We stood in the doorway, gawking. Our apartment was almost unrecognizable. We had hurried out the door in the wee hours of Tuesday, a family of two, and now we were back on Thursday, returning at a slower pace – in fact, fairly gliding along so as not to jiggle the very tiny third family member sound asleep in her car seat. Every surface was covered in flowers, cards, and gifts: a welcome sign draped down the wall, courtesy of the kindergarten class, pink balloons on the ceiling, adorable baby clothes hung across the curtain rods, and the counter laden with a heaping It’s-a-Girl basket with a pink champagne bottle peeking out the top.

I was amazed, but not surprised. This was our first time on the receiving end of such largesse, but I can’t count how many times I had the fun of preparation, scurrying around while the family was at the hospital, deep cleaning, bringing practical supplies for mom and baby, arranging gifts, stocking the fridge, putting up decorations, and generally making the house into one giant welcome for a new arrival. It doesn’t matter if it’s a first child or a fifth. Any baby born on a Bruderhof community gets this reception – not just in tangible gifts, but in the love of a two-hundred-member family.

As I was reading the thirtieth congratulation card blurrily at two a.m. (being up anyway), I was filled with wordless gratitude, not only for our baby, but for the love surrounding her. When life is humming along, it’s easy to forget about the strong network that undergirds a life of shared work and goods and time. But it rises up to support you all the same.

As useful as all the material gifts are, support comes in many forms, and one of its most beautiful forms is the “grandma,” an older woman whose task it is to look after a new mom. If there’s a biological grandmother anywhere within travel range, that’s her prerogative. (This is in addition to the routine check-ins by medical professionals who are attuned to conditions like postpartum depression, and also happy to answer questions about nursing or sleep patterns.)

Being a new baby’s grandma is not necessarily a hovering job; some moms need quiet with an occasional hello, and others are delighted to have company. I was in the latter camp; my mom was waiting in our house when we arrived home, folding back the crib blankets so her granddaughter could (hopefully) continue sleeping.

I love my mom every day of the week, but those days were truly next-level as we got to know our little person together, singing to her, cuddling her, helping her clear the five-pound mark. It started my mom down memory lane. As I was her first child and only daughter, who also began life as a bit of a lightweight, I heard all the fond comparisons.

To feed the baby, you must feed the mom; thus, here comes the dad at noon, toting an enormous tray of food – some healthy, some just plain good – made with great intentionality by one of the women in the communal kitchen. It’s her task to cook for the people who require special diets, and then to provide daily lunches and dinners for new parents. The size of one raspberry cream cheese pie alone seemed to operate on the assumption that our household included ten people, not counting the one with no teeth.

It does present the chance to invite friends over to dote on the baby and help attack the pie. It’s also a chance to share the joy of the newborn days with someone who might not often have the chance to hold a child.

In a community the size of ours, two hundred individual visitors would be a little overwhelming. But everyone’s keen to meet the kid, and one way we do that is to take the baby to a ground-floor room with a big window, and have the entire community stroll past to offer their congratulations in one go. There’s a whole canon of lovely lullabies in the Bruderhof song repertoire, and often they will be sung by the people waiting their turn in the line. The window gets smudges from small noses pressing against the glass, and the baby’s parents get aching cheeks from smiling proudly for so long.

My husband stood tall, cradling his little lady – from top to toe, she was as long as his forearm. If one more person had exclaimed, “Look at those eyes!” the buttons on his shirt would have popped off in all directions.

Our baby’s first weeks went so well that I figured I would manage just fine next time around. The second baby had other plans. His colic had us taking shifts to pace around the house like trapped cats. We tried all recommended remedies to no avail. It got to the point where whenever he cried, I cried, and he cried more than he did anything else.

My wonderful neighbor Becky stopped by and offered to take him for a spell one afternoon, but I was still in my managing-mom phase and turned her down politely. By the next morning, I ran across the lawn to her cottage, babe in arms. When she opened the door, I thrust him at her unceremoniously. She took him with a delighted grin, plopped him over her arm like a football, and the noise stopped instantly. Turns out she once had a son with colic, and it had lasted six months. I doubted my sanity would last six weeks.

Even today, when that former baby looks down on her from a great height, she still likes to kid me that he is really her baby whom she has just let me borrow for a bit. Interactions like these, lighthearted but genuine, help a child grow up in the confidence of wide-ranging kinship, like Wendell Berry’s “membership” that extends beyond family ties.

There’s one ceremony that parents look forward to especially – a more solemn welcome not just to a community, but to a church.

Of course, there’s a biblical precedent for this; the second chapter of Luke describes Mary and Joseph taking eight-day-old Jesus to the temple “to present him to the Lord,” and the accompanying prophecies and praise of Simeon and Anna as soon as they behold the baby.

Presentation of infants to the church is also an old Anabaptist tradition first mentioned in a letter from theologian Balthasar Hubmaier in 1525: “I like to assemble the congregation in the place of baptism, bringing the child.… As soon as his name has been given to him, the whole congregation on bended knee prays for the child, entrusting him to the hands of Christ, that he may be ever closer to the child and pray on his behalf.”

This presentation reflects a deep theological point: Anabaptists believe that babies are born innocent, an untainted soul entering a tarnished world. Bruderhof founder Eberhard Arnold once wrote that “every child is a thought of God,” and thus should be welcomed with reverence for the mystery of God’s specific thought for that specific child.

A church blessing befits a baby whose family is also part of a wider church family. The parents will bring their child to the center of our meeting circle and put him in the arms of a pastor, who then speaks out a blessing and a prayer requesting God’s guidance in the child’s life. Sometimes the baby gets passed along to the grandparents, who add their own wishes for the child to grow in health, love, an understanding of God’s path for him or her, and service to others. This is followed by a prayer in which all members take silent part, vowing to uphold the child and support his parents in the years ahead.

Our good friend and pastor Richard Scott gave the blessing for our son. He had baptized me, married us, and seen us through quite a few ups and downs already, so we were glad he was the one holding our baby, looking down at him as he spoke: “Now when we think of this little child, it reminds us how Jesus took the little children in his arms to receive them. He let them come to him, saying, ‘Whoever receives this child in my name, receives me.’ When anyone believes in Jesus, they are called children of God, and children of his Spirit.”

We were happy with our son and daughter, born sixteen months apart but now as inseparable as twins. Number three arrived five years after we had packed the baby clothes away. Hearing again the prayer and promise, I felt a new, stronger sense of the big circle of faith surrounding us, into which God gave us this beautiful baby who will grow up with all the usual struggles and joys of childhood and adolescence. But we won’t be going it alone, either in the struggle or the joy.