Saturday 28 June 2008
- Games, entertainment and fun for everyone!
- Interactive workshops and demonstrations
- FEATURING Niambi Jaha-Echols – author of “Project Butterfly: Supporting Young Women and Girls through the Transitions of Life
- Activities for kids
- Vendors market with cultural products
Prizes and FREE stuff! - FAMJAM!
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By Nicole Brooks
HOW do women cope with work and raising children?
Did my mother work? Yes. Did my grandmother work? Yes. So what is new? In my field, film and television, I don’t think anybody ever anticipated a woman having a child. The hours that have to be put in, the potential travel that has to happen, being a producer and managing an entire show…yeah, it’s the timelines. It’s not like I have the conventional nine to five. My life work is not what you could call daycare-friendly.
I studied this field in school for seven years. I knew what type of job I was getting into. I saw having children as something that I would do later in life – after 35, after I was established.
Life happens. I went to Africa and that made me question how we live our lives here. It made me question using birth control. I was learning more about our bodies as Black women, really understanding our cycles and not messing around with those things. I was leading up to my 30s and all these questions were happening. I began to say, Well, why am I poisoning my body? My partner was supportive. I was trying to learn about myself, the rhythm of my body and seeing if we could try different practices.
After my second trip back to Africa, I became pregnant. I knew it from the time that it happened. I was like, Do I want to take the Morning After Pill? I’d already been reevaluating what we do to ourselves to try to “control” reproductiveness. I thought, If it is, then it will be.
How did I feel about the possibility of being a mother? Scared out of my damn mind. I was horrified. I could barely provide for myself. Can I live off of canned tuna and be pregnant? What do I do when the child is here? There are months where I have no work. I have to provide for this child. How am I going to do that?
My partner was not a landed immigrant. He could not work so I was already supporting him. As the breadwinner, I would have to go back to work earlier. At the time he seemed very supportive of being a stay-at-home dad. He had a child from a previous relationship and seemed very good with the baby – as opposed to the whole stereotypical Ewwww….diapers! I’m not saying men are like that. My partner was very embracive and very participatory in raising our child in those early stages. But in hindsight, he wasn’t really okay with not being the breadwinner. He wasn’t okay with the situation.
| "Usually in Canada, women can have a year maternity leave. That was not an luxury for me." |
I had a very easy pregnancy. I worked up to three days before my due date. For the first seven months I took on a gig in the cast of the play Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God. From month one to seven, I was dancing and singing on stage for eight shows a week. How is that physically possible? I carried in my back so a lot of people didn’t really know. If you didn’t know me, you just thought I was a bigger girl.
After that, I still needed money. I got a job at CHUM Television as a Line Producer working 12 to 14 hour days. They didn’t know I was pregnant. A month into it I had to let them know by law. I went to them and said, “Uh, I need to take some time off.” They were like, Omigod, is someone dying? I said, “No, I have to bear my child.”
For maternity leave, I was short. You need to have 13 weeks working and I had about 12 or 11 weeks. Usually women in Canada can have a year maternity leave. That was not a luxury for me. So what I had was all that I would have up to the point that I would have to find employment again. I had a small bit in the bank and I knew I was going to use my line of credit.
I worked up to three days before my due date. Then I ended up being two weeks late – to my midwife’s joy because she said I needed rest.
My birth was one of the most dramatic and hilarious experiences of my life. I had a midwife but we had decided to have the child in the hospital. I really wanted a home birth but my family was utterly against it. There was a compromise of, Okay, have the midwife and go til’ tell-tell time but you MUST push out the pickney in the hospital!
When my child was late, I tried homeopathic methods to encourage the baby to come naturally. My midwife encouraged sex but my partner didn’t feel comfortable. He didn’t want to hurt the baby.
In the end I used castor oil. Oh my God, who told me to do that? It was my midwife who encouraged me because in the hospital we had those people asking, Why aren’t you inducing after the first week? This is crazy. I said, “I want my child to come when he wants to come.” I’m not going to force him to come unless you see there’s a medical problem. There was nothing wrong; he was fine. I figured that he was thinking, It’s about time Mom slowed down.
I can’t even remember how much castor oil my midwife told me to consume but she told me a specific dosage and bwoy! I laboured for almost a day at my home. After all the labouring that I did by myself, I called my midwife the next morning, Friday, and said “This is all that I can bear. We have to go to the hospital.” So we went.
My water hadn’t broken yet but I was having contractions. By the time my midwife checked me, I was like “You better tell me I’m five centimeters plus or else we are going to have a damn problem!” I was only two! Let me tell you, I was vex!
My midwife said “I’m going to break your water” – with the hook! So I got that done. Then I saw her face change because it wasn’t just water. The baby had defecated. It was, Uh oh, we gotta get going NOW panic mode. The midwife had to hand it over to the hospital. The doctors were saying, Yes, this is very serious. We have to induce to speed you up.
| "I just wanted to learn about him. The thought of going back to work was horrifying." |
They also gave me an epidural because I was just tired. The epidural didn’t work. I felt everything. It lightened up for a bit and then everybody broke out because the doctors said “We think the baby will be born on Saturday. So you rest up, everyone chill and we’ll be back.”
During that time, because I’m still feeling everything, I was saying to the nurse, “You know,” as I’m breathing through it, phoo phoo, phoo phoo. “I think the child is coming.” The nurse says “Oh no, I looked at your chart. You’re due tomorrow.” It was an Asian woman. When she changed shifts, a Nigerian woman came in. I said “LOOK SISTAH! You need to come and check because I think my child is here.”
The woman opens my legs and yells “Oh, there’s the head!” She runs out and grabs the doctor. I had to struggle and call the father back – he went out to get something to eat! All I could breathe was “He’s here,” click! and dial tone.
My pushing was all of fifteen minutes. All this time, no one believed me that he was coming. Even the midwife bruck out and then she came back and gave me a flower. I wanted to t’ump her down.
We had to stay in the hospital for a week. I was quite grateful, in a way, because I had a lot of support in the hospital – 24 hours a day, people helping me latch and whatever. By the time I got home, I was a pro. I felt really good about that. It was good to be with my son Asah.
Six weeks later I had to go back to work. Leading up to that there was a lot of dread but I had already told my job that I would only take six weeks. I was trying to ensure that I would have a job. But, instinctively or not, you want to spend time with your child. I was breastfeeding and enjoying that experience. I just wanted to learn about him. The thought of going back to work was horrifying.
I started pumping so that Asah would still have my breastmilk. I fed him in the mornings and when the baby was too fussy, the father would show up at work with the baby. I would run in the car and bring the breast to Asah. At the end of day it would be Dad And Baby At The Door, literally, waiting for me to come home.
| "In our society, we have walked away from what we did in Africa or in the Caribbean." |
I was unhappy at that workplace and unhappy because I was away from my child. With the sacrifice that women have to do to work, you want to at least enjoy what you’re doing. I was at that job for three or four months and then we parted ways.
A month later I got an associate producer job for a television show called “Divine Restoration” – restoring Black churches in the US and Canada. The downside was that I had to travel. Asah wasn’t able to travel with me. I was really upset – it’s one thing to go back to work but it’s another thing to really leave your child. But it was finances again. All of my funds had depleted. I spoke to my partner and we really needed the money. This was a very good paying job that would allow us to have some kind of saveability. It was also a great opportunity for my career.
Back and forth, I was traveling for a good four or five months. During this time Asah was entirely with his father. There was one trip I made before Christmas. I continued pumping on the road to keep my milk stable but by the time I came back, Asah didn’t want me anymore. He was around six months old. After that I was on the road for another three or four months.
My partner and I are no longer together. I’m grateful for the family support that I have now in order to raise Asah and be able to work. My mother lives about 15 minutes away from me. My brother and sister live in the same house with me and my caregiver is about ten minutes away. It’s fantastic to know that Auntie or Uncle can pick him up because I work in the downtown Toronto but I live in the suburbs. Or Nana’s there to have him. I didn’t want my child completely with a stranger all the time. The security that I had when my partner and I were together was that at least Asah had one of his parents there.
When it comes to support, it’s more about family than finances but it is both. I guess we in our society have walked away from what we did in Africa or in the Caribbean, being in a setting where you’re close to family and you can leave the baby and have that time to do whatever. It doesn’t have to be work-related. You also have the support and wisdom of other mothers.
Since becoming a mother, I have learned two important things. First, my child does come first but I’ve learned that to be an effective mother in the choices that you make, you yourself also have to be happy. You are of no service to your children if you’re not where you want to be mentally and spiritually. I had to make some hard choices. The relationship that I was in wasn’t a positive relationship for my son to witness. So I said, Let’s work on being good parents because our togetherness isn’t working.
There are women who have to make the sacrifice to take whatever job to pay the bills. I’ve been privileged to be able to pursue the career of my choice and still be able to raise my child. It’s a double sword – my child comes first but I also know that I have to be fulfilled in some way as well to be able to give the best to my child.
Nicole Brooks is a Producer for Echo, a new show on SunTV. Echo features stories of second- and third-generation Canadians from Black, Asian and South Asian communities – focusing on career, style, arts and entertainment and self. Currently airing several times a week, Echo highlights the richness and diversity of its innovative, successful participants. For more information and the show schedule, visit http://suntv.canoe.ca.
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