Your needs, their needs

There are situations in which, in spite our best intent, we are just not able to provide any help. We might not know the situation well enough,  or we are simply to far away physically to be able to contribute to solve the problem. However, some people feel so bad about not being helpful, that they insist on meddling even if they are just a distraction or, even worse, a nuisance, with the ultimate goal of helping themselves to feel less bad. Unfortunately, my mother sometimes falls in that category, but I have set my mind into the idea of making her see the difference between tending to the needs of others and tending to her own needs (of helping others).

My brother David and his wife (mostly she) were due to have their first daughter ten days ago, but the date came and went without any sign of the birth being imminent. Two days ago, more than a week past the due date, they went into the hospital to try to induce the contractions through a substance called prostaglandin, which is commonly used to induce childbirth alone or together with its more famous cousin oxytocin. She was having some contractions, but dilation was still very slow, so she was sent back home. My mother, unable to cope with the unknown, asked a couple of time how things were going and my brother patiently answered that there was not much progress.

Photo: Bicanski on Pixnio

In the evening I could not help myself and had to text her to please leave my brother alone, because her continuous pestering would not help things go faster. For her to get news two conditions had to be met: first, that there was any news; second, that David was able and willing to pass on the news. But her asking again and again was not going to help in either direction. She apologized profusely with the argument that "she was just trying to help", which I did not bother to reply to.

Yesterday, around 7 a.m she finally broke water, was brought again to the hospital and a couple of hours later David let us know that they were in the delivery room, but things were still going slow. We all sent our best wishes and waited for additional updates. Around noon dilation was half way through, we all tried to cheered her up and continued to wait until 8:30 p.m. when David reported that they were ready to start pushing.

In the meantime, considering that it was Wednesday, I have inquired with Jack and my mother if we still wanted to have the weekly video call even if David was going to be "busy". My mom, in an incredible display of unjustified optimism, replied "Let's get together and, in case the baby is already born, David can show her to us". I silently rolled my eyes all the way to the back of my head and set up the meeting. Jack excused himself because he was on a business trip and was having drinks with a client, so that left the two of us to chat.

After some catch up on her (still) very active life, my mother started wondering what had happened with the birth: the expulsion phase (from dilation to birth) had been going on for almost three hours and that sounded a bit too long. She used to be a digestive surgeon, which means that she had a lot of general medical knowledge but certainly not the latest in obstetrics. Still, the lack of news was making her anxious and she announced "wait a second, I am going to call". You can imagine that I almost yelled at her not to do it. She was a bit frightened by my reaction, so I pointed out that, if we had not had news yet it was in all likelihood that they were all still busy. Then she came again with the fact that she was worried, and this time I lunged at the opportunity to let her see her error.

Given that she was not in the delivery room and also that she was not an ob/gyn it was obvious that she was not going to be able to provide helpful advice in the delivery. In the best case scenario David would have had to leave his wife pushing to pick up the phone or, in the worst one, they all would have had to endure the ringing until the call went to voice mail. The call was an attempt of my mom to help herself, to soothe her own worries. I insisted that, if she wanted to help, the way to do it was to hold back with the phone and suffer through it until they gave us some news. And apparently I convinced her.

About twenty minutes into the call, finally David sent a picture of baby May and her mother. We all cheered once more, congratulated the mother for her effort and everyone else for their support and my mother, in another prominent display of selfishness, wrote "I want to see a picture of David with the baby". I scuttled to tell her how inappropriate that request was, because it sounded like "we do not care about the mother, let my wishes (from afar) become true". She argued that it was not the meaning and the I was retorting the sentence, but in the end decided to delete the message, leveraging on the fact that neither of my brothers had seen it yet.

It is remarkable how often our intentions to serve someone else's needs are covert attempts to serve our own need to feel helpful. Karen's mother does the same when she collects the laundry that Karen has just hanged to hang it again "the right way": Karen did not ask for any help and did not have any need of it either, but her mother need to feel helpful, so she just acted.

Next time you find yourself trying to help, take a minute to consider if your actions are actually aimed at helping or you are just trying to feel well in an situation where there would otherwise be nothing you can do. Have a nice evening.