Flamingo Flamenco: You Can't Dance with Us

Postpartum Flamingos, Matrescence, Lessons on Rest

Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash

We are blessed to live in a city with an extensive Zoo that not only takes excellent care of its animals, but also focuses a ton on worldwide conservation. It’s such a gift to be able to bring the girls there regularly and let the toddler run her heart out, watch the elephants get bathed, and point out all her other favorite animals.

On one of our most recent trips to the Zoo, we went with a dear friend and her two sons. When we passed the flamingos, she pointed out to me that several of the adult-sized flamingos were not pink, but gray or white:

“Those are the mamas that just gave birth! They lose all their color when they’re taking care of their babies, and the other flamingos don’t let them do the daily flamingo dance. Which seems a lil rude to me—like, you’re not pretty enough to dance with us… but, I guess if I had just had a baby, I probably wouldn’t want to be dancing either.”

While searching the internet for “gray flamingos daily flamingo dance” or “do flamingos shun new moms” or “postpartum flamingos you can’t dance with us” didn’t quite conjure up the information I wanted, I was able to find this article, which explains that there is, in fact, a flamingo dance (a flamingo flamenco, perchance?) that plays an integral role in the species’ mating ritual. Additionally, the deep pink color we expect from flamingos signals to others in the flock that they are healthy and would be a suitable mate and determines, to some extent, their social status and their position in the mating dance.

Thus, whether or not it’s a formal and definitive exclusion from the mating dance, the gray coloring seen in new-flamingo-parents (not just mothers!) would certainly signal to others in the herd that they are not ready for or interested in mating. (They very well may be formally and definitively excluded from the Flamingo Flamenco, for all I know; I just wasn’t able to get a source to confirm. If they do participate, it’s certainly in a lower-status position on the outer edge, as the center is reserved for the pinkest dancers.)

But other than being fascinating about flamingos and all that, this conversation and the subsequent deep-dive got me thinking about traditions of postpartum rest around the world. I think of the Jewish rite of the Purification after birth, and its equivalent traditional Christian practice of the Churching of Women. So often, we see these things framed as anti-woman (“why are women considered unclean or impure for experiencing a normal and healthy bodily function? isn’t that sexist?”).

And certainly, there are some rules around blood and ritual purity in some ancient traditions that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable for us in the twenty-first century. I won’t try to pretend like those rules couldn’t have been misused or misapplied in an unkind or discriminatory way.

But I just keep thinking back to my own postpartum season. I tend to be over-ambitious postpartum (I had a few instances of walking too far, for example, because “well, I feel better after this birth than I did after the last one”), and I think that a formal and definitive command to rest would have been a benefit to me. In other words, while I might not want to be excluded from the Flamingo Flamenco(TM), it is probably in my best interest that I sit out until I am restored to my full pinkness.

Postpartum depletion is so real, and that nutrient deficiency can have so many downstream effects across our lives. Sleep deprivation wreaks havoc on our whole families. The adjustment for older children of having to make space for a needy baby is bound to cause regressions and behavioral challenges. In other words, everything in and around us is crying out for rest, for an intense focus on the home. And, like flamingos, this often includes not just mom, but also dad.¹

The closest thing we have in our modern culture to a “ritual of purification” or an “end to postpartum” is the six-week follow up visit with the physician or midwife who attended the birth.² Depending on what type of prenatal and postnatal care you received, the content of this visit might vary significantly, but it typically signals the end of formal postpartum care and the end of pelvic rest (a milestone anticipated or dreaded, depending on who you ask).

While this “ritual” has the potential to be an important checkpoint in the life of the family, what’s sometimes lacking is any accountability in between the birth and the visit. With our first, I was in the care of an obstetrician, who I saw once for about ten minutes before we left the hospital and once for about half an hour at that six-week follow up. I didn’t speak with her at all in between, left to navigate postpartum with advice from women whose children were mere months older than mine, frantically googling or texting when I encountered unexpected challenges. With our second, I was in the care of a midwife, who I saw quite frequently in those six weeks.³ She was always just a text away, happy to answer any questions I had, and our follow-up visits were just as much focused on my physical recovery as my mental and emotional experience of matrescence the second time around. In both cases, that six-week follow-up was pretty much purely a formality, but for very different reasons and with very different experiences in the meantime.

In many ways, this second postpartum period was also defined by James’ summer break. My final follow-up visit fell during the first week of June, which was the first or second week that James was off of school. The summer formed an extended time of adjustment, adaptation, learning, and support as we found our rhythm as a family of four on the out-womb. His transition back to full-time teaching this fall was blessedly slow, and even so, I took a step back from posting here as frequently as I had been over the summer, a decision which was desperately needed, and a habit I look forward to repeating in future seasons of transition.

At five-going-on-six months after birth myself, I generally think of my “postpartum” as completed, but in the thick of it, I couldn’t have given you (and still couldn’t, frankly) a hard-and-fast end date. “Before, this day, I was postpartum but after that day, I’m just a mom with a baby.” As I emerge from my postpartum cocoon, I’m starting to see how many things in my life—cherished friendships, routines and habits, goals and plans and dreams—have fallen to the wayside in the wake of this new person making space for herself in our family. I’m starting to have the capacity to branch back out, to re-establish some of these relationships and habits, to set my sights back on some of these goals. That capacity varies by the day, sometimes wildly, but it’s gradually moving from “postpartum capacity” to “motherhood capacity”. To use everyone’s favorite 2020 catchphrase, we’re “finding our new normal”.

I’ll discuss this further later this fall, but our experience of parenting and family life this second time around has been, in some ways, much more intuitive, much more driven by survival instincts and less by well-researched decisions. Two under two will do that to a family. We’ve had a new set of learning curves, to be sure, as a result of this more intuition-led experience. But we’ve also had space to withhold judgment about habits that are getting us through this season (read: my constant craving for cookies?) with the knowledge that this season will end, and the time for reestablishing healthier long-term habits will come again sooner than we think.

All this to say, postpartum rest is a complicated topic. Rest itself is a complicated topic, and far too often a precious, limited commodity.⁴ There are a lot of factors that contribute to shape our experience of the postpartum season—and, really, any season of transition or any season where we need to take it easy. In these seasons, it can take us a long time for our bright pink feathers to come back. And that reality is something to be noticed and honored, rather than judged and ignored. The time for pinks and oranges, for flamenco dancing and a full social calendar, will come again. For now, we’re focusing on crop milk and not minding our gray feathers.

Where can you stop for a moment this week and “listen to your body” to ensure that you are getting your needs met? Can you ask for accountability or impose some external boundaries to assist you?

1. I’m not going to turn this into a conversation about parental leave in the United States, but know that I could and if you’re also thinking along those lines, I see you. I’m frustrated with you. I want better for our families.

2. In case you’re at home doing the math, six weeks of seven days is, yep, just over 40 days after birth. This lines right up with the timeline of the Jewish purification ritual discussed above.

3. I’m not going to turn this into a medical vs. midwifery model of care rant, but oooooooh boy howdy do James and I have feelings. You can probably guess them. Perhaps another day we can talk about human dignity in the context of pre- and post-natal care.

4. I hope to write on rest as a limited resource soon!