The new parents’ not-to-do list

I see that more than the usual number of days have passed since the last blog post. Several times over the last week I have thought about sitting down to write something, but other activities have always taken precedence.

For me, the excuse is not “I was sitting on the couch feeding the baby.” Many new parents, however (especially new moms), have exactly that excuse for explaining with they did not [answer an e-mail] [return the boss's phone call] [send out the baby announcements] [fill in the blank with another task].

Sadly, many new mothers (especially in our get-it-done culture) feel guilty for not immediately getting “back to their lives.” I believe they do themselves and their nascent families a great injustice. There is a reason why so many cultures create a sacrosanct space around the first 40 days or so (about 6 weeks) of a mother’s time with her new baby. While the traditions can seem quaint or even backward (as described in a recent Slate.com article), I think modern moms would do well to follow the intention behind these customs. Here’s why:

1) REST. So many of us are unable to do what we need to do to take care of our health unless forced to do so. When you have a newborn–and especially when you’re breastfeeding–it’s not just your own health that’s at stake. My own postpartum doula told me something that has stuck with me for 13 years: “Sleep makes milk.” I liked the simplicity of it, and physiologically, it’s true. Your body produces greater quantities of prolactin, the milk-making hormone, when you’re sleeping.

2) HELP. As with self-care, too many moms are unable to ask for–or even accept–help with the tasks around caring for a newborn. I often encounter couples who want the first few weeks to be a romantic bubble around mom, dad, and baby. What they don’t realize is how grueling it can be to care for a newborn (sorry to those of you who have not yet given birth) and how this hope too often leads to dad morphing from a loving partner into the errand-runner. Take all the help you can get: from letting people make meals for you to tossing in a load of laundry and swabbing down the bathroom. If your relatives will be more of a hindrance than a help, have discussions with them beforehand about your expectations, and be prepared to set limits. If you can afford it, hire a professional postpartum doula.

3) NO SEX (!?) This prohibition is as likely to come from the medical community as from tradition. Your obstetrician or midwife usually recommends abstaining from sexual activity until after your 6-week postpartum checkup. Of course, even after you’ve been cleared for action, most moms don’t magically start feeling like their old frisky selves on day 43 postpartum. As with all the physical and emotional changes of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, this is a process. Assuming you and your partner are in it for the long haul, there’s nothing wrong with waiting until you feel healed in more than the physical sense. And of course there is no prohibition against snuggling, cuddling, and smooching!

These “not doing” prescriptions can be hard to follow, especially if you have been accustomed to crossing things off your to-do list. If you absolutely must have a to-do list in the early weeks postpartum, please make sure it contains only these three items:

1. EAT
2. SLEEP
3. FEED THE BABY
   REPEAT AS NEEDED

I guarantee that sticking to this for the first couple of months will get you back to feeling like your old self sooner than if you try to act like your old self right away.

– Audrey

Cry me a river

Babies cry. It is a fact of life. Why? They cry because they need us and their other signals have failed to get our attention. (Yes, babies have lots of other methods of communication–just take a look at some information about infant states.) They cry because they are tired. They cry because they just don’t know what else to do.

As we grow older, we learn to get through life without crying. For boys and men especially, crying becomes not a natural expression of an emotional state but a sign of weakness. Some of us have learned to suppress crying to such a degree that we feel uncomfortable doing it even in front of our most intimate partners.

For women who don’t cry easily, the few weeks after giving birth can be a gift. The hormonal shifts that follow pregnancy leave you in an emotionally vulnerable place we often refer to as the “baby blues.” You might find yourself crying at almost anything (for me, it was a car insurance commercial).

The surprise for many people is that crying feels really good! In the years since my own postpartum outbursts, I’ve learned a lot about the emotional and physical release of crying. It works for adults. It works for kids. And it works best when you can let it happen, without judgment or censoring.

Because of our histories, many of us react strongly to our children crying. We respond to them, but we really want them to stop. This need in us can lead to all kinds of unhelpful responses, from overfeeding to inappropriately expressed frustration (the most severe of which might be shaking or otherwise hurting a baby). (For more on crying, see the Secrets of Baby Behavior blog.)

Embracing crying as a normal part of the spectrum of human expression helps us truly listen to our kids, as infants and as they get older. We fix what we think is wrong–the dirty diaper, the hunger, the boo-boo–and then, if the crying doesn’t stop, we simply hold them.

In the process, we may learn to let go a little more. Who knows–we might even end up crying too.

– Audrey

Get out of the house

I know how hard it is to get out of the house. Even after 13-plus years of being a parent and honing the morning routine, I experience many days when getting myself and everyone else out the door is a stressful, last-minute rush.

With  a newborn, getting out of the house can be even more difficult. I remember the days when every step toward the door seemed to be blocked by another obstacle: a diaper change, a hungry baby, or just plain inertia (I can’t get up off the couch).

I remember too, how great it felt to arrive at my destination, especially when the destination was a group of moms in situations similar to mine. My oldest son was only three weeks old the first time I ventured out to a new moms’ group. I  probably arrived late and I know I spent most of the time nursing. But I had my first encounter with a wonderful group of women who remain my friends to this day.

When I visit new parents postpartum and find them alone in their homes, I worry. You shouldn’t attempt parenthood on your own. Even if you’re capable of meeting your basic needs for food and sleep, becoming a parent–especially for the first time–cries out for community.

The Bay Area is blessed with many ways to build this community. Numerous city-based mother’s clubs, parent centers like Blossom Birth and Harmony Birth, hospital-based support groups, and gatherings like Peninsula Birth Companions’ Drop-In Breastfeeding Support group can give you a destination and a nudge out the door.

Yes, blogs can connect you with anyone anywhere anytime and YouTube and Skype are great. But there’s still no substitute for communing with an actual, in-the-flesh human being. Until women start having virtual babies, it will be worth the effort to get yourself and your little one out into the world, no matter how challenging it might seem.

–Audrey

Your real job as a parent

There’s a line in the breastfeeding video I use in my classes (Baby-Led Breastfeeding by Kittie Franz) that goes something like this: “Don’t think: ‘I need to get her to eat,’ think : ‘I need to get her to calm down.’”

After about the 50th time listening to that line along with my students, I had a revelation: that’s the best approach to anything you’re trying to get your child of any age to do. Get the shoes on the toddler? Have the teenager finish his homework? You’re not going to get far with a lot of tension in the room and one–or both–of you screaming.

That’s all well and good, but until I found a tool to help me do this, it was just a wild dream. There are many possible approaches. The one that works for me is Hand-in-Hand Parenting, which emphasizes listening and connection. I felt drawn to a method that focuses on encouraging rather than insisting–while still maintaining firm boundaries.

This is a radically different view of parental authority than the one many of us were raised with and can take a lot of getting used to. But if you think ahead to the day when you won’t be right beside your child to cajole, bribe, insist, and browbeat her into doing something, the idea of helping her to stay calm and centered so she can make the best decision for herself begins to seem quite reasonable. Of course, you’re not going to let the baby starve… but you can bet that the calm baby eats more than the one who’s upset!

–Audrey

It’s either hard or it’s easy

Even after more than 10 years of helping moms with breastfeeding and more than seven years as a birth doula watching first feedings and then following up to see how things go, I’m not sure I can say with certainty what makes for a “hard” vs. an “easy” time breastfeeding.

The first challenge is definitional. As I like to point out in relation to labor pain, one person’s “oh, that’s a little uncomfortable” is another person’s “oh my god that’s so excruciating I can’t tolerate it.” And so with breastfeeding. Most women experience some discomfort in the early days of breastfeeding. Exactly how much, and whether this discomfort signifies that something wrong, is impossible for anyone but the mother to really figure out.

Then there’s the fact that breastfeeding doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Mothers come to it with all the biases, prejudices, associations, knowledge, and  beliefts that have informed their lives to that point. This life experience colors not only the actual breastfeeding experience but how a mother perceives it.

I was remarking recently about the fact that sometimes moms who have the most challenging birth experiences–long labors, unexpected surgery, etc.–have the easiest breastfeeding experiences, as if the universe were somehow rewarding them with a gift for enduring hardship, while moms who have short, uneventful births sometimes end up with all the breastfeeding challenges.

Of course, this does not hold true statistically and nobody should wish for a hard birth just to have an easy time breastfeeding. But it does illustrate that despite everything we know about how to make breastfeeding relatively easy (lots of skin-to-skin time early on, unrestricted and frequent feedings in the first weeks, good support for mom), there are factors that are out of parents’ control. This is because the breastfeeding relationship involves two people, mom and baby, and mom is in control only of her end.

If you remember this, then everything will be much easier, breastfeeding included.

–Audrey

In sickness and in health: a little selfishness goes a long way

Those of us who have taken marriage vows are familiar with the promise that we’ll be there for our spouses no matter what–whether either one of us is sick or healthy.

Mothers usually don’t make such an explicit promise to our children when we become pregnant. If we did, it would be a one-way vow (at least until our kids are grown and we reach our dotage.) We are there for them 24x7x365 whether we’re sick or healthy.

This late-winter/early spring season when many parents and children are succumbing to some nasty viruses is a good time to remind ourselves– especially as mothers, on whom much of the caretaking task still rests–of the importance of an idea I try to communicate to all new parents but sometimes have trouble following myself:

CARE FIRST FOR YOURSELF

I realized recently as I lay in bed, feverish and achey, that coming down with the flu dramatically illustrates the necessity of this approach. Until I recovered, I would be unable to care for anyone else.

It’s easy to see why you need to take care of yourself when you have the flu. But applying this credo to less dire situations often seems selfish. Going out with friends and leaving the kids with a sitter? Taking a half hour in the afternoon to have some tea and read a book while the kids (shudder!) watch a video? Not reading the 14th story before tucking them in to bed? These are all part of parents learning what they need to be successful parents and setting limits around their kids’ needs–not harshly, but in a loving way that serves the whole family better.

There are many parenting philosophies that help parents do this. Some approach it from an emotional perspective; some from a physical; some from both.

But it really doesn’t matter what philosophy you adopt or exactly how you go about it. The important thing is to realize that sometimes the most selfless thing you can do for your family is to be, well, a little selfish.

–Audrey

In the moment

Though it was not all that many years ago (in the grand scheme of things) that I was walking zombie-like through the haze of new motherhood, the challenges of those early months seem part of a far distant past. Still, I can easily conjure up how those days felt, dictated as they were by the seemingly ceaseless needs of a tiny child.

A colleague has said of babies: “It’s amazing that one little baby can so overwhelm two working professionals that they can’t even find time to take a shower.” And it’s true!

These days, I don’t have to wake several times in the night to feed my sons, or figure out how to ensure that they get at least one good nap during the day so they can sleep at night. My time is much more “my own.”

So what’s to miss about the days of being a new mom? Odd as it sounds, I miss the constant reminders that my time is not really my own.  I miss being forced to come back again and again to this moment.  The irony is that I couldn’t appreciate living in the moment when I was living in those moments. I only wanted to get more sleep and have more “control” over my life.

For all of you mothers and fathers now experiencing the intensity of the first year of your child’s life, I won’t say “enjoy it because it lasts such a short time” (though that’s true). Instead I’ll just hope that when you look back you can remember the joys and satisfactions that came wrapped up along with the sleep deprivation and worries.

And I hope you can take the advice of my grandmother, who knew nothing about Zen philosophy but was wise enough to say, “Don’t wish your life away.”

– Audrey