Becoming a parent is one of the most beautiful and challenging transformations, particularly in our world today.
We are hardwired to belong, and begin co-regulating with our mothers within the first trimester. We feel and absorb what she experiences through hormones and energetic impressions. While all primary caregivers are important, the bonding with the Mother plays a very influential role in the development of the child’s nervous system, and how they will perceive and interact with the world around them. The irony is that these are often the most challenging years as a parent – I say this also from personal experiences.
If our Mother is at ease, has made peace with any personal or generational trauma, is rested, nourished, and present, the child has a great chance at being resilient.
How many moms do you know in this situation? Honestly, I’m curious.
Motherhood and Mental Health: Moms are overwhelmed
Unfortunately most Mothers experience stress while pregnant or in the early years of raising their family. Some stress is important and normal, in fact titrated amounts can help us develop resilience when we also have the opportunity for recovery. The concern is when stress or lack of emotional attachment due to stress is the primary experience which can affect both the parent and child’s physiology.
How stress affects children’s development
Under chronic stress, the prefrontal cortex doesn’t develop to its greatest potential, which influences the ability to manage emotions and stress. In our formative years, we largely learn implicitly and are primarily in a Theta state (highly influential). Everything a child learns creates new neural pathways that form conscious and subconscious patterns. Many of these patterns are helpful, but as adults we may recognize there are a few we’d rather release!
Stress, Sleep Deprivation, and the Limbic Loop
For many, sleep is compromised in the early years along with other stresses due to all the changes and lack of support in our current society. This results in many parents being chronically stressed, which can leave us reacting from the Limbic brain. If you’re not familiar with the limbic brain – this is where those subconscious patterns and survival mechanisms are ‘stored’. These patterns are the same ones we learned implicitly as children. This is how generational patterns continue to be passed along.
Add in the rapid pace, do it all, instant gratification mindset our society endorses, and parents need to be highly conscious of being present to create healthy emotional bonds with their children.
Tip: While feeding, try to use this time to rest yourself and just BE with your child. I know it can be hard to resist the scrolling… but is it nourishing you?
And for extra fun, let’s add the challenges over the last few years and a complete sense of unpredictability and fear for many. It’s no wonder we are seeing record levels of burnout and more in parents!
This post is not all doom and gloom… stick with me. It’s important to be real and speak to what is happening, because if we try to pretend it’s all butterflies and rainbows we feel worse about ourselves, isolated, and we can’t change anything.
I don’t know about you, but I’m here for change.
I originally wrote this article in 2022, when this wasn’t being talked about. I mentioned we were seeing a rise in chronically activated nervous systems, anxiety, depression, increasing rates of diagnosis (a good thing), and more trauma being experienced due to lack of capacity to handle the day to day, and compromised emotional processing (or regulation). Since then we have made some progress, but there is still a long way to go… and often it falls on parents who are already spread thin.
Pause… and breathe… there is hope.
My Experience With Postpartum Anxiety and Depression
I am a mom to two little ladies (now 4 and 7), I have an incredible husband, we have our health, I was able to process my personal and generational trauma in my twenties, and we live in a beautiful, safe city close to nature. I share this because I believe it’s important to set the stage, and let you know that despite these blessings, my extensive nervous system knowledge, and a nearly life-long practice of meditation and breathwork (thanks to my Mam), I still went through Postpartum Anxiety with my eldest and a severe Postpartum Depression with my youngest.
Full disclosure: With my eldest I was running a community space/ yoga studio that construction blocked for two years, which meant that during the time I was supposed to be with my new angel, I was panicking due to the financial strain. With our youngest, I didn’t sleep more than an hour at a time for a year from when I was 5 months pregnant… and trust me, I tried almost everything except cry-it-out, which is not for us.
From a nervous system perspective, insufficient sleep puts you in a chronic sympathetic state, and overtime this leads to a Dorsal Vagal State… commonly known as Burnout. I was dissociated most of the time due to lack of sleep, escaping from her colic and my guilt at not being able to help her despite having many tools. On top, our two year old would scream on top of the noise to try to ‘control’ it.
I say this, because I believe in being real. So if you are struggling, I hope you know that while each of our situations are unique, you are NOT alone.
The Statistics We Can’t Ignore
- Since Covid, 41.5% of adults have been diagnosed with anxiety or depression (2021, CDC)
- Prior to Covid, 1 in 11 youth were prescribed anxiety medication (2019, Mental Health Canada)
- Up to 70% of moms have feelings associated with postpartum depression (2021, Psychiatry.org)
These stats come as no surprise.
In our current society families receive little support, on top of high costs of living, childcare concerns, and mothers often needing to return to work as soon as possible for financial reasons.
What is the result?
- Stressed families
- Mothers struggling to cope
- Children lacking deep emotional attachment
- And a society experiencing a severe and worsening mental health crisis
Moms are being prescribed antidepressants like candy, and while this can be a bridge and offer relief, it doesn’t get to the root of the problem.
The Systemic Problem Behind Maternal Burnout: Self-Care Isn’t the Whole Answer
We’re told to practice self-care. Thanks.
Self-care can help, to an extent… but this is a much larger systemic issue. What we really need is for society to value and support families and maternal health in particular.
When I was 18, I recall a powerful moment watching my Mam working on her Masters, while solely raising my siblings and I. I realized then that our society was going to need to change drastically, as more women were becoming highly educated and would want to be working moms, or would need to for financial reasons. This insightful moment is what inspired me to start my community space/ yoga studio years later.
Rebuilding the Village Mothers Need
Thankfully there has been a rise in the Conscious Parenting movement. To me it’s not about being perfect, but rather that we are present in the moment, in order to connect with our bodies, process emotions and situations in a healthy way, and lead our children by example. In order to do this, we need to create the space for holistic self-care… and this space often means having more support. This is especially true for parents who are raising neurodivergent children.
We DO need the support of our villages, and for society to value the family unit. This means – affordable housing, nurturing and affordable childcare, maternity/ paternity leave, and investing in holistic Maternal health.
As moms, we also need to use our voices and ask for support from ‘our village,’ which can be incredibly challenging when we are already overwhelmed. I get the fear it may be harder to explain to another how to do what’s needed (if we can even wrap our heads around that). I understand the vulnerability in asking, worrying we may be turned down or dismissed as not being able to be a ‘good mother’.
The truth is, we can not do it all alone… and nor should we.
While it may take a while to make the strides we need, there are some things you can do for yourself… after all, change begins within each of us… and being a mother is perhaps the best lesson in surrendering and the power of transformation!
Nervous System Support for Mothers: Part of the equation
Self-care is as unique as each of us! Do what nourishes your soul and whole-being – art, movement, nature, song, dance, breathwork, connection, meditation or reflection practices and many more!
My work is based on nourishing all the layers of ourselves – physical (somato), emotional, social, intellectual, and energetic. When we are able to create the space to do this – and yes I understand this often means we need someone else to take over as caregiver – we develop greater self-awareness, compassion and empathy for ourselves and others. We are also able to process and release patterns that are no longer serving us. In doing so we can be more present, resilient, experience better health, fulfilling relationships, and most importantly – able to lead our children by example in how we care for ourselves and handle challenging situations.
I believe our purpose is to grow symbiotically in our relationships – with our children, partners, and parents being some of our most important teachers. We won’t be perfect, and that’s ok. What our children remember is how we handle these challenges and make them feel – repair over perfection.
So do something nice for yourself, even if it seems small. In fact 5 minutes every few hours to check in with yourself, eating well, resting when you can, and getting exercise (which you can do with your children) is a great start!
Resources to Support Your Journey
If you’re looking for more resources to empower yourself on your journey, start here: https://glowithin.ca/
You can also find more tools on Instagram @https://www.instagram.com/parentingneurodiversesouls or YouTube @https://www.youtube.com/@parentingneurodiversesouls
“The way we speak to a child becomes their inner-voice”
~ O’Mara
