Halloween memories of pumpkins, baby wipes, and being a ghost of my former self…

Comparing photos of my first and second child's first Halloween, and being struck by the difference in my mental health in each postpartum period, inspired me to write this blog post to share with you what made the difference, in the hope that it might support you too.

(Yes, my arm is around a pumpkin rather than around my daughter in the photo above - that’s two weeks postpartum for you!)

I remember the evening this photo was taken so clearly. Partly because it was my son's first Halloween and he was just 2-weeks-old, but mostly because that night he had his first bout of colic, and cried non-stop for three or four hours.

The next morning, I remember thinking, what was that? I’d never experienced anything like it before. I put it down to the spooky Halloween energy and thought it was just a "bad night". 

But then it happened again two nights later… and again two nights after that.

I remember saying to my husband, “Thank God it’s every second night, at least we get a break in between.” But before long, it was happening every night.

During that time, I was surviving on tiny scraps of sleep, waking to feed him three, four, five times a night after he had cried non-stop from 7/8pm to 11/12pm. By contrast, in the first few weeks when my daughter was a baby, we had introduced at 10/11pm dream feed which my husband gave to her, so that I could sleep from about 8pm until the first wakening after the dream feed, giving me the potential for an invaluable 4 or 5 hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep (although for other reasons this didn't always happen - more on that later). I stumbled through those weeks of my son's colic like a sleep-deprived zombie.

Even in that exhaustion, I remember feeling grateful for three things:

1. My belief, at the time, that my three-year-old daughter was asleep for the night before my son's crying would start and she didn't hear him. It was months later that her teacher in ECCE said "you all seem much more settled now, S. used to tell us "our baby cries a lot" " :-(

2. That this was happening with our second child, not our first, and that she had been such a settled baby and a brilliant sleeper. All of this allowed me to trust (most of the time) that I was doing nothing wrong, and that this wasn't my fault. Already having experience of the newborn stage allowed me to trust my instincts, and trust that we would get through this.

3. That I had postpartum anxiety with my first child. I understand that might sound bizarre, but it meant that I had learned the knowledge and skills to manage and overcome this challenge, and I had built a solid support system around me - my "village". I also knew where and how to access professional support, and how to ask for help. I don't know how I would have gotten through my son's colic without all of this. 

Looking at the photo above I can see, and remember, that my mental health was remarkably strong for just two weeks postpartum. By contrast, looking at the photo below, when my daughter was six months old, I can see that I look like I was ok, but I can also see how hard I was trying to look ok, because I was really struggling. For example, the sleep I could have been getting with our dream feed arrangement? Instead I was lying awake, listening, making sure she was breathing.

And that is why it was so important to me to write this blog, to share with you what helped me:

• Learning about matrescence and how to practice self-compassion
  ”A moment of self compassion can change your whole day, and a string of such moments can change your life” - Christopher Germer.

• Understanding my nervous system and the safety responses of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, and understanding both physical and mental ways to support my nervous system - for example mentally with mantras (see below), and physically with adequate rest, movement, fresh air and getting out getting the maximum amount of daylight available during that long winter.

• Grounded in these foundations are my Motherhood Mantras, such as “I’m human, I don’t need to be supermum”, “This is a season, it’s not forever”, or “I am everthting my baby needs”.

• Prioritising my sleep, exercise, nutrition, hydration and fun - "prioritising" means recognising that I need these things just as much as my children do (another one of my mantras), and going to the same lengths to make them happen for myself as I do for my children (why this can still feel so hard, and yet seem to come so naturally to my husband, is a discussion for another day!)

• Taking breaks, and scheduling time away from my children, not because I don't love them, but because I do. I’m human, and I need time and space to experience being other versions of myself as well as mammy, in order to be a better mammy.

• Building a solid support village - regular meetups with them saw me through that time.

All of these elements of my motherhood toolkit are woven into my Motherhood Matters supports, which include 1:1 support, group support and free monthly coffee mornings.

Postpartum isn’t just about the baby arriving, it’s about a whole new version of YOU arriving too.

You are not meant to do this alone. You are biologically, emotionally and socially wired to need postpartum support.

And you deserve it.