby sleep-suits that were worn a handful of times before the heatwaves set in and now no longer fit. The oven we avoided turning on at all costs to keep the kitchen just a few degrees cooler. The duvet that now lives folded up on the floor. The never-ending white noise of the tower fans. The patch of golden straw that borders the road near our house, previously a plush green grass. The drought. Another hottest summer on record. Thousands of deaths across Europe. Fires. Smoke. Devastation. Glacier collapse.
During all of this, while feeding my baby in the shade of another relentlessly hot day, a new red dot appeared on the global wildfire map. I received a message from my parents to say they’d fled their home in Italy because that burning red dot was nearby. An evacuation order had been issued and footage of a dark, plume of smoke was shared by the local newspaper on Facebook. Just a few weeks later and I got a taste of it myself when we opened the door to a sky perfumed with smoke, the wind blowing in from the Welsh moors, many miles away.
When I was pregnant, I dreaded what it would feel like to experience the climate crisis while raising a child and my anxiety suddenly shifted from something that felt distant and hypothetical, to something that felt very real. I now felt utterly and totally unprepared. I started to wonder if we’ll ever be prepared enough, if now was the time to start packing an emergency to-go bag and if we should start stockpiling food. How can we be responsible parents if we aren’t prepared for an emergency?
At the beginning of August, the National Farmers’ Union in the UK warned that the drought is likely to cause food shortages in the coming year. The stockpiling question started to feel like a legitimate concern. It was all well and good having a spreadsheet of what baby clothes we’d bought but what about what food was in our cupboard?
When I say I think we’re all headed for the newborn trenches, I mean that most people have a basic understanding that climate change is bad, just like how most people understand that raising a baby is hard. Endless hot weather is not good. No sleep is tiring. Heavy rain causes flooding. Time to yourself becomes a luxury. The UK can finally start producing its own wine (I jest).
But what we have the privilege of not understanding is how hard it is truly going to get. We won’t know this for certain until it is us with the floods at our doorsteps, until it is us filming the sky filled with smoke. Just like how we don’t know how unrelenting keeping a baby alive is until the responsibility is thrust upon us.
This period we are in now is like the 9 long months of pregnancy. Our world has already changed entirely – many people have had their awakening; they’ve seen the heartbeat on the ultrasound, the wildfires raging on the TV – and the way it is all going to implode upon us is fast approaching. Except the nesting stage will not be one of carefully folding tiny white vests into a drawer but one of stacking bean cans and buying bags of rice and flour.
At this stage, it could be very easy to start telling the people around us to, “Just wait!” as they start to realise the world is forever changed. It is easy to say, “Just wait!” from the other side of knowing but as any new parent will tell you, just waiting helps nobody. You need proof and stories of how people have overcome challenges and you need to see how the waiting actually plays out.
While greenery shoots back up across our fields and lawns after some much-needed rain, I feel a bit like the land too; a little brighter but still prone to flooding.
As I’ve emerged from the newborn stage and the fourth trimester, I can even see the world around us reflected in my postpartum experience. While greenery shoots back up across our fields and lawns after some much-needed rain, I feel a bit like the land too; a little brighter but still prone to flooding. A little more like myself but still on the verge of going underwater. Inside of me I hold two versions of myself. One which is thriving and supported and one which could easily be overcome by the challenges I face and swept up in it all, if left unattended.
Many of us will now be taking a sigh of relief at the cooler temperatures while also trying to comprehend the scale of what is at stake as the bodies pile up in Nepal and the UN announces that we’ve blown past 1.5°c.
We can hold those two realities in our hearts and choose how to birth, raise and care for them. Just like how I had to make choices in order to stay afloat within the depths of the newborn trenches, we as a collective have choices to make that will shape what new world we are breathing life into.
We can choose what this postpartum looks like as a forever changed world is born (and reborn and born again). If we are going to start preparing – nesting – for the worst, how can we start preparing together? If these hot summers are going to become the norm, how can we make them as painless as possible? What story can we tell that makes “Just wait!” something that’s said with optimism?
Just like how we won’t always know why our babies are crying, we won’t always have the right answers but I’m pretty sure it’s our most important duty to try and figure it out while we still can.
