Finding Time When Your Watch Stops
Recently my watch stopped. At just the right time.
It was one week after attending my ‘last birth’ as a full-time homebirth midwife, and 43 years after attending my first birth at age 16. It was the 6th watch I’ve worn out, along with a lot of watch batteries. These watches hold so much of mother’s stories, and mine!
As many midwives do, I often struggle with “time” in general, resulting in a complex relationship with watches. Of course, it’s my watch that helps me count a baby’s heart rate, perhaps reassuring or alarming, or notice how long it’s been since someone last called to say, “I think labor might be starting.” It’s the item I ignore in favor of tuning in to a mother’s actual well-being in a long labor, and I’ll confess, the item I sometimes grudging look at to see how much sleep I haven’t gotten. As an apprentice back in the day, I’d be sent to “call time” on the landline (ah hem, the ONLY kind of phone) to sync a watch as part of the homebirth set-up. My watches have accidentally been in birth tubs, the laundry, and endlessly at the bottom of my purse. I bet I could write a whole book on the various ways I’ve attempted to keep it hygienic, functioning, and fast to put on (and take off!). My watch is always with me.
As mothers, we spend a lot of awareness on the passage of daily time, don’t we? Time to get kids up for school or nap the littles, time to start dinner or start bedtime. When we are exhausted, time distorts and muddles our day. It can be very hard to ‘stay present’ as we struggle with more to do than there is time to do it.
I’ve been reading about the benefits of learning to live in the “timeless present.” Undoubtedly, It seems like this is ALL mothers and midwives do, right? And all the time! We are trying not to be impatient with our kid on the potty, or a pokey labor, it appears there’s little room for anything BUT present moments!
…And then this,
“Focus in the present moment creates the sensation of timelessness. Past and future thinking create most of our problems in terms of harmony in our relationships, getting things done, enjoying what we do with our time and being highly energized doing what we do.” Chloe Wordsworth
Immediately a thousand rationalizations and justifications leapt to mind about why parents, and midwives, just CANNOT pull off this rosy picture. I immediately thought of wet laundry trying to mildew in the buried washer, forgetting to thaw something for dinner, and midwives juggling their kids’ pick-up from school, or Thanksgiving, from a birth. This sort of busy has always seemed inescapable to me, needing a lot of hustle to ‘keep things moving.’
Some of Beth and her mom’s watches.
Now I am wondering if the experience of ‘busy’ must always be breathless? Or seem like it? As my children have grown and I’ve started to rein in my professional obligations, the biggest change I am feeling is a more forgiving sense of time instead of it ‘working against me.’
My relationship with time began to mature when the kids were young, interestingly, when my mom was living with us during her hospice journey. We had to slow down in every way to accommodate her compromised movement, hearing and overall sensitivity to being jostled. The kids were 7 and 9, and the workload was up dramatically; my mom needed hands-on assistance for everything. Mom in the house also meant I had a witness (with an opinion :) to any daytime family mayhem (mixed bag there), and someone who’s timed pain meds had to have meals on time. There is no ‘hurrying’ an end stage bone cancer patient; their vivid pain really helps one appreciate the wonder of well-timed pain medication. The only way we were going to get through this was to improve my organization and family rhythms.
At one point my mom chided me about leaving the mess in the kitchen until after the kids went to bed, this was just wrong in her generation. But if her winding down was showing me anything, it was that time was indeed fleeting and that small moments were disproportionately valuable. A week later something very special happened. My mom’s outlook opened up, and she reflected, “I see you spending all this focused time with the boys after dinner, really giving them your full, undivided attention. I don’t think I ever really did this with you, chose you over the dishes? They feel so loved by it! I hope you keep doing this.” It was an unexpected and most healing moment between us.
It's funny, but I don’t remember that period with grief, even though my mom was dying and I was massively overwhelmed with demands on my time. Overall, I was actually more efficient, more energized, and more satisfied with my days because of the slowing down to live them fully. There were a lot of intentional, if brief, moments because there weren’t going to be more of them - sitting on the deck with mom when she could, or lingering to be silly and laugh at dinner to make good memories for the boys with her, even when I was tired and sweaty.
I think I took more deep breaths.
And daily time did, in fact, seem to slow way down. Even though her timeline was quickly wrapping up.
(Here my boys and I are at my Mom’s bedside during ‘After Death Home Care’.)
Sometimes we ask, “What would you do if you knew time was limited?” I’m asking, “HOW would we do time?” With even an extra deep breath or two, our brainwaves start to slow down or become synchronized. Moving towards this relaxed state of mind (the opposite of fight/flight/freeze), means being fully in the present moment becomes more possible. And we can experience the same busy day with a greater sense of calm and clarity.
This started to become more conscious later when we left on a car trip, and did our characteristic pause before starting the car to make sure we hadn’t forgot anything. It literally took only a moment, but we felt more grounded, focused, and calm. It was different and amazing to feel ready.
So I tried it on school mornings too. Unbelievably, taking a deep breath and smiling over at the back seats before putting the key in the ignition was a game changer for our day, and for our nervous systems! And I got more done, not less.
In the wild and turbulent times of raising young families in this time, I invite you to increase your inner resilience by building in just a single small moment for a deep breath in your day. I know you’ll find your just-right moment. And these timely moments do not need a watch!
PS. I do have a new watch though. It’s not water-proof, does not illuminate in the dark, takes time to fasten on, and it frankly hard to read.
It makes me very happy.