James' World 2

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There’s an old saying (of questionable validity) that you don’t know what love is until you have a baby. It’s too often used as a way to lord one’s hard-won parenting knowledge over the uninitiated. And while it’s true that when my daughter was born, I felt like I was drowning in my love for her, the full weight of this saying revealed itself only after we got home: You don’t know what love is until you’ve had a friend leave hot dinners on your porch for weeks. You don’t know what love is until your mom drops everything to stay for a month, cooking and cleaning and caring for your new family. You don’t know what love is until a stranger in the neighborhood sees you out with a newborn wrapped up against your chest, asks your address, and leaves a huge batch of homemade soup on your front stoop. You don’t know what love is until people emerge from the woodwork and go out of their way to soften your landing into parenthood.

A month after my daughter was born, my husband had to go out of town for the first time. I was terrified. A friend of mine left her own baby at home and drove two hours to my house, bearing snacks and drinks and the easy confidence of a mom with nearly a year of experience under her belt. She walked laps around my living room, rocking my daughter as she wailed, and I looked on in awe. And then she asked if she could clean my bathroom — my disgusting, neglected bathroom, with a month of unspeakable grime caked under the toilet rim and pale pink mildew ringing the sink drain. You don’t know what love is until your friend has driven four hours round trip just to pull on rubber gloves and scrub your toilet bowl.

Ahead, here are 12 more stories from the trenches of new parenthood, on the large and small ways we take care of one another.

Care Packages For The Big Kids

My daughter, our third child, was born with a rare genetic disorder, which we didn’t know until she was about 8 days old. She was in the NICU for about six weeks. So on top of normal postpartum stuff, I had a C-section for the first time, and I had to leave her in the hospital when I was discharged. It was just a perfect storm of emotions. We were living in Texas at the time, far away from our families. It was still Covid, so we were on our own. I would wake up, spend a day at the hospital, and come home. I was barely getting through the day. I definitely felt like I was neglecting my older two children.

The week before Easter, one of my best friends in Boston sent a kit for the kids to make Easter cookies. It was pre-made sugar cookies, icing, and decorations and stuff. It was just one of those little things that I normally would have done with them that I just didn’t have the bandwidth for. A lot of times when you have a baby, so much of it is about the baby. But recognizing that there were other people affected by everything that was going on, and our whole family unit — that meant a lot. Especially for me. It was nice to have something that was so simple, but they enjoyed it so much, and it was already all set, so I could actually sit down with them and just open it up and do it.

— Claire, 36, North Carolina, mom of three, ages 8, 6, and 3

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12 parents of all ages look back on the postpartum gestures they’ll never forget.

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