Thoughts on Raising (and Teaching) Children during COVID

Touching on the social dynamics of children going to school online and on Zoom…

You have a front-row view of shifts in your child that you’ve seen pre-pandemic to now: but how can parents identify alarming changes and help combat the effects of COVID on children? Read below for some thoughts on how COVID might be affecting your children, and tips on how to help out.

Zoom is the New Playground

We spoke with Stephanie Juarez, a working mom in the Southern California area, who has noticed major changes in her son, who is 17 years old. She recalls that before COVID, her son was on the shy side- but luckily his Sophomore year of high school was becoming a breakthrough. “He joined the water polo team and we finally felt like he was improving his social skills, making friends, and was the happiest we’d seen him. Before that, his interests were in video games or activities that isolated him”. She told us the first few weeks of lockdown were easy for her son; his friends would keep up via FaceTime, Call of Duty (an extremely popular Xbox game among teenage boys), or the occasional phone call.

But as time went on, week after week on Zoom school, her son began to take some steps backward and was showing signs of burnout. Although he started with a strong desire to get back into water polo and wanted to keep up with his high school friends, these were soon replaced by mood changes which led him into isolation. Stephanie recalls her and her husband purchasing a VR toy that he hadn’t picked up in months. “I’ll never forget the moment he picked up that headset for the first time in months. We were devastated- but what can you do? Of course, we set limits and encourage him to do other things, but to see him shift so quickly back to his ‘virtual world’ was heartbreaking. Kids don’t know how to cope with what’s going on.”

One recommendation that Stephanie said helped her was more intentional family time. She said she let her two children pick meals each week and would involve them in cooking. Dad would bring them outside more on neighborhood walks. And they even started watching movies together. She also called up a few other moms from school and set up social distance play dates, which she feels has helped her son a lot.

Loss of a Routine

 Does your family (among many others) rely on resources like sports, summer camps, after-school daycare, and general activities to keep your children active (and you sane while you’re working)? Chances are those programs haven’t started back up, and if they have, they’re a lot shorter than they were before. Kids used to be learning how to schedule their lives: school, then sports, then bath time, dinner, and bed, etc. Now, we expect them to say “use this meeting password at 12:15, then log off at 1:15, and go back on at 1:30 while mama is working”? If your kid is anywhere under the age of 5, good luck. Creating an at home school schedule is virtually impossible, but here are our tips on how to keep it controlled:

If you’re also working from home, (if your schedule permits), try creating a fun activity for your kid called “walk to class”. Getting up and moving will help their attention span, and this will make it fun. Get up from their workspace, walk outside or upstairs, and turn back around. Then, diiiing! The next class is in session! Additionally, call on other members of the household to help start your little ones Zoom classes, so you’re not on duty 24/7. Last resort, try forming a study “pod”- this is where a few mothers will hire a tutor to monitor a few kids at a time while they attend school.

We also loved this article that shares tips and tricks for even the most distracted children… It’s something new for children, teachers, and parents, so try to remain flexible and patient! Read the full article here.

Inability to Become Inspired

Kids aren’t used to learning in isolation; it’s just not natural. The moments of asking a friend next to you what the teacher said or raising your hand to have your teacher check your work are nonexistent. Studies have shown that kids who felt like they had friends and supportive teachers thought school was more interesting, which made them more engaged and perform better. Recess is the best part of school, and without that- it makes the incentives much lower for kids to pay attention.

How to cope with this: try engaging more than usual in your child’s schoolwork. If you can help make up for their lack of in-school support, they’ll at least know someone cares. Even though 2nd-grade spelling can be the last thing you want to do at the end of a long day, it will have wonderful effects and lead to positive reinforcement for your children.

Lack of Exercise

Okay, P.E. over Zoom? Give us a break. Kids can hardly pay attention for 10 minutes over Zoom, let alone doing a form of exercise indoors. Parents, now is the time to dust off your workout gear and get some movement in with your kids. Children are not meant to sit in front of a computer all day: this not only affects their mental health, but also their bodies. Your kids need a break from screen-time. Studies have shown that children who have too much screen time don’t sleep as well, develop blurry vision, and have dry, irritated eyes.

Here are some solutions: monitor unnecessary screen time. Take into consideration how long their classes are and try to get them off the screen in between (but still allow them to socialize when school is done!). Also, take those smart devices out of their bedrooms, because they can make sleep a hard time. Lastly, try getting them outdoors for a daily walk or bit of exercise so they can release some of that energy. 

Stress and Anxiety 

It’s no surprise that kids have already shown much higher levels of stress and anxiety since the pandemic began. Parents are much more in tune with children, many of which have begun taking away more screen time or social media out of concern. It’s important to realize it’s inevitable to have more screen time right now because it’s the only way our kids can stay connected. Those who can’t talk to friends at all can easily become lonely, or even depressed.

Make sure you check in with your child once every day. Make mental health a priority in your household, and learn to talk about feelings. The best thing is to stay in tune with yourself, your partner, and your children. You never know how someone is coping with this pandemic. Try to make the most of it by being there for each other through these tough times. Our community is here for you, too.

International Women's Month: Celebrating Strong Mothers Who Endured COVID Pregnancies

Ahh… March. It’s a special one! The beginning of Spring, Daylight Savings (for some of us!), and of course, that special week you get extra time with kids- Spring Break. On top of all of this, in the past few years, women have come together more than ever to fight for women’s equality.

As you may know- March is International Women’s Month. Today, we wanted to feature a couple of moms who were pregnant throughout COVID, and in our eyes are absolute superstars. Pregnancy was already hard enough; throw a pandemic on top of it and now we’re in uncharted territory. Women are going to appointments alone, not having the opportunity to celebrate with family, and some aren’t even able to have their partners in the delivery room. Suddenly, the days where we struggled to pick out items in our nurseries are overshadowed by much larger problems.

If you’ve had any part of your pregnancy during this pandemic, we want to start by saying: you are incredible and we are in awe of you. So what better way to celebrate Women’s Month than to feature a story of an incredible mom who went into lockdown the week after she announced her pregnancy to her family? Below is our conversation with Bobbie Marlow, a 35-year-old mother of two beautiful boys.

Before we talk all about your pregnancy journey, I wanted to first congratulate you on your beautiful baby boy, Harry! What do you think has been the most surprising thing about being a mother this past (five) months?

Thank you, thank you! Well, there’s certainly one thing that hasn’t changed with this pregnancy: I haven’t had any sleep. Babies are just programmed to keep us chronically awake, I think.

But yeah, obviously we had baby Harry in the middle of a pandemic so pretty much everything has changed this time around. There are definitely silver linings, as well as drawbacks. I think the thing that’s been the most different this time around is that I’ve had my husband at home so much these past 5 months since he’s working from home. He’s still on calls the whole day, but having him be able to take a 15-minute break here and there, and do lunches at home has made a huge difference. I work from home too so it’s allowed me a little extra work time, or a quick ride on the Peloton when he can watch the baby.

So take me back to the very beginning. It was February of last year, and you found out you were pregnant- how exciting!

Yes! I found out we were pregnant in early February, so I was due in November. I only had a month of my pregnancy before we went into lockdown. Not to mention, we didn’t even find out until a couple of weeks before California shut down.

 You had just told your family you were pregnant, and a week later, suddenly the world was on lockdown. Most of us were fighting for toilet paper and food. What did that time look like when you were just starting your pregnancy?

Oh, gosh. It was nothing like I was expecting my pregnancy to be like. We’d just gotten back from a trip to Mexico when we found out we were pregnant, and of course, in those two weeks, I had so many things going through my head. What gender was the baby, how would we tell my family, what would the gender reveal look like, how would I decorate their room, and of course- where would I go for my babymoon?

So then, a week before the pandemic, I told my immediate family I was pregnant. My parents, my sister and her husband, and my little brother. I’d been wanting another baby for so long. Obviously, I’d heard about COVID-19, but I didn’t think much would come of it. Then, on March 16th, California went into full lockdown. I had no idea what to think. I was terrified. We were lucky enough to find a grocery store that had a good amount of things that my husband went to, and he stocked up on some diapers and Lysol. We wiped everything down and he immediately took a shower and we bleached his clothes. Luckily we had a couple of paint masks in our garage because I called 17 stores around us- no exaggeration- and they were all sold out.

The pandemic has been an unprecedented time for everyone, especially mothers-to-be. The thoughts and challenges traditionally associated with pregnancy have been exacerbated ten-fold, bringing on waves of stress and anxiety and leaving expectant couples with more questions than answers. But, we have you covered in our article, Coping with Pregnancy Anxiety During a Pandemic, where we speak on ways to overcome these negative feelings by offering a few simple daily changes that have the ability to alter your pregnancy experience for the better.

That must have been terrifying. Once the shock settled in and you realized, okay, we’re going to be shut down for a while- what went through your mind?

Of course, my main fear was somehow getting the virus and something happening to my baby. On a smaller level, I was concerned about getting food, diapers, and sanitizer for the house. I had no idea what was going on or what to think, and pretty much went into panic mode. Not only was I providing for myself, but also a tiny baby who certainly couldn’t fight off a virus-like what I was seeing on the news. I was also afraid for my 3.5-year-old, and my husband. This was when we were watching the news hourly and hearing devastating stories of young families who were getting the virus severely enough that they were on ventilators. It was devastating and the scariest thing to watch- I mean, we were all watching it unfold just waiting for answers.

What do you think were the main differences between your first and second pregnancies?

I think any person that was pregnant at the beginning of the pandemic can acknowledge there are so many things we’ve taken for granted in our perception of pregnancy. With my last pregnancy, my biggest concerns were the color I’d paint the nursery, or how I’d announce my pregnancy on social media. Now, I was just praying my husband could be in the delivery room to see our baby.

Was your husband able to go to all your appointments? Was there any talk of him not being able to be present at the birth?

Oh gosh, yes. There was so much uncertainly in the beginning. I just remember hearing stories about women, specifically in New York, that weren’t able to have their husbands in the delivery room. I had nightmares about it, wondering how I’d do it on my own. I couldn’t imagine having him drop me off and not being able to be present at the birth. I was extremely lucky though because he was able to be at the birth.

I think the saddest moment we had is when we realized he wasn’t going to be present for the gender reveal appointment. So that’s when we decided we wanted to keep the gender a secret until the baby was born, so we could enjoy that moment together. It also gave us something to look forward to during such a dark time. 

How did your support system work throughout covid? I know you have a pretty close family that was very present during your other pregnancy; this time around, were they able to support you from afar?

Again, really lucky in this department because my family lives very local to me. My parents had hired a shopper for themselves, my sister, and I (my parents are in their 70s, and my sister is in a high-risk category). The choices at the store were nonexistent; it was like, take whatever you can get.  We also live near some farms, so I was able to coordinate a few pick-ups. My family tried to make the best of it. A couple of nights a week we would all make the same dinner and send each other photos and eat at the same time. That really kept me going and made me feel like I wasn’t alone.

My parents also have a backyard, so we drove over and sat on chairs about 30 feet from them and talked to them once a week. I recognize how lucky I was to have this experience though because a lot of my friends didn’t.

What was your secret to keeping such a good mindset through such a dark time?

To be honest, seeing how the world was coming together during such a terrible time gave me hope. I was so convinced that someone would find a vaccine soon. I was also tremendously inspired by healthcare and frontline workers. I thought to myself, if they can work on the front lines and risk their lives to keep our world running, I can get through this pregnancy that I have the privilege of sitting at home for.

Were there any silver linings in having your pregnancy at this time? 

Absolutely. I definitely had more time to focus on important things like staying in tune with my body and my baby during the pregnancy. I had more time at home with my husband, more time with my 3-year-old before there was a new addition to the mix, and was constantly surprised by how everyone continued to show up for me. I felt like the world was going through it together, and I wasn’t alone.

A Male Perspective On Birth Work: An Interview with Austin Humble

Austin Humble, the recent founder of Compa Doula, is a young man with a vision and passion for birth work beyond his years. His sense of curiosity for the divine feminine as well as his eagerness to spread his birth philosophy radiates a sense of comfort, humility, and lightness that is exactly what we would want in a doula. Not to mention, his beautiful newborn daughter, Willow, joined us for the conversation, chiming in with various baby noises that made us all smile. 

Before we talk about your new business, I wanted to ask you about being a new father! Congratulations. What has surprised you most about fatherhood?

Oh, man. What has really surprised me is that I could just put her [Willow] on the ground and watch her for three hours and still be invested and inquisitive. Usually, I flit from thing to thing, but with Willow, she requires a lot of attention in a cool way. It’s like, I WANT to give her all my attention and she’s easy to focus on. And of course, they say, you’ll never love something like your child. And that’s surprising, even though you know ahead of time that that’s coming. 

You’re also a new father in the middle of a pandemic. What anxieties and stresses have you experienced with everything that’s going on in the world right now? Pandemic aside, your wife also went into labor during the Black Lives Matter riots here in LA. 

Britta Bushnell in her book “Transformed By Birth,” talks about how the birthing partner needs to be the banks to their partners’ river so they can be free to change and move and embrace the wild nature of labor. And Casie [Austin’s wife], had to remind me while all the news was happening and the helicopters were hovering, that it was time to turn it off. She said, “I can’t have that energy around this birth space right now.” And so that’s been one thing. Just that mindfulness that I want to be the protector of this space, the cultivator of this garden. And with the pandemic, I actually started doing a lot of cooking. I really fell in love with cooking really nourishing foods for Casie. I felt like, if I’m giving Casie a bowl of warm, nourishing food, then I’m, in effect, helping the baby. And as for staying at home, all of those peaceful homebody things are also great for a pregnant Mama. So there’s some alignment there. 

So tell me how you got interested in birth work. How did you begin Compa Doula? 

Even before the pandemic, our doula and midwife would always say, “Woah Austin, you seem so curious about this process.” This was news to me because I was just acting like myself. But I was getting these positive affirmations and it felt good. Then after the birth, I heard of DONA [doula training], which is like, the most official sounding place to get your credentials. I took a weekend course with Ana Paula Markel and I was like, this is awesome. I saw that there’s a sizable amount of female doulas, but not a lot of men who have doula practices. Then it was our lactation consultant that suggested I check out this Dad’s group for some support during the postpartum period. That’s when I realized that, a lot of the time, the things we need ourselves are the things we want to teach others. I wanted to be able to support partners so that they can support their birthing partner. Doulas are truth seekers. It feels like, I don’t know… this is transformative work I guess. 

How has being a doula changed or deepened your understanding of the female experience?

Wow. I’ve learned so much about the female body. I mean, my wife is a pelvic floor physical therapist, so we have a yoni model over here and a vulva model over there. I feel like I’m surrounded by the divine feminine that lives in my wife and my daughter at all times. I see [women] as so powerful and brave. My wife, from the beginning, has always been the type of woman who, like, uses a diva cup and gives her menstrual blood to the plants. I’m not just gonna sit here and watch her do that stuff and then not ask questions about it. Being a doula, in a way, is historical work, anthropological work, and anatomical work. There’s so much storytelling in birth. 

What’s your perspective on home birth versus hospital birth?

It’s all about informed consent. Preparing them for whatever is gonna happen. You’re acting at this beautiful liaison in this big world of birth. A lot of the time, what we see depicted in pop culture are things being done to the mama instead of her saying, “Yes, I want that.” Mama’s are already grappling with losing their autonomy by carrying a child, but then when things are getting poked and prodded and adjusted, they feel even more out of control. But between a home birth or hospital birth, one is not better than the other. You need to have all the options available to you. 

What’s it like being a male in a predominantly female line of work?

So sick! I love women. I love that, kind of, “tend and befriend” vibe that women have. In my very first doula course, it was me, one non-binary person, and forty women. Most of the women were actually black, which was awesome because we need more black doulas and midwives. Nothing about it makes me feel insecure about my masculinity. I think the world could benefit from more female OBGYNs and more male doulas. We need to balance some of these imbalances that we have in the world. 

What is your trajectory for Compa?

Well, I’m starting my own dad’s group. It’s gonna be a little bit more geared towards the spiritual nature of being a dad. I want to have a group where men can come together and talk about the emotional nature of their lives. So that’s next. Then, I’m working on making a curriculum to teach a birth prep class just for the dads. I mean, I googled top pregnancy questions from men, and I realized there needs be more education and there needs to be a safe place for them to ask those questions. 

How has your doula experience informed your role as a husband? 

I think that’s what’s funny about being a doula. A lot of the stuff I was already doing for Casie during the pregnancy are the things a doula recommends. Foot rubs, belly rubs, and eye gazing meditations. Connecting so that oxytocin can flow. That kind of behavior that helps your partner feel supported is also good for the marriage.

The pregnancy journey often focuses on the mother’s role - her responsibilities, challenges, and emotions… However, we know that often times, she isn’t alone. Read more about some of the obstacles men face in their transition to parenthood in our article here!

So talk to me about the postpartum meals you offer! What’s on the menu?

Every little bit of knowledge I’ve acquired about food over the last few years, I throw it in the pot! I’ve learned from a traditional Chinese medicine person about having more warming foods with pregnancy. I can make a really good kitchuri, which is basically this savory porridge with vegetables and lentils. When it comes down to pregnancy, you really want to eat things that are a net gain of energy and nutrients. I also make a bone broth and lots of soups. Not a lot of smoothies though, because they’re cold. You want to be drinking things like teas and broths because they’re warming. 

That all sounds delicious! I was excited to see you offer that.

Yeah, we also encapsulated the placenta and Casie’s milk supply has been amazing. We can’t pinpoint that as the main reason, but it definitely helps. And that’s what’s incredible about birth, really. It’s such a pyramid built up of so many little choices and decisions. If one thing goes awry, you also have 70 other things that you did right. Pregnant people need to be reminded that, “Hey, this is a ten-month process, and all these books that tell you to do this and that are great, but check in with yourself to see what feels good.” 

Time to Think About Pre-ternity by Avra Siegel

A trimester or two ago (I’m now 38 weeks pregnant), I was texting with a friend of mine, also pregnant, lamenting how terrible I was feeling. I had been up all night, stricken with nausea, frantically Googling “heartburn or heart attack?” because my epic chest pains were so bad that they were making me feel faint.

I’d been Deputy Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls, and then worked as Director of Public Policy for Care.com. Yet, I was totally unprepared for how challenging pregnancy would be--and felt uncomfortable voicing this to anyone but someone else who was also pregnant.

I didn’t want to be seen as complaining or ungrateful -- or even worse, not committed to my career. And I know I’m not alone. For the millions of American women who work outside the home, the career consequences that frequently accompany starting a family can begin during pregnancy, well before the baby arrives. The truth is, pretending pregnancy doesn’t sometimes suck isn’t doing anyone any good.

Yes, America, finally, is having the very overdue and well-deserved conversation about paid parental leave. But can we also talk about pregnancy for a second -- a life event that three-quarters of working women will experience at some point? 

It interrupts your physical and emotional body in ways that – unless you have been pregnant before – are pretty hard to fully appreciate.  

Let’s take, for example, this whole “morning sickness” thing. Almost 90 percent of women experience some symptoms of nausea during pregnancy. Ninety. That’s not the exception, it’s the rule. Of course, it’s not necessarily “morning sickness” at all – for millions of women, it’s more like “all-day” sickness, an ailment that can make you feel nauseous 24/7 for months on end. Some of us are even lucky enough to experience this for the entire duration of our pregnancy.

I have spent countless days triaging. I’d time my meetings and work for the first half of the day when my nausea was less severe and building in afternoon breaks to account for the freight train of nausea and exhaustion that I knew would come. In between I’d forage for something with any semblance of nutrition to eat, even though just a waft of fresh-cooked vegetables made me gag.

That’s been my life for 9 months – and it doesn’t leave a lot of room for being productive at work.

It’s time for employers and politicians to recognize that pregnancy is hard, birth is messy, and being postpartum is an actual medical event that requires recovery.

At Care.com, I was extremely fortunate to have unlimited paid sick days, but many workers don’t have even one. In fact, only 60% of workers have access to paid sick days, and those who are left out are at the bottom end of the income scale.  More than 82 percent of low-wage workers don’t have access to paid sick days, and the majority of low-wage workers are women, many of whom are women of color. Additionally, forty-three percent of women working in the private sector are not able to take a single paid sick day when they are ill. 

My heart breaks for the waitress who has to be on her feet all day, smelling the fumes   from the kitchen, trying to hold herself together as a cranky customer gives her a hard time, and she grits her teeth, swallows her nausea (literally) and musters all the strength she has to just to get through her shift. Now there’s a woman who needs a paid, job-protected sick day.

Or how about the array of doctor’s visits to attend, especially women experiencing high-risk pregnancies who may need three or four times the number of typical pre-natal appointments? The fact is that for a variety of reasons, low-income women face a greater number of risk-factors during pregnancy, and those are the very same women who are far less likely to have access to paid sick days.

From my work at the White House and at Care.com, I know there are simple, low-cost fixes that could help keep women healthier and encourage safer pregnancies, all the while reducing absenteeism and increasing productivity.

The array of flexible work arrangements such as teleworking, flexible start-stop times, and even the new rage of nap-rooms (yes, nap rooms!) could alleviate so much stress for pregnant workers.  (Care.com has four of them)

For hourly workers, companies could use technology that allows for ease of shift-swapping, so that when a pregnant woman needs to adjust her schedule, she has the ability to do so more easily. These types of solutions allow for all workers and employers to benefit, with the added bonus of making work more flexible and manageable for pregnant workers in particular.

Even more important than enabling these women to be more productive at work, ideas like these help foster a culture of trust proven to help companies and organizations retain their valuable talent and participation in the workforce the long run – a benefit to families, companies, and the broader economy writ large.

I told my bosses the reality of my condition during pregnancy and am so lucky to have received full support and encouragement from the CEO down. All of us pregnant women who are in a position to do so can do our part to speak up at work. Because each and every time you tell your manager how you are feeling, you empower other women to do the same. This single action gives confidence and credence to those around you and helps to change the workplace culture from the ground up.

Let’s be real: it’s not like women got pregnant on their own – there was another person 50% responsible for that pregnancy. But men just happen not to be the biological sex that bears the child, and so all the consequences of the pregnancy fall on women because of our physical role in childbearing and rearing. When our laws and workplace policies do not account for the reality of pregnancy and childbirth, it is the height of gender inequality. We must do better, not because pregnancy is a disability, but because it is actually a condition that should be honored, revered and celebrated.

We are perpetuating the human race after all.

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Avra Siegel, Gender Equity & Workplace Policy Guru

Avra Siegel is Policy and Strategic Partnerships consultant for the private and public sectors. She was formerly the Director of Public Policy and Strategic Partnerships at Care.com after serving as the Deputy Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls in the Obama administration. Avra also held positions at the White House National Economic Council where she led the women’s economic security portfolio.

Father Feelings with Ben Ringler, MFT

Psychologist Ben Ringler and I spent time dissecting some of the core obstacles men face in their transition to parenthood. Ben’s counseling practice focuses on men, particularly as they approach fatherhood, and he is a father of two himself. While most of our readers are women, we hope that you will be able to better understand your male partners with compassion after learning more about the male experience of new parenthood.

                                                                                                       -Sara Lyon

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Because Glow specializes in prenatal & postpartum massage, we hear from more women than men, and we often hear that women feel under-supported by their partners. Many women express that their male partners aren’t taking the egalitarian, active role they had hoped they would maintain with children in the picture. What are some modern cultural features distracting fathers from being fully present with their partners once a child arrives?

Ben: Before kids come into reality, it’s common for couples to have certain ideas, expectations, hopes of themselves and of each other, but they have no idea what the reality of becoming a parent is like. There can be a real dissonance between the fantasy of what a father wants to do, how they want to show up in their new role, and what the reality is.

This can be particularly hard for men who like to be able to anticipate something before it happens, but having a baby is beyond anticipation. A lot of men solve problems as a way to manage anxiety, and that’s not always possible in parenting. No one can predict how they are going to respond when they have someone truly dependent on them.

Being fully present is very hard even without a child, I think many people struggle with that. It’s the nature of the human mind, especially in this age of technology and busy-ness and disconnection. Unless you’re doing an active meditation practice or some other practice, being fully present is even harder. So, when you add a child to the mix, a lot of men will discover how un-present they really are. Parenthood is a mirror for both parents. It can be ego dystonic, in other words, not how you see yourself.

Having a child will often confront men with the areas in life where they really aren’t present and aren’t fulfilling their goals. So expecting oneself to be present is really a setup for failure.  It is very important for men to be compassionate to their own struggles.  Being hard on oneself makes being present even harder!

What are some common underlying psychological barriers preventing men from being totally present with their families?

Ben: Some of the biggest psychological barriers are memories and emotional experiences that lay quite often unconscious without extensive therapy. There is a lot of unconscious mapping of what it is to be a child in a family. We all grow up imprinted with particular dynamics that we’ve experienced by being fathered and mothered by our own parents, or not fathered and mothered in some cases.

These imprints are comprised of absences, wounds, and even just particular norms and values that are imbued unconsciously. Men don’t think about that unless they’ve already experienced significant suffering before children come.

So, these unconscious dynamics inevitably come into play in the relationship with the partner and the child. Some of the things that might not have previously come up in the intimate primary relationship- tensions, conflicts, anxieties- will start to surface and put pressure on fathers. These new pressures are uncomfortable and even emotionally painful. As humans, we all try to minimize pain­ and build defenses to reduce our experience of pain, but these defenses block our ability to be fully present for our families.

Because our children are our mirrors, I truly believe that their job is to push their parents’ buttons so the parent can grow into the parent that the child needs. The parent can then give what they themselves didn’t receive as a child.

Quite often, a prior generation father-son dynamic will come more directly into play when a new father has his first son, and there will often be some projecting onto the child and the relationship. The father doesn’t want to repeat the unhealthy dynamic, and there can be anxiety that the father doesn’t want to repeat history.

All of these factors contribute to the pressure of new fatherhood, and the struggle to be present. For men, this struggle can often take the form of avoidance of family time, or overextension in work, or sometimes it can take the form of aggression, depression or anxiety. It all comes back to unresolved childhood conflicts and the defenses against those conflicts that exert more pressure when a child comes- there’s just not as much room in the family for the their needs.

Also, the change in the dynamic between the parents, particularly receiving less attention from the partner, can bring up all sorts of different feelings. It’s important for the father to be able to speak openly with his partner about the changing relationship in a non-blaming, non-judgmental way. Ideally, the father is given room to speak about his own experience without receiving judgment from his partner. Hopefully the partner won’t feel blamed, and that channel between the partners can remain open, which frees up energy to take care of the child and protect the parents’ relationship with one another.

Along with individual counseling, I also work with couples that are going through this transition. Couples’ therapy is a great space designated for the couple to maintain connection and feed the relationship because it inherently goes under strain. We are not taught how to communicate like this culturally and we do not organically have the time- there are so many distractions, so many pressures. So, making the time, scheduling it into your week is tremendously important. Ideally, you go to therapy both individually and as a couple. When you set apart the time, it’s an investment that will pay off in terms of how much you enjoy your relationship and your child. And while it does take the investment of time, every step is celebratory. Every chance you have to reconnect provides energy that can bring more enjoyment and creativity.

We discussed prenatal and postpartum sexuality in our last two newsletters, and the feedback was overwhelming. In this busy, distracting world, it’s no surprise that there are many couples feeling sexually unfulfilled after having children.  How does this lack of presence impact the intimate relationship between a man and his partner?

Ben: A mentor once told me that the number one thing that maintains sustained sexual passion in a long-term relationship is being present with the other person. So, if that’s true, a father’s declined presence and defensive reaction to the stresses of a relationship are going to make it harder for him to tap into his desire.

If you think of things in an energetic flow sense, presence enables a flow of energy, particularly desire and sexual energy. So, when something gets evoked internally- a conflict, certain wounds- there is a defense against that. This defense is going to cut off the flow of energy, the openness, the desire, all sorts of things.

The second level of this lack of desire is that for some men, seeing their female partner give birth to a child can bring into conflict their view of their wife as a certain kind of sexual object. It can go into deeper things like their view of their own mother, for instance. There may be some integrating work to do around how they’ve been attracted to or turned on by women prior to parenthood, resulting in a widening of how they currently see women. If they can dedicate themselves to that kind of work it can actually make sex a lot more fulfilling.

And then there are the feelings that come up when you’re not being attended to in the ways you have been before parenthood. Many mothers, particularly mothers who are nursing, are understandably drained. The mother is the primary caretaker early on, and there’s kind of a developmental necessity for one parent to be a primary for attachment at that time, and that’s going to affect how some men feel. It can bring up certain feelings of abßandonment, resentment, anger, hurt, fear, anxiety, all kinds of things. Many of those things just squash passion, particularly resentment.

There’s also a societal aspect, this conscious story that’s told to us that long-term monogamy is a passion killer, and that becoming a parent is unsexy. These themes reinforce themselves because there are so many cultural reminders. But I am convinced, I know that if there is enough work and investment in the primary relationship there can be a whole other layer of passion that comes from discovering your partner in a new way. Men think they know their partners after a few years, but that’s (a) not true, providing a false sense of security and (b) it’s a passion killer!

We have to get to know each other in a new set of ways, which can be hard with the introduction of a new child. Parenthood is a great opportunity to see the other person in a new light, discovering new aspects of a partner can generate more curiosity and passion as the father discovers things about himself through parenting.

How can we help our male partners, and even our male friends, through this confronting transition?

Ben: This taps back into the cultural reality that men are not supposed to have certain feelings and shouldn’t express feelings. Different men respond differently to varying approaches. One of the keys to supporting men through this time is compassion and understanding, not pushing but providing an opportunity for conversation. Hold compassion for men and what they’re going through. Know that there is a reason why they may not be opening up about their emotional experience.

Sometimes compassion is just something you do internally where you just have empathy for another person’s suffering. Sometimes it’s more action oriented, like “Hey man, you need to get help”, or “Hey, I’m sorry you’re going through it.” Sometimes you do have to be more direct about it, because it can have an impact on the family when one person is struggling. In these cases, find somewhere a man can feel safe, understood, and met, like a therapist versed in the psychology of fatherhood.

In a more direct approach, you may need to say something like, “It’s OK that you don’t want to open up to me, but you can enjoy this a lot more and find relief from this suffering if you find someone to talk to about this, someone who understands and can help you understand this process.” Then you refer the man to a professional or to a support group.

Be sensitive to the man’s communication needs; some men need a more direct approach to suggestion, while others may need a softer approach.

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Ben Ringler, MFT

Ben Ringler is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, with a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology from California Institute for Integral Studies. He is also a Certified Hakomi Therapist, a psychotherapeutic approach that combines Buddhist principles and mind-body awareness.

Ben is passionate about this work and holds the position of psychotherapist with respect and and humility, particularly because he knows how challenging and vulnerable it is to seek therapy. In my work with clients, he pulls from a variety of practices in order to bring a balance of attention between mind and body so that I am able to listen attentively.

Sex After Kids: Talking Postpartum Sex with Midwife Leopi Sanderson-Edmunds

Leopi, what do we need to know about the postpartum period that will help us understand the libido after baby?

Perhaps the most important thing to learn about postpartum sex is the role hormones continue to play in the postpartum physical experience. The breastfeeding hormone prolactin will reduce a woman’s libido, and even make her mucosal membranes dryer, including her vagina, which makes sex uncomfortable without adding lubrication.

For people who are highly sexual, the shift can be quite a shock, but know that it’s normal! It’s very rare that someone is highly sexual when they are postpartum and breastfeeding. The shift is so dramatic that it can be scary for a woman if she really identified with her sexuality prior to pregnancy. She can feel really lost without that natural desire. She can feel numb.

How does this new physical reality impact the relationship dynamic?

It’s so important that both partners are totally aware of the hormone shift involved with breastfeeding, and the physical impact of those hormones. Don’t feel threatened by these changes, or insecure, it’s a necessary process that will change again when breastfeeding ends.

Partners often feel like the new mama doesn’t love them as much as before she gave birth, and that she’s spending all her time with the baby. Meanwhile, the mother starts to feel unsure of herself because she’s always rejecting her partner since she doesn’t feel affectionate or sexual. The hardest part of the postpartum process is not knowing how to talk about all the changes in the core relationship, how to express these emotional and physical feelings.

Your doctor will almost always say that after six weeks, or sooner, you can resume sex if you’re not bleeding. That’s the typical expectation: at six weeks we’re going to get back to it! I’m going to have my body back and we’re going to be so in love, and now our little baby is here! But this high expectation that there’s going to be normal sex happening again soon after birth, especially on the part of the person who didn’t birth the baby, is often met with disappointment. Lo and behold, most people get to six weeks, and sex is just not happening the way they anticipated.

For the mother there is a sense that the six week healing “deadline” is approaching, and she’s like, “oh my gosh, we’re going to start having SEX?! I’m not ready!”  Her body is being held onto and touched constantly by the baby. She’s tired, but it’s also the prolactin hormone that’s driving her brain and body to be focused on this little baby, and not her own desires or the desires of her partner. From another perspective, the perspective of evolution, it’s actually kind of perfect!

Both parents are going to be exhausted, and the partner also might not always feel like being sexual. Heterosexual couples live with the reality that the male partner has testosterone and still has a sex drive, that didn’t go away with the birth of their baby. So, here we have two partners, one with testosterone who is desiring sex, and one with prolactin who does not desire sex- it’s not a personal thing, it’s very important to understand that it’s purely hormonal. This does not exclude same-sex couples from a similar conundrum: one partner does not have prolactin, and is desiring affection and sex, while the other does have prolactin, and isn’t in the mood.

Most mothers are feeling more love than ever for their partners after birth, they’ve just had this child together. She’s hopefully feeling safe and protected by her partner, even though there are totally new dimensions of each other that they’ve never experienced before. This newness in the dynamics of the relationship can be really tricky to navigate.

The mother is so tremendously devoted to the new baby, and the partner can easily become threatened by this bond that is growing outside of his relationship with the mother. It can be disorienting, both emotionally and physically, due to exhaustion. Hard nights and tough feelings can mean that sometimes a couple just needs to look away from each other for a time, and go through their huge growth curve as human beings; there is a lot happening for each of them.

How can couples work together to maintain intimacy during the postpartum phase?

Women need to stay connected to their sexual selves. Enjoy your beautiful body that’s just given birth, your full breasts that aren’t sexual for the time being, but they are feminine and life-giving. Let your romantic and sensual understanding of what you’ve just achieved with your body take the place of sexual desire. I remember feeling extremely romantic and sexy, I just did not feel sexual, and that’s a big distinction.

It’s important for her partner to look at her, not just at what she’s doing, like a cow milking all day. She needs to feel attractive to her partner. Her partner is responsible for continually reminding her how beautiful she is with words and welcome touch that can be sensual rather than sexual, like kisses on her neck, or pulling her in close for a meaningful kiss, things that make her feel desired as a woman, not a caregiver.

It’s hard work being touched all day by a little being, and sometimes a partner’s touch isn’t the thing that will bring her back into her own body. Sometimes it’s some form of body therapy like massage where there is no reciprocity expected, where you can just go within, de-stress and fine tune, and listen to the details of what you need, and then you feel sexier. Also, having really high quality, delicious, medicinal food and eating enough every day is great for the libido.

Maybe most importantly, both partners need to have some explicit agreements in the new paradigm of postpartum sexuality. For instance, “We will be sexual and affectionate regularly without the expectation of sex every time we reach out.” It’s OK for the mother to stipulate, “I just want to be held by you, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to try moving this into sex every time, because then I’m going to stop reaching out to you. I don’t want to reject you, I hate having to reject you.”

This typical approach-rejection back and forth around postpartum sex sets up a terrible dynamic of isolation from one another. It’s so sad to see this happen, derived solely from the confusing postpartum hormones and exhaustion. It’s so much easier to avoid the isolation if there is open discussion of what’s going to happen postpartum, and agreements made about behavior and communication before it’s an issue.

These agreements can include something like a cue: “When I really want sex, I’m going to give you this sign, and then you’ll know that we’re in that zone.” Which I know sounds silly, but the closeness and the sensuality and the affection and the friendship and the humor are so much sexier than sex to a woman in the first 3-5 months. When a partner changes diapers, makes dinner, wakes up early with the baby so mom can sleep, when he washes the dishes and puts everything away and makes the kitchen beautiful, these are things that are sexy to a woman in this phase.

I know that sounds really dumb, and housewifey, but it actually makes a lot of sense! She needs to feel taken care of, she doesn’t need to feel like just a big mama, always bossing people around or organizing people. And she definitely doesn’t want to be a nag; that feels so unsexy. She wants to feel like she’s being heard and that she’s really respected and appreciated for the hard work that she does all day and all night with her baby, that’s really sexy.

The body does change postpartum, particularly with the breastfeeding hormones. It’s fair to assume that the first few times will be a little awkward, because mom’s like, “Whoa! I can’t believe I had a baby through my vagina!” So let’s assume the first 3-6 weeks you can enjoy sexy touching, kissing and foreplay. This type of sensual interaction can be really lovely for a women who has just give birth and wants to feel like her partner really wants her, really loves her and her body.

When it’s safe to have intercourse, which is usually around 6-8 weeks depending on the birth, mama will be dry due to the prolactin hormone. Use a lot of lube! Many women think it’s because they had stitches, or are damaged from the birth, but this is rarely the case. Often it starts as real fear, then the awkwardness around sex sets in through the repeated attempt and rejection, then it becomes a kind of excuse: “It hurts too much, I can’t do it”, when really it’s just uncomfortable interpersonally more than anything.

Once you start actually having sex, you’re going to realize how good it is for your own body and mind, and for your relationship. At first many women resist sex because it’s really confronting. It’s hard to commit to working with your new body, and with your partner, to overcome what feels like an insurmountable task: rebuilding your sexuality after birth. As a postpartum mom, frankly, it’s such a beautiful, compassionate gift to give your partner sex and in a loving way, because they need it! They really do! If you are able to give your partner sex with joy and lovingness, you will probably end up realizing how much you needed it too.

Do you have any do’s and don’ts for this sensitive time?

DON’T GO FOR THE BREASTS. Just don’t go for the breasts. That is such a turn off for nearly all postpartum moms. Their breasts are being touched and sucked all day, in a non-sexual way, and that’s what they exist for in this time and space. But of course, they’re so beautiful and round and full, they’re very attractive, of course the partner wants to enjoy them! But no, just don’t.  So, where can the partner touch a new mother’s body? Down the spine, the butt, the legs, anywhere the baby hasn’t been touching all day. Rediscover erotic zones besides the breasts and vagina.

DON’T COMPARE PRE-KIDS SEX TO POST-KIDS SEX. Before, there was time, you could just linger. But now, you might just have a quickie, or some foreplay, and then get interrupted by the baby or the kids, and then get into it again later. Sometimes you get into it just enough to get turned on, and then you just have to enjoy that feeling until you can get back into it, and that’s ok! Even if you were turned on and you guys didn’t have your orgasms, it’s so deeply beneficial to turn up that sexual dial again. It’s a great beginning!

BE FLUID AND HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR. Laugh about how long or short the sexual interaction is, or when you’re interrupted by the baby crying, or when your milk starts leaking mid-sex. This postpartum phase is precisely why I suggest working on your communication early, before birth, so you can flow through this new territory comfortably, because it’s tricky!

EXPRESS YOURSELF. I can’t tell you how many of my mom clients have told me that they are so sick of their partners wanting sex when they’re just exhausted; maybe they’ve been up with the baby all night, it’s 11 am and she hasn’t even gotten any breakfast yet, and her partner is awake and has some free energy and wants to have sex. Resentment easily builds when these two people are living in such different worlds together. The mother needs to feel comfortable explaining her needs instead of repressing it all, hiding her feelings, and possibly becoming depressed.

How do you commonly see couples sabotaging their sex lives after kids?

Physicality, whether it’s sensual, sexual or affectionate, is necessary for both parents’ health and wellbeing. I’ve seen modern parenting evolve so that the baby is getting all of the affectionate love, leaving little between the couple, and this is unbalanced. Parents can sabotage their sexuality and their relationship by over-parenting.

We all read so many books about parenting, but how many books do we read about healthy sexuality or a happy marriage? It’s all about being this ultra-perfect mother and father, and that’s really what we become, this ultra-mother and ultra-father. In this process, we lose a little bit of our identities with the parts that we were initially attracted to.

Be mindful when you are choosing your parenting philosophy; are you making room for your primary relationship? Attachment parenting, the family bed, prolonged breastfeeding, these are great philosophies in theory and sometimes in practice. But, a couple really needs to be educated on the postpartum hormones and make informed decisions about their parenting style with a full understanding of how it may impact their relationship. I actually think that in a lot of ways, the relationship is the primary concern, and the baby secondary, because the baby really needs the couple to be happy and connected and in love and close to one another.

So, really assess what you need as a couple to foster your intimacy. Do you need to get the baby to bed by 7:30 so you can have evenings together for adult conversation? Are you able to sleep in the same bed even with the pressures of night-feeding? Can you make it a goal to be in bed together, touching one another, not with pajamas on but skin-to-skin?

It’s OK to have boundaries with your parenting and with your children in a loving way. It’s a wonderful thing for a child to see that their parents’ relationship is important; there should be no guilt about that. It’s so positive for the child to see that the parents matter as much to each other as the child matters to them.

There is so much guilt around parenting right now: the pressure of perfectionism, all the books, the intellectual inundation. My blanket advice is to be in your body and in your heart. Say “no” when you want to say “no”, you don’t always have to explain everything. If you’re an affectionate, loving mother, then you can say “no” at any time without any guilt.

Leopi, you are the sexiest woman I’ve ever met, please tell us your sexy ways; we need your help!

I’ve always loved to decorate myself in some way, I love to take care of my body, to be in my body. I love being sensual and having beauty around me. I indulge in creating a peaceful space filled with symbols of beauty that help my heart and soul. 

I love giving myself treats like body care therapies and occasional nice meals out. I actually love taking myself out to dinner and being served, especially when my kids were younger. I love to sit in a beautiful restaurant, daydream, eat slowly, and observe people.

I suggest you also indulge yourself when eating at home. Have your treats, a little pot or wine or a mixed drink, of course not too much. We need to have our treats, we are women, we need to enjoy relaxing. Eating your chocolates, along with your healthy diet.

Lingerie! I come and go with that, but after birth, and especially while nursing, having some lingerie that’s fit perfectly to your new body, even if it’s under your clothes and you don’t show it to anyone, it’s a beautiful feeling.

Decorate yourself! Wear some beautiful earrings, get your nails done, fine-tune the things you enjoy and treat yourself. I like having liquid eyeliner on, lotions and oils on my skin.

Nurture your relationships with adults other than your partner. Invest in a variety of  relationships that reflect all of your essential things in life.

MEET LEOPI SANDERSON-EDMUNDS 

Leopi has been a licensed home-birth midwife since 1985, supervising and caring for over 1300 families. In addition to her midwifery practice, she offers care for prenatal and non-natal clients through orthobionomy, a slow and beautiful form of bodywork focusing on bone and soft tissue alignment. Unique in her field, Leopi offers prenatal counseling for women and couples to reach a deeper experience of pregnancy, and birth, no matter where and with whom they are birthing. Leopi also has a BA in Art Therapy and creates phenomenal masterpieces of figure painting. Leopi can be reached via the web at Sanctuary Leopi.

The S Word: A conversation about Prenatal Sex with Leopi Sanderson-Edmunds, LM

As a midwife, Leopi, has a unique view into the sex lives of modern couples. Her approach to midwifery is holistic, incorporating the psychological and social transformations people experience when they are expecting a child, including their sexual realities. I interviewed Leopi on the topic of prenatal sex, expecting her to lay out the best sexual positions to work around the belly, and all sorts of other concrete details. Instead, she got to the core of the issue: change. Below, Leopi discusses how and why your sex will change, and what to do about it. Hallelujah!

-Sara Lyon

Sexuality in a pregnant relationship is totally the other side of the coin from being in love. This stuff is really important to talk about because many people who are newly pregnant are also newly in love. Sometimes they are already at a very evolved and mature relationship, but often it’s the beginning and a romantic sense of one another predominates. They’re making love all the time and exploring sexuality together and relating powerfully to one another this way. For some newer relationships, it’s the opposite, maybe they’re newly discovering each other and they’re shy and they’re not showing their bodies entirely yet. Either way, pregnancy will change the way sexuality is experienced for both partners. 

Be Prepared

Couples benefit from being prepared for the ebbs and flows in their pregnancy, and the shyness that the mother might start to feel with her changing body. I recently spoke with a couple entering this phase. They fell quickly in love, then suddenly she’s pregnant, and her body is changing very, very quickly. Almost immediately, she’s very shy even though their sexual connection is amazing, but now she wants the lights off, for instance. It’s very hard in our culture to not feel fat, but instead to embrace the curves and softness, so I’m trying to help her see the beauty of the softness and the changes of the body in this super ultra-feminine state that it is.

Often the partner is totally into the newness of her pregnant body, but women can actually project on themselves that it’s not beautiful. Don’t get me wrong, many women also feel quite sexy, even in their first trimester of ups and downs physically. In the second trimester, the body feels more feminine: breasts plump and a little round belly pops out. So, it’s an important place to be curious about rather then shy away from: going from being really in love and really confident in the relationship because the sex is good, to accepting the physical and emotional changes that have come. Those are often big shocks to a relationship and this is where intimacy really potentially begins.

I feel that one of the most important things I do for couples is prepare them for this surprise, because they can so easily feel estranged from one another if they aren’t warned. Suddenly, the pregnant woman’s like, “My god, I’m crying all the time!” or “I feel really insecure.” or “I don’t even know who I am anymore, and I don’t even want to look in the mirror, and does he still think I’m beautiful; am I sexy??”

The Murky Time

Up until 16 weeks, you don’t really look pregnant, you just look softer and a little pudgy, and no one really knows what to say to you because they’re not sure that you’re pregnant. That first trimester is the most sexually and emotionally challenging period for most couples.  After about 20 weeks, things can really improve sexually, because you get over the physiological hurdle of the first trimester. There are no certainties, but normally the first trimester’s emotional and physical symptoms last until about 12 - 18 weeks. Women can feel pretty funky until then.

Emotionally, a woman becomes much more internal. She slows way down due to the pregnancy hormones, she may be nauseas, and exhausted. All she can really think about is the reality that she is pregnant. She’s seeing her life changing, she’s becoming more vulnerable and more dependent on her partner, instead of this rich sexual experience they may have connected through previously.  Her body image is changing and it can really rapidly change.

A woman’s changing body image can be very difficult. If that’s not enough, her hormones cause physiological changes in those first weeks, and the things she used to find sexually arousing will often be a turn off: her nipples can be super tender, her vagina is swelling and in a constant arousal state which can be hyper-sensitive, actually making touch uncomfortable. She may also find that her vagina looks different and she may not feel comfortable with this.

Remember, the first 12 week period can be tough and quite shocking.  The depth of complex emotions, even when the pregnancy has been planned can be surprising! Life can be put at a standstill due to hormones and nausea. This uncomfortable experience usually lasts longer than the first trimester and it can be quite disappointing when you’re still sick and you’ve passed 12 weeks. So, of course this is all a shock on the relationship! You’re partner is like, “Well, I’ve never seen you like this!” and you’re exhausted or tired or crying; it’s really difficult for both partners. Some women don’t have these symptoms, and feel great all along, but that’s not typical.

I believe this is nature’s way of helping us to slow down in this modern and pretty crazy world that’s going very very very fast, especially with technology that makes everything even faster, and then there is Googling! Helpful, yes, but it can really put a lot of fear into pregnancy, too.

The first trimester requires you to put the brakes on, so you can feel yourself as just being, slow way down, appreciating everything moment to moment. Sometimes you aren’t able to deal with life as you did before: making schedules, being strong, or super social, and “having it all together”.  The state of pregnancy is a non-linear world!

It’s nature’s way of helping a woman to rest and go within, which is where the baby is, it helps her connect with the baby. The first trimester hormones reset the nervous system, and the way that we settle into the pregnancy.  So that’s a positive to all of those murky feelings.

These primordial feelings can feel dreamy, and sometimes a little scary and unknown. The partner usually doesn’t get it, because he or she isn’t pregnant and can’t possibly understand it; that’s really hard on a couple in those first weeks. Understanding that this is a normal and helpful process in securing the pregnancy can alleviate some of the confusion or judgment between partners.

The second trimester usually, not always, but usually starts a shift into a beautiful space. Around 18-20 weeks, a woman often starts to feel better, more like herself. It’s very important that mama has been taking great care of herself, so that she can come back into her body and move out of the murky, defeated place.

Health and wellbeing are extremely important for sexuality, for coming back into your body, and for getting a hold of the pregnancy and enjoying it. With good eating, resting, slowing down in the world, and having time for yourself, sexuality can be amazing, especially when the baby bump finally comes out. If your nausea is gone, this new evolution can be exciting, and sexy.

Pregnant Femininity

There are many ways of being pregnant. Many many women feel very sexy when they are pregnant, but there is absolutely no judgment if you do not. If you don’t feel well, it can be extremely difficult to enjoy your sexuality. For some, prenatal sexuality can feel really spicy and almost even tribal: here is a couple making a family, whether they’re married or not, they’re bonded and connected like never before. They’re bringing in this life; it’s very romantic and it’s hot, really. It’s a beautiful time to see your sexuality as a woman being ultra feminine. If you can notice it, embrace it, and savor it, there couldn’t be a more feminine time which empowers you forever.

The feminine potency of pregnancy is so seldom discussed, and that’s really unfortunate. It’s the crystallized power of feminine energy. We have this uterus that is finally doing what it was born to do, and the power of that feeling inside a woman, to hold a creative act of life-force inside her body that is coming from love… that’s very sexy. Wear beautiful clothes, feel it, enjoy the silhouette of your body. I love how many beautiful clothing lines exist today to show your shape. Indulge in it!

Sexual Satisfaction

This is a really important time for old love, new love, whatever love, to embrace the changes. There are a multitude of complex feelings, as we discussed, and physically there are many body changes: the breasts can be very sensitive, they plump up and press out, which can be a lovely feeling, or an uncomfortable one. You are really budding everywhere.

You may need to work around certain areas of the body, and give more attention to others; your partner really has to explore. Your blood plasma has doubled, so everything is fuller, fleshier, a little swollen. Even our lips plump up on our face and our vagina. This can be more sexually arousing, but it can also be uncomfortable. In order to accommodate the fleshier pregnant body, you may need more lubricant, or, none at all. Most women are really wet throughout pregnancy, really mucussy; don’t be alarmed. If sexual exploration is done with consciousness, it’s a fantastic time to reinvent everything, and relearn each other: “What do you like now? What does this feel like now?”

It’s an important time to take all of this newness and practice communication with curiosity and gentleness, especially if you’re a couple that tends to be shy. If you begin talking about these sensitive topics now, then you’ve begun something that’s going to be so important for the rest of your lives, for your whole relationship. It’s time to develop friendship, humor, affection, conversation and cuddling. Begin talking about things that are unknown, out of your control, and very raw. Don’t avoid being vulnerable and intimate, and learn to talk about it without judgment of self or other; it will always serve you.

Partners

Emotionally, partners are also shifting. They’re developing into caregivers and providers, even in a dual-income household. They tend to become more protective of the pregnant partner, wanting to spend more time with her. They want to get their lives together and often put a lot of pressure on themselves to do so.

Sexually, some men have difficulty having intercourse with a pregnant woman; mentally, some men can’t put their penis in a pregnant woman’s vagina. It’s like, “Woah! There’s a baby in there!?” They still want to be super affectionate and increasingly attached, but they simply cannot have sex with a pregnant woman, and that’s their truth. However, they can be affectionate and sensual without intercourse, like kissing and oral sex.

Sensuality should never go away, it’s probably way more important than sex. Not just affection, but sensuality; the eroticism of connecting to your partner that way, exploring in a surrendered space together. Just being turned on and having orgasms is so important for our nervous systems, for both the mother and the partner. It’s an irreplaceable space of wordlessness, connecting in hearts and bodies and breath. Its also really, really good for your body! The movements we make with sex are very hard to get anywhere else.

Make it Happen

So, let’s say the pregnant woman is growing and she doesn’t know what to wear, and she’s looking at herself, wondering what will make her feel good- and her partner comes up and gives her lots of kisses along her shoulders and neck and breasts, or playfully grabs her ass. She needs to feel that her partner is attracted to her, not like she’s just carrying their child. But, of course, this is only half of it; more than anything, she needs to feel attractive herself, not just to others.

How can you cultivate your own sexuality?

Take pictures. Really observe yourself and appreciate what’s changing instead of shying away from it. Wear beautiful clothes that make you feel like you’re showing your pregnancy instead of hiding it.

Take really really good care of yourself. Focus on your nutrition, your bathing rituals, the things you find pleasure in.

Surround yourself with the right support people. Talk about what’s going on with your body image, your hopes and your fears. 

Choose positive healthcare providers.  How do your healthcare providers look at you? Make sure they are reflecting back how healthy you are and how normal pregnancy is. This is especially emotionally important if you had IVF. Be sure your provider includes your partner in conversations around the pregnancy, if that’s what you would like. It’s very sexy to a woman and to her partner when the partner is included in her prenatal care, it’s bonding.

Seek meaning in your experience. There are many ways to access the spiritual and emotional side of the prenatal experience. In addition to your primary medical care, make sure you are getting complementary care that reflects the health and vitality of pregnancy. This can come in many forms like yoga, massage therapy or adjunct support like a doula or a prenatal guide. 

It’s really important to me, as a midwife, to help my families keep connecting and exploring in these unknown spaces, not just being functional, but enjoying, having pleasure with one another. We cannot let go of all of ourselves, just to become a mother and a father. We are sexual human beings, and we are brilliant human beings, we are creative human beings; we are so interesting. We need to keep reflecting the magic and the attraction back to one another.

MEET Leopi sanderson-edmunds 

Leopi has been a licensed home-birth midwife since 1985, supervising and caring for over 1300 families. In addition to her midwifery practice, she offers care for prenatal and non-natal clients through orthobionomy, a slow and beautiful form of bodywork focusing on bone and soft tissue alignment. Unique in her field, Leopi offers prenatal counseling for women and couples to reach a deeper experience of pregnancy, and birth, no matter where and with whom they are birthing. Leopi also has a BA in Art Therapy and creates phenomenal masterpieces of figure painting. Leopi can be reached via the web at Sanctuary Leopi.

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Toddler, Much? An interview with Dr. Jill Sulka, PsyD

Jill, as a mother of two and a psychologist specializing in 0 to 8 years old, you are uniquely qualified to give your opinion on toddler matters. In your personal and professional experience, what is the most difficult aspect of parenting a toddler?

Perhaps the most difficult part of toddler parenting is keeping your own emotions in check. It’s so easy to become frustrated with a toddler who wants to do more and say more than they are capable of developmentally, and losing your cool will only fuel a tantrum.

Toddlers are coming into a newfound sense of themselves as differentiated from their parents. In this crucial phase of development, toddlers are navigating their emerging autonomy while needing the security of their relationship with their parents. When toddlers come up against their own limits and the limits of their parents, frustration and disappointment can be overwhelming and seem very out of proportion to the situation.  While this sometimes intense phase can feel like a train gone off the rails, your toddler is tackling essential and normal developmental tasks. 

As a mother of twins, I have certainly fallen into the traps of a frustrated parent. One of my twins has the temperament of what we commonly call an “easy baby”, and even as a toddler this child’s feelings didn't lead to an extended loss of control.   He easily accepted the comfort and assistance I offered, the ups and the downs weren’t so extreme, and all of my professional and personal parenting strategies worked. These interactions were gratifying and rewarding.

With my other twin, the same strategies  didn’t result in the same outcomes. This twin, constitutionally, came into the world much more fiery and intense. It gave me the opportunity to feel the humility of learning to navigate that relationship and our fit.

All children bring their different and unique selves, and self-blame is such an easy trap to fall into as a parent. When you compare yourself to others, it's impossible to win. As a professional, observing the number of children I have in my career, I can assure you that there is so much variation in what babies and toddlers bring to the relationship. It’s about meeting your children where they’re at and knowing that they’re all going to be different, and what you need to do to meet the specific needs of your child and your relationship with them may look different than how another parent learns to be best respond to their unique child.

Ah yes, parental judgment, my favorite aspect of the job. That’s such a brutal one, because you can be judged by others, sure, but the judgment you place on yourself follows you home.

Exactly! I believe so strongly in compassion for ourselves. We are all going to be thrown by what our children present us, so it’s about having compassion when we fail over and over again. "Success" is weathering the storm as you show up in the best way that you can. It’s about striving towards how we want to be in our best selves as a parent, to each unique child.  That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t want to reach out for help to learn more effective ways to parent and to manage your own triggers that come up, but be easy on yourself in your self-judgment as you strive to learn more about your child and yourself as a parent.

The act of parenting is your opportunity to learn who you are in this evolving role and even to revisit your earlier history from a different perspective.   Your worth as a parent is not  dependent on what others think; know that kids are different, and it’s very easy for others to judge what they haven’t personally experienced.

Remember that your role as a toddler’s parent is to do your best to assist your child to calm down, to manage their big, irrational feelings and eventually those experiences of help in managing their feelings will result in the child developing the capacity to soothe themselves. As a part of healthy development, toddlers do need to push their emotions and your limits to the very edge sometimes, and just being present to help them calm down is doing the necessary work.

When dealing with a tantrumming  child, remember that the tantrum will end, and that your value as a parent is not determined by whether or not your child throws a tantrum and for how long.  You can neither reason with your child toddler about their upset, nor force the tantrum to end. No matter how “perfect” you are as a parent, your toddler will still have tantrums; stopping them isn’t the goal, staying emotionally connected with them  through their ups and downs, while calming yourself, is. In fact, tantrums are normal and important work for toddlers.

Important life lessons about emotions and relationships come out of a tantrum:

• Big feelings are survivable;

• Feelings shift and change;

• Their parent is still there, a real separate person who didn’t fall apart or retaliate.

• Relationships can recover from hardship, their parent still loves them.

Know that after the toddler years, your child will have more capacity for reason, for being rational and for being socially and emotionally available in a different way. This phase does not last forever.

We all make “mistakes,” we all overreact at one time or another. Always remember that there is power in repairing the relationship with your child when you haven’t succeeded the first time (or the 10th time);  it teaches your child that big emotions are survivable and that the love remains intact even when we have a disruption in our connection. 
 

Acknowledging that every family is unique, what are some common ways you observe parents contributing to the sometimes brutal frustration of toddlerdom?

Trying to control the toddler’s behavior in order to manage your own emotions.

When your emotional state is dependent on how the child is behaving, that is often how power struggles begin. If you feel the emotional pressure building inside of you because of what your toddler is doing, it’s easy to become more insistent and controlling of your toddler in an effort to shift your own feelings and reactivity. When you are feeling upset, frustrated, saddened or angry, notice your reaction, take care of it separately, independent of what the toddler does. 

Taking responsibility to manage your own feelings and not take your child’s oppositionality personally is a primary part of parenting during this period, especially because toddlers have embraced the experience of saying the word “no” as a way to experience their newly emerging personhood, as an individual separate from other people, testing out how their world and relationships work and hoping to find it predictable.   While it may be greatly frustrating for you, your toddler is doing something utterly necessary for their growth as a human being, and it has nothing to do with good or bad behavior. And it has nothing to do with disrespect.

In the December 2015 newsletter you explained that “time-out” is counterproductive for most children. Can you please explain briefly what time-out does to the child mind at 18 months to 4 years of age?
 

Thinking of your child as behaving badly disposes you to think of punishment as the answer. Alternatively, thinking of your child as struggling to manage something difficult encourages you to help them through their distress.
Even if we were to consider the merits of time-out  as a productive form of discipline, it would not ever be valuable for a child younger than 3.5 because the parts of their brain that are necessary to make any use of something like that are not yet developed. A toddler is not yet able to go sit and think about what they did, that is not part of their capability  and is not be part of the experience of being a toddler.

In general, connection with their important adults is the primary thing that helps toddlers calm down. Being forced to separate from their parents and to be alone can have the opposite effect, children become even more distressed and dysregulated.

So, in addition to whatever the original disappointment or frustration was, they now have to manage the disruption in the emotional relationship with the parent. Consequently, they can become so overwhelmed with that disruption in the relationship, that the likelihood of learning from the experience decreases dramatically. Now they are distressed by being isolated, but they are not aware of the cause.
 

Are you saying that toddlers are not yet capable of understanding consequence? 

Often parents will designate consequences that have no relationship to what was going on with the child. The closer the consequences are to what actually happened, what we might call “natural” consequences, the more likely a child will make a connection between the consequence and the behavior. Then, the child doesn’t view the consequence as punishment, but part of a natural sequence of events spurred by the problematic behavior. The child then learns that there are rules, and that they can expect that the rules will be upheld, as opposed to learning that they are “bad”.

For example, your child is throwing a shoe in the house, and this is against your house rules. Firstly, say a few times,  “We don’t throw shoes in the house because they are hard and can break something.” Then offer the toddler an acceptable object to throw (i.e. a little foam ball or a small stuffed animal), and simply say, “The shoe is going away”, and take the shoe away. Do not allow the shoe to be part of the equation any longer, as opposed to saying, “Now go on timeout!” or “No dessert tonight!” which is entirely unrelated in time and in associative connection to what actually happened. The timeout or the withheld dessert are independent of throwing the shoe, and this type of punishment undermines the learning of why the shoe was taken away because the consequence is not meaningful to the toddler mind. 

Your child’s job is to be a scientist in the world--they need to push limits in order to understand the boundaries of the world. They will test the hypothesis that things will or won’t respond as they expect over and over again and this includes testing their social relationships. This is how the child learns that they are secure, that their relationships are lasting and strong. They are going to push and push and push against the limit in order to understand what the world is, and that it won’t be destroyed, and that they won’t be destroyed, . They will actually feel safer after pushing a limit and having it enforced in a way that is meaningful to the toddler mind.

It would be tremendously helpful to have some toddler parenting guidelines both for self-management and for child-management, please give us a shortlist of parenting tips.
 

I know it’s popular to publish clear “Do’s and Don’ts” on parenting, but I so strongly believe in compassion for ourselves, that I have a problem with this style of education. Here are some basic guidelines to help you through the toddler years; let’s call them “Try to’s” and “Try not to’s:”

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Try to…

• Find your calm. Your own managing of your own feelings in the moment is the number one thing that is going to be helpful. When you have stress hormones coursing through you, it has an effect on the stress hormones coursing through your child. Remember, you are needed as the secure base that anchors your child’s world, and if you collapse or get angry or hurtful back, your child’s anxiety—even devastation--about the rupture between you intensifies their distress and out of control behavior.

• Validate your child’s feelings. Even when we’re ignoring the behavior, we don’t ignore the child. We speak to the distress, “You really wanted the purple cup, and it’s not here, it’s so disappointing.”

• Give your child the words to express what they’re feeling. “I think you’re feeling really mad and you can say ‘I’m mad.’” That’s how they are going to learn to express themselves through words instead of through their bodies.

• Give your child reasonable choices. “The purple spoon isn’t here, so would you like the red spoon or the yellow spoon?”

• Offer physical comfort. The child may not be able to verbally express that they need comfort in the form of affection.

• Express reassurance. After the tantrum, reassure your child that you love them, that the relationship will be ok.

Try not to…

• Think of your toddler’s tantrum as misbehavior or disrespect.

• Reason or argue with your toddler. Logic will not work, a toddler is not capable of logical reasoning, even if they are verbal, so we often forget this and then feel manipulated, or compelled to negotiate.

• Give your child false choices: “Would you like to use the red spoon or go buy the purple spoon”, if you don’t intend to fulfill the promise.

• Punish your toddler for their out of control feelings. Try not to yell, scream or scold the child. Don’t put them by themselves and expect them to manage their distress on their own. Try to remain connected to your toddler through the tantrum: they are needing your support while they navigate their own intense feelings.
  **Exception: If your own stress leads you to feel like you are no longer effective in the interaction with your child, if you aren’t able to calm down by remaining with your child or if you feel you might harm your child, put your child in a safe place, tell your child that you are going to calm down and that you’re going to come back,, then go take of yourself so you can come back and be more helpful to your child.

• Don’t collapse or retaliate. Don’t be so scared of the toddler’s feelings or behavior that you are willing to do anything to appease them, that shows the child that their feelings are more powerful than anything else, more powerful than you are. Don’t retaliate by getting angry and returning their aggressive or destructive behavior. For example, by hitting them if they hit you, or an older children will often say “I don’t love you” or “I hate you” and it is only destructive to say it back to them.

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MEET JILL SULKA

Jill Sulka, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who specializes in infant and early childhood mental health. She provides parent consultation, infant-parent and child-parent psychotherapy, and child play therapy in her office and at home, depending on the needs of the family. Dr. Sulka has been providing psychological services for 20 years, and has directed several programs for parents and their children birth to 8 years old. She believes that every child and parent deserve the opportunity to develop a relationship together that best supports that child’s potential to grow well and love well. Jill regularly contributes to the Glow newsletter and her articles can be found in the Parenting section of our Resources page. She can be reached at (510) 326-2002 and jillsulka@gmail.com.

Your Heart is Depleted.

My lovely baby girl is 18-months-old today.

Around her first birthday, I started managing crippling abdominal pain. The pain stops me in my tracks and wakes me in the middle of the night. Causes me to double over, grimacing and sweating while I wait in line at the grocery store; somehow still managing to dangle something – anything -- in front of my daughter’s face to keep her content for Just. Five. More. Minutes. Yet another attempt to stave off the piercing scream that marked her entry into this world and continues to sound out throughout each day to signal hunger, sleepiness, boredom, displeasure, disapproval…

My soul was not prepared to withstand the overwhelming amount of adoration and responsibility that accompanied my daughter's birth. I remain unstable. Many days I’m convinced that I will feel this way for the rest of my life. I often marvel at the fact that we are only at the very beginning of this journey together. Down the road remains teaching her how to ride a bike, helping her with math homework (ahem, learning how to do math), and holding her close when someone breaks her heart. Once you enter motherhood you can’t turn back. We are forced to evolve at someone else’s pace and keep up, keep up, keep up.

And I want to be the best. Mostly because I want her to be the happiest, healthiest person that ever was. Also, selfishly, I want her to love me as much as I love her.

But I digress -- back to the stomach pain. For months I’ve endured this pain. Most days I thought it would go away on its own. Some days I thought it was a sign of a heart attack. At some point, I think I just accepted that living with chronic pain was my new reality.

The truth is that between keeping a relatively new job, keeping a relatively neat home, keeping my husband relatively happy, toddler giggles, first steps, “Goodnight Moon,” changing diapers, changing clothes, filling bottles, cleaning the cat litter, feeding the dog, “Twinkle, Twinkle,” Doc McStuffins, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and “MOMMY!,”I just didn’t have time to figure out what was happening to me. There were never enough hours in the day to genuinely check “Take care of me” off of my to-do list.

My body showed evidence of this, too. Post the initial breastfeeding weight loss, I’d put on some weight. I ate whatever was nearby without thinking. My grad school days of eating only raw food, cognizant of the intentionality of food consumption as fuel for my body, soul, and mind, were long gone.

Then one day I sat in a meeting, pain searing through my stomach to my back and radiating down both sides of my ribcage. The room was fuzzy. I couldn’t focus on my colleague’s words. I could only focus on taking shallow breaths and contorting my body in just the right way to make it through this flare-up. I was finally fed up. I made my first appointment with my doctor.

As of today, I’ve had several appointments with specialists, including the one where they stick a camera down your throat. Nothing has been named. No plan for healing identified. No relief in sight. The ‘diagnosis’ does not ring true with my experience. I called my gastroenterologist the day after that procedure, failing to hide my lack of faith in his opinion, “This is not acid reflux. I was pregnant about a year ago. I know acid reflux intimately.”  

A month ago, I started seeing a Chinese Medicine practitioner. She is convinced that the pain is related to food sensitivities and digestive disturbances, and I’m inclined to believe her. After some changes in my diet and the addition of some digestive herbs, I feel better. I’m not 100%, or even 85%, but I feel better. 

During our second meeting, she did fire work over my body as she walked me through a guided meditation. This was the start of the shift to less pain. I felt at peace. As she closed the session, she shared what she’d learned about me that day. Four words rolled off of her tongue that will stick with me for the rest of my life, “Your heart is depleted”.

Having met the love of my life just a year or so prior, I could not fathom that this was true. My heart had never felt more full. The rewards of motherhood outweighed the pains every day -- not every moment, but definitely every day. She continued to tell me that I needed to find time to connect with other grown-ups – to laugh, to dance, to escape the to-do list.

I’d been so wrapped-up in giving all of me to my family, to my daughter, that I’d opted to endure a life full of pain just to keep doing it for her. My healer went on to explain that in the end, that choice would only be hurting my little girl as she would get a lesser version of her mother. I’m certain I’d heard this once or twice before, but it's so easy to get sucked in without even realizing it.

This time the light bulb went off. To help create the happiest, healthiest person ever, and even to achieve the impossible of having her love me as much as I love her, I have to make time for self-care. And, every once in a while, I have to attempt to define my health and happiness as separate from hers. I imagine this will be something I will have to remind myself of often.

The spa day is scheduled. I’ll keep you posted.

RESOURCES 

Get yourself some bliss:

ACUPUNCTURE | Cara Brockbank’s Temescal practice combines classic acupuncture with divine aromatherapy, set in a charming craftsman cottage.

TAROT | Are you having trouble tapping into your gut feelings? This is your remedy. Laura Zuspan’s tarot readings are just the dose of reality you need, with a sprinkle of magic on top. Laura pulls from her beloved tarot deck and offers grounded, pertinent observations without judgment.

INDIAN SPRINGS | Located in Calistoga, this resort and spa is the perfect day trip to fit between daycare drop-off and pick-up. Our favorite treat is the mud bath and mineral pool combo.

GLOW POSTPARTUM DOULA CARE | Email us to find out more about our postpartum doula services which include a suite of wellness therapies tailored for your experience. 

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MEET IMAN MILLS GORDON

Iman is an independent consultant living in Oakland, CA with her husband and their daughter, Lena. With the support of her family, Iman continues to actively pursue her ultimate balance.

Lean Sideways with Mary McQueen from Baby Bootcamp Oakland

What inspired you to start Baby Boot Camp in Oakland?

I was actually about 35-40 pounds overweight before I got pregnant with my first son, Liam, and then I put on an additional 50 pounds during that pregnancy; so, all told, I had about 90 pounds to lose.

Having a baby really awakened me to my need to get healthy. My father passed away suddenly from a heart attack when he was 49 years old (I was 20) and his father passed away from a heart attack when he was only 38 (my dad was 17)! So my family history of heart disease is so strong, and I realized that I did not want to follow that same sad path and not be around to see my children grow up.

After I had Liam, I thought I could make these changes on my own, so I started doing some light cardio - run/walking around Lake Merritt, pushing Liam in the stroller. I realized about 9 months in, though, that making these big changes on your own can be quite challenging. I was yearning for a support system. It was my younger sister, actually, who found out about Baby Boot Camp - she does not have children, but she did have her personal training certification, and she answered an ad for an instructor on Craigslist.

So I started going with her as her “plus one,” and I instantly fell in love. I loved the workouts, I loved that I could bring my (sometimes screaming and cranky) baby along, and I especially loved the camaraderie with the other moms. I lost the rest of the weight as a participant of Baby Boot Camp, and I thought, “Hey, I did it. I can show and encourage other people to do what I did.”  

The previous owner of Baby Boot Camp was going on maternity leave and needed another instructor, so I got my certification and taught for her for about 6 months, and then she asked me if I was interested in buying the business. I jumped at the opportunity - I saw such potential in the program, and I wanted to help people make positive changes in their lives. I had no interest in returning to my previous job - I went on maternity leave and then just never went back! So, I was definitely looking for the next step in my life, and this just sort of fell into my lap! 

How did you find the courage to bring your life into its current state and what have been the rewards of that investment?

Ha! Talk about taking a risk - I bought the franchise when the classes were very small, in April of 2009 when the economy tanked; and the same month that I bought the business, my husband, a carpenter, lost his job! I knew it was all a little crazy, but I have always dreamed of owning my own business- I was drawn to having time freedom, being my own boss, and, above all, hopefully making a difference in people’s lives. I saw the potential and I knew that what Baby Boot Camp had been for me, could be for someone else that really needed it - whether it be the need to lose weight, the need for companionship, or the need to help combat the “baby blues.”

When I bought the business, I had also taken on some part-time work as an Administrative Assistant for a wonderful network of psychologists in Oakland that do really meaningful and important work for children in the Richmond school system and the juvenile “justice” system in Oakland. So I didn’t make a complete and clean break with regards to my career change - I most certainly eased into it. The CEO and COO of that company were awesome, and, by this time, I had just given birth to my daughter, and they let me bring her into the office with me, nurse at the office, work from home with her...And I really supported and believed in the work that they were doing.

But there came a time when I needed to focus on my own business if I wanted to be able to reach more moms and families, so I gave my notice. I was really nervous about my decision, but it has absolutely been worth it. I think that if you are passionate enough about something and if you have a really authentic experience with that vision and passion, you can find a way to make it work!  
And I see this more and more with the moms that I teach in Baby Boot Camp. There are definitely a lot of moms that go back to full-time work, but there are also a significant number that do things a little differently - working part-time, working from home, freelancing. It is less “lean in” and more “lean sideways” - we are navigating new territory in this way, I think.

What is the simplest, most fundamental way a woman can take care of herself postpartum?

Move your body (even if it’s just for a walk around the block) and make connections with other moms. Honestly, I was really in denial about how isolating being a new mom can be. There is no easy segue into motherhood, no course on how to do this - you really are just thrown into it; and that is true for each baby, at least in my experience. Being a first-time mom is so different from being a second-time mom, which is different from being a third-time mom. And it can all hit you like a brick sometimes.  

When I had my first son, I was only 25, which is rare for the Bay Area. None of my friends were even close to having children yet. I had already made the decision that I wasn’t going to go back to my previous job, and I had also decided that I wanted to get back into shape, but I thought I could be a mother and make these life changes on my own. It took me several months to realize that not only does it “take a village” to raise a child, but it takes a village to raise a mom and to help support her with these big life changes. I did start losing weight and getting healthier on my own, but, to be honest with you, I was pretty miserable, and I felt really alone.

I joined Baby Boot Camp when my son was about 9 months old, and everything changed. I found a community of women I could really talk to and who knew exactly what I was going through, it got my babies and me out of the house, and as my children have grown up as “Baby Boot Camp kids” it has helped set a healthy example for my children, whether they see me exercising, participate in the class themselves (which they love to do during the summer when they are off from school), or tear it up on their bikes and scooters and skateboards while I’m teaching.

So my advice would be to find your tribe - whether that be through a mom support group, Baby Boot Camp, a music class you enroll your children in, whatever! Just find a group that is going to help support you in this transition.

Why is it so important that a woman who is tired, potentially nauseas and physically uncomfortable consider her own fitness during pregnancy?

There are a couple of things going on here. First, it is so important to consider YOU. When we are pregnant, so much of the focus is on our bellies and that little baby growing inside of us, and we forget to put ourselves as a priority (and things only get more extreme after that baby is on the outside). It is certainly easier said than done, but it is so important to put time and energy and care into ourselves in order to support all of the caring that we do for other people. So move your body in a way that feels really great - take a dance class, take a yoga class, go for a walk or hike. Your body and your baby will thank you for taking that time for yourself!

Second, I was so much more active and my nutrition was so much better with my second and third pregnancies, and I think it made a huge difference in my deliveries and recoveries. And I’m not the only one - I have spoken to many of my Baby Boot Camp mamas that say the same thing. They took Baby Boot Camp classes after they had their first baby, got pregnant a year or two in, and they felt so much stronger in their second pregnancies and deliveries.  

You’ve recently widened your focus to diastasis recti prevention and repair. Why is it important to find out about your DR status and how common is it?

Oh my goodness, it is SO common! Over the years, the VAST majority of moms that have come through Baby Boot Camp have a diastasis recti (DR) and did not know it. It is very important to know that this is NOT a life-threatening condition, and it can absolutely be healed without surgery! 
DR occurs during pregnancy when our bellies are growing - it is the natural separation of the rectus abdominis (our “six pack” abs, so to speak). A lot of women think that because they had a c-section they wouldn’t then have a DR; but the DR starts happening at pregnancy. Our abs separate during pregnancy, the tissue between the two sides of the rectus abdominis called the linea alba gets stretched thin, and in an ideal world, everything comes back together after we have our babies.

This does not typically happen, however, and after we have given birth, our rectus abdominis does not come back together. This can lead to lower back pain, incontinence, and in extreme cases, can contribute to uterine prolapse.
I measure all new moms that come to class for a DR - we measure finger width at the belly button, above the belly button, and below the belly button. Moms with a 1-2 finger separation at the belly button are good to go in class (it probably won’t close beyond a 1); for moms with a 3+ finger separation, I make a lot of modifications for them during class, and I also recommend that they attend my 4-week intensive Core9 Diastasis Repair Workshop (I have another workshop scheduled for June).

In general, it is so important for ALL women - not just recently postpartum and not just those of us with a DR - to strengthen the transverse abdominis (the deepest layer of abs muscles) and the pelvic floor with pelvic floor lifts (use it or lose it - yikes!).

Please join us next month to talk about diastastis repair in more detail! We’re just scratching the surface here.

I will be more than happy to join you for more DR talk - it is one of my favorite topics, and it is such a important and overlooked part of postpartum care!

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MEET MARY MCQUEEN

Mary is mom to Liam (5/07), Sinead (6/10), and Jameson (7/12), and has owned Baby Boot Camp Oakland since April 2009. She has a B.A. in English and French Literature from U.C. San Diego, is an ACSM-certified personal trainer, and certified in Group TRX Suspension Training. 
You can reach Mary by email or phone at 510-418-8599.

Sleep: It's No Joke!

Sleep deprivation is not a laughing matter, nothing to be casually bandied about like it’s a cheeky right of passage. It’s not a badge of honor. It’s torture. And it sucks. Bad.

What are we living on if we haven’t slept for days on end? If we’re postpartum, we get a healthy super-mama dose of oxytocin to help us through those zombie days, so we can drive a car and be trusted with another human’s life. But that’s not enough. 

Our wise, desperate bodies release adrenaline to carry the tired load. And then we drink caffeine, which only increases the amount of adrenaline our adrenal glands pump into the bloodstream. So, now you’re flitting about the new-mama world of mothers groups, work, and grocery runs fueled by adrenaline and caffeine. Oops. This can’t be physiologically healthy, never mind psychologically. 

So, let’s review what happens when your body is operating like this. Adrenaline is designed to trigger your fight or flight response (thank you, evolution). There are three major muscles programmed to contract with adrenaline- any guesses what they are?

1. Your shoulder muscles, the ones between the shoulders and the ears- yeah, those. They tighten to protect your brainstem as if a grizzly bear is approaching.

2. Your jaw tightens in preparation for direct combat - those teeth are serious weapons, am I right early teethers?

3. Finally, the psoas, a deep abdominal muscle, tightens along the lower back and this muscle helps us run away. Fast. But it also provides significant lower back discomfort when chronically contracted from adrenaline and poor posture (read: stress and sitting- hmmm sounds an awful lot like the early days of breastfeeding. And every single day in the car or an office.

It’s a feedback loop: the tighter these muscles become, the more adrenaline they trigger in your tired, baby-obsessed brain. But this is good news! You can address this exhaustion, this overwhelming abundance of adrenaline, from two different angles: physical and lifestyle. Reduce your physical tension in your shoulders, your jaw, and your psoas and you will reduce your anxiety, your stress, and your general feeling of “what’s happened to my life?!" (thumbs up!).

Stretch!

• Stand with your feet wide, look straight ahead, clasp your hands behind your back and bend forward, letting your hands slowly drift towards the floor

• Open your jaw slowly just to the point that you feel a gentle relieving stretch. Then close your jaw lightly so your teeth are barely touching, relax your tongue in your mouth and massage the jaw muscles

• Place one foot on the ground and the other knee on the ground with both knees initially bent at 90 degrees. Support yourself with both hands on the ground at your sides. Slowly inch the front foot forward so that you begin to feel a gentle stretch at the front of the body with the bent knee.

• Once you feel a gentle stretch, place both hands on your upper knee and lift your chest to stretch the psoas

Decaf!

Yeah, yeah, I know, embarrassing to order, but give it a whirl. And notice how your breastfeeding baby responds- maybe they’ll chill out too since they drink what you drink. It may take you both a few days to notice the positive benefits. Trust that it’ll be worth it when you don’t want to go all “Red Wedding” on your partner come the end of the day.

Ask For and Offer Help!

It may only be 90 minutes that you crucially need, or an hour: ask someone to come to your house and hang out with your baby or, better yet, take the baby on a long walk around the ‘hood while you put earplugs in and slumber. Ask a mom in your mothers group if you two can do a sleep/playdate swap. Call your friend who wants to be called ‘Aunty’ and let her know that this is the test. Ask a tolerable and relatively responsible family member to help. People will be honored, I kid you not. And, most importantly, don’t let this opportunity pass you by: discipline yourself to get in bed, plug those ears, and close your eyes.

Please, Share a Night Feeding!

Share this article with your partner and then arrange for them to take at least one of the feedings at the beginning or end of the night so that you can go to bed early or wake up later and get a “proper” stretch of sleep (4 hours!? YAAASSSSSS!!).

If you’re breastfeeding, you will have to consider your boobs’ schedule but it’s worth the logistical analysis. If you encounter pushback, reference the “Red Wedding” allusion above.

Massage!

Did you know that Glow treats women at any age and stage of life? We’re not just prenatal specialists! Massage relieves anxiety by relaxing your tired muscles, reducing adrenaline, reducing blood pressure and increasing our happy hormones like oxytocin and serotonin (yum). Glow’s massage therapists will come to your house if that’s what suits you logistically or you can escape to our perfectly controlled environment at 4901 Lawton Avenue. 

Postpartum Doula!

Hire a Glow postpartum doula to come to your house for a four-hour spell so you can take a load off, watch a backlogged episode of The Affair, and zzzzzzzzzzzzz. If a postpartum doula is too costly with all baby accoutrement accounted for, ask your friends and family for an early birthday gift. Better yet, pregnant mamas, ask for postpartum doula care in lieu of baby gifts! Email us to explore more postpartum doula options at glow@gloweastbay.com and check out our offerings.

Mini Vacay!

Once you’ve mastered breast milk storage or trained your partner/friend/family member to mix formula, GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! Book yourself a hotel room; it doesn’t have to be posh, because your eyes will be shut, god willing. Bring ear plugs, bring some basic food items, and SLEEP, MAMA, SLEEP! Even if you have to pump in the middle of the night, it’s not the same as waiting to hear the cry for a feeding. Worth every penny you will save on couples counseling, do this for the team.

Toddlers and Time-Out

Many parents grapple with the challenging behaviors of their babies, toddlers, and preschool-aged children and wonder: Can a young child manipulate or be naughty? What does child discipline look like for babies and young children?

These are important questions, as the meanings that we attribute to our children’s behavior affects how we feel and respond. Seeing our children’s behavior as manipulative or bad sets us up to respond in harsh or punitive ways that worsen rather than calm the situation. It’s essential that parents’ expectations for their young children, and the interpretations they make of their children’s motivations, be informed by an understanding of what is normal for each age and developmental stage. Interactions that seem driven by purposeful mal-intent are often creative strategies central to your child’s developmental milestones. When my son was almost one, he started to drop his food off his high chair, watching what would happen to the food and also closely observing my response. While it would have been easy to interpret what he was doing as manipulative or naughty, I came to understand that he, like all young children, was investigating cause and effect. In this situation, he was discovering gravity and he was also fascinated to see how his actions impacted me, whether it led to my frustration at his refusal to stop or to my delight in the game he was inviting me to play by picking up the food he dropped.

We come into the world as little scientists. From infancy, children are driven to explore and investigate all facets of their world, including exploring the full range of emotions in themselves and in others, the most compelling of which are those of their parents, or other primary caregivers. An astonishing number of neural (nerve cell) connections in your baby’s brain are made each minute in response to their interactions with you, and from numerous, similar, repeated experiences over time, those connections are laid down as established neural pathways. As I discussed in the October and November newsletters, your baby’s relationship with you will be the central thing that organizes their experience of their world for the first six years of their life.

Young children are driven by emotion, not logic. They have very little self-control and are dependent on you to help them learn to manage their intense emotions and communicate in acceptable ways. These skills take years to evolve, so don’t blame yourself or your child when you find yourself helping your child manage their great disappointment for the thousandth time in response to a limit. 

Time In vs. Time Out

The purpose of child discipline is to assist children to regulate their emotions, increase their control over their behavior, and learn acceptable ways of communicating over time within a developmentally meaningful framework.

Limits make children feel safe and secure. When your child tests the limits, your kind, firm and consistent responses help provide a predictable world where your child knows what they can expect.

Children between birth and age three are not developmentally capable of making use of “time out” as a discipline strategy. Even after age 3, time out is of questionable usefulness before age six, and even then is not ideal as a primary strategy for changing problematic behavior. Young children need physical proximity and emotional connection in order to calm down after dysregulation and to learn new ways of interacting. If a young child is overwhelmed or distressed, physical and emotional separation in the form of time out will increase the child’s anxiety and fear and escalate the situation. The best use of time outs is when parents themselves need some time to get calm enough to reconnect with their child. Instead of time outs, try a “time-in”. “Time-ins” involve a break in the current situation, usually by removing the child in order to manage feelings and calming down with parent/caregiver assistance. When calm enough, the parent addresses the issue and assists the child in a reparative act if relevant. Time-ins build capacities for emotion regulation and self-control, both vital lifelong skills. This alternative to a “time-out” can allow your child to make use of your help calming down, and when calm enough, to address what happened in order to learn new ways of being.

BASIC TIPS

• Manage your own feelings so that you are calm enough to help your child. Strive to maintain control over your response to your child’s actions.

• Set the limit and keep it short and sweet: “We don’t throw plates. It’s not safe.”

• With empathy, validate your child’s feeling: “I see you’re really disappointed that your sister is using the yellow plate."

• Provide simple choices: “Would you like to us the red plate or the purple plate?”

Every parent deserves the support and help they need to have the best possible relationship with their child. For some, consulting with a therapist specifically trained in infant mental health or early childhood mental health can be of great benefit.

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MEET JILL SULKA

Jill Sulka, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who specializes in infant and early childhood mental health. She provides parent consultation, infant-parent and child-parent psychotherapy, and child play therapy in her office and at home, depending on the needs of the family. Dr. Sulka has been providing psychological services for 20 years, and has directed several programs for parents and their children birth to 8 years old.She believes that every child and parent deserve the opportunity to develop a relationship together that best supports that child’s potential to grow well and love well. She can be reached at (510) 326-2002 and jillsulka@gmail.com.

Infant Mental Health

From birth to age 6, your child’s relationship with you is the central organizing experience of their life. From the beginning, your baby is a person with feelings, thoughts, and a meaningful inner life who is developing a sense of themselves, others, and the world through their relationship with you.

Babies are extremely attentive and sensitive to the feelings, facial expressions, and mental state of the adults to whom they’re close, and they depend on back and forth responsive communication to feel calm and secure.

Understanding the mind of your baby or child, and the meaning of their signals and behavior as they seek to understand yours, is a key part of the parenting experience. However, it is not uncommon for parents to find it challenging to attune to their baby or young child, especially with babies that have difficult temperaments.

When stressful things happen in your child’s life, it’s their relationship with you as their attachment figure that will help them manage their feelings and make sense of their world.

The more safe and secure your young child feels in their relationship with you, the more they will turn to you for help when in trouble when they’re older. With this foundational security, they will have a higher sense of self-worth, know that most problems have an answer, solve problems on their own, know how to be kind, and trust that good things will come their way.

Be aware that memories of our own early relationships and childhood experiences—both benevolent and problematic—return to us when we become parents. As children go through different developmental phases, unresolved past experiences and feelings can emerge in one’s present relationship with their child.Sometimes this causes difficulty with parents’ relationships with their children, but it also offers new opportunities for growth and transformation

Did you know?

Every baby and child is different. What it takes to be a good-enough parent to one child can be very different from what it takes to be a good-enough parent to another.

Separating from your baby? Make sure to say goodbye! All children feel more secure when they know they can count on you to let them know when you are leaving. Otherwise, children learn that that the people closest to them unpredictably disappear, and can become more clingy and anxious in general since they don’t know when you will suddenly be gone.

Everyday routine activities like diapering, bathing, dressing and feeding are not mundane activities for your young child; from the start, these are learning experiences through which your baby is developing a relationship to their body and their needs, and discovering what they can expect in connections with other people. 

RESOURCES

Zero To Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families

The Emotional Life of the Toddler, by Alicia F. Lieberman, Ph.D.

Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive,
by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Mary Hartzell, M.Ed.

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MEET JILL SULKA

Jill Sulka, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who specializes in infant and early childhood mental health. She provides parent consultation, infant-parent and child-parent psychotherapy, and child play therapy in her office and at home, depending on the needs of the family. Dr. Sulka has been providing psychological services for 20 years, and has directed several programs for parents and their children birth to 8 years old.She believes that every child and parent deserve the opportunity to develop a relationship together that best supports that child’s potential to grow well and love well. She can be reached at (510) 326-2002 and jillsulka@gmail.com.

Babymoon Breakfast Cookies

Makes 5 dozen cookies - an excellent make-ahead food to prepare for while waiting for baby. Freeze 2/3 of the cookies in ziplock baggies, and they are there to grab whenever you are desperate for a meal, whether it's breakfast, a missed dinner, or middle of the night breastfeeding munchies. These cookies are delicious, and full of nutrients your body needs to heal and feed a growing baby!        

xo Sarah Vine, Glow Doula

Ingredients

• 2 c oats

• 1 1/4 c whole wheat flour

• 1 c high fiber cereal (any sort! I used this Trader Joe's kind last)

• 1/2 c wheat germ

• 1/2 c oat bran

• 2 teaspoons baking soda

• 1/4 c seeds - can be sesame, hemp, pumpkin, sunflower, flax, chia

• 1 c butter, room temperature (or coconut oil)

• 1 c applesauce

• 2 eggs

• 2/3 c brown sugar

• 1 tablespoon vanilla

• 1 c chopped almonds and walnuts

• 1 c rasins or cranberries,

• 1 c chopped dates

• 1 c dark chocolate chunks

Method

• Preheat oven to 350. Line cookie pans with baking paper. Combine all dry ingredients.

• Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla, beat well.

• Add dry ingredients a bit at a time, until mixed.

• Stir in nuts, rasins or cranberries, dates and chocolate bits.

• Form golf ball sized cookies, flatten onto cookie sheets 1 inch apart. Bake 13/15 minutes, cool, enjoy!

Benefits

• Oats and oat bran - iron, also known to increase lactation

• Wheat germ - vitamin E, zinc, B vitamin folate

• High fiber bran cereal - good digestion regulation

• Seeds and nuts - good sources of essential DHA fats important for infant (and mother) brain development

• Walnuts - omega 3, calcium, iron, vitamin B6

• Almonds - increase milk production

• Dates, raisins and cranberries - iron, carbohydrates, potassium, help regulate the gut.

• Dark chocolate - makes you happy! And that is always a good thing.

CMV and Your Family

There are a million things that cause anxiety during pregnancy; this doesn’t need to be one of them. The following information is powerful and significant because this virus is preventable. Please ask your doctors about the risk of CMV infection during pregnancy.

Did you know?

50-80% of the population will be infected with Cytomegalovirus (CMV) by the time they are 40 years old yet. Coming into contact with the CMV virus is a common occurrence and is generally harmless for healthy kids or adults, but it can present critical problems for babies who are infected with CMV before birth, referred to as congenital CMV

Approximately 30,000 children are born with congenital CMV infection each year in the U.S. and 5,000+ will develop permanent health problems such as hearing or vision loss, cognitive or developmental disabilities, cerebral palsy or seizures

More children will have disabilities due to congenital CMV than other well-known infections and syndromes, including Downs Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Spina Bifida and Pediatric HIV/AIDS

CMV is preventable! Only 13% of surveyed women of childbearing age know about CMV prevention tactics

There are simple and effective prevention measures you and your loved ones can take to mitigate the risk of CMV transmission during pregnancy. Please join Glow and the National CMV Foundation on October 8th to learn more.

The National CMV Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting awareness, providing access to resources and sharing prevention information to eliminate congenital CMV. With your support, we intend to empower women, facilitate communication, generate social outreach, and ultimately drive behavioral change.

Learn More

The National CMV Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting awareness, providing access to resources and sharing prevention information to eliminate congenital CMV. With your support, we intend to facilitate communication, generate social outreach, and ultimately drive behavioral change. Please visit the CDC.