Mummy Matters

‘I knew I’d be a perfect mother. And my perfect baby would be a credit to my perfect mothering. I knew, too, that I would never ‘let myself go’ – that I would always be immaculately groomed and, eventually, surrounded by a whole family of perfectly clean, perfectly behaved children and a perfectly adoring husband in a gleaming, perfectly sparkling home.

‘Of course, back in those perfect days BC (Before Children), I also pictured babies either peacefully sleeping or smiling Heinzfully day and night. I imagined toddlers cutely toddling (never climbing or spilling) between afternoon naps and bedtime stories. I visualised crisply ‘Fabuloned’ children, happily playing in sandpits (never mud). I would take my perfect brood for frolics in the park, with my long red hair (semi-permanent, naturally) blowing in the breeze. Then I would feed my hungry little human beans and tuck them into bed before a gourmet dinner for two, prepared with my own perfectly manicured hands. I’d be simply irresistible and he’d love how my hair shone.

‘Alas, I wasn’t like the TV mothers. I learned that happiness was not a dry nappy. I had nightmares about drowning under piles of nappies. I felt as though I was drowning in breast milk. In the supermarket another shopper whispered, ‘Excuse me, your milk is leaking.’ Can you imagine a better start to the day? I automatically made an embarrassed check. It was the carton in the trolley she had been referring to!

‘I gave up being a Wella Woman sometime during the first year of motherhood. The baby woke up every time I was about to wash my hair (and whenever my beloved told me he loved how my hair shone), and there would be another centimetre of regrowth.

‘In between mopping up the spilt milk, I only ate half as much. And when the children didn’t empty their plates it would be half as much again. I used to look great in a mini, too! There were night howls and musical beds. I started asking ‘Have you got any protection?’

‘Oh ad man, ad man, show me the way,

To be that perfect woman every day.

Yes, I’ll shave and deodorise every inch of me.

I’ll be an ad man’s woman – naturally.’

                        ( Manic Mothers)

Today,  I was called to advocate in court (in my capacity as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant)  for an illiterate migrant woman who had her baby removed whilst a patient in a psychiatric ward. This poor mama had been fully breastfeeding her 4 month old when she reported that she had been raped. While in a police station the baby was taken from her (this was probably appropriate while the mother was interviewed etc). However, the mother who was traumatised and thought her baby had been taken off her attempted suicide whilst in the police station. This is how she became a psychiatric inpatient.

Sadly,  officials didn’t organise access of baby to mother so breastfeeding could continue: in 5 days the baby was taken to the mother only once – according to a social worker, the baby lit up when she saw her mother , their mutual gaze was exquisite, they were perfectly attuned and the baby breastfed voraciously. Although the mother was expressing her milk with a hospital breast pump during  separation from her baby, the precious liquid gold was being dumped down a sink – not because it was contaminated by medications that may harm the baby, but because of a communication breakdown – nobody followed through so that the milk could be given to the baby.

Today’s case was initially about gaining daily access for baby to her mother so breastfeeding could continue. Very quickly it became evident that unless a placement in a mother baby unit where the mother could be with her baby under supervision, the baby would be weaned and placed in longer term care, regardless of the mother’s willingness to breastfeed or provide her milk for her baby.  

Access to her mother’s milk is not only every baby’s birthrite, but a basic human right and this is what I argued today on behalf of this baby and her vulnerable, disempowered mother:

Ceasing breastfeeding poses health risks to both mother and infant, but particularly the infant.

UNICEF and the World Health Organization recommend breastfeeding until age two or beyond. Breastfeeding provides health benefits both for the baby (reducing the risk of juvenile diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome [SIDS]), meningitis, Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, chronic liver disorders, childhood cancers, asthma, ear infections, and diarrheal /gut infections), and for the mother, decreasing her risk of breast, ovarian, and cervical cancer. In addition, breastfeeding helps mothers bond securely with their babies, which is essential to a child’s future well-being.

As a breastfed baby, removed from her mother’s breast, this baby’s level of anxiety and stress would be extreme. This poses risks to mother-infant attachment that may compromise the baby’s emotional development. According to the Australian Association of Infant Mental Health,  ‘a baby under two years and particularly under one year can be severely stressed by separation from the people he or she   feels safe with even for short periods of time and ongoing stress affects the infant’s brain development. ‘

The impact of breastfeeding upon the mothering abilities of women is substantial: Australian research has found that women who do not breastfeed or breastfeed for a short time are at a 2.5 fold greater risk of neglecting their children (at any time through to 15 years) than women who continue to breastfeed (Strathearn, et al., 2009)

There is also the issue of food security. In a low income mother, if the baby was weaned and later returned to the mother, the cost of providing infant formula would significantly disadvantage the mother. This would increase the likelihood that the baby may receive inappropriate feeds if the mother couldn’t afford a recommended formula for her infant.

Although the mother is expressing milk, which demonstrates her commitment to her baby, this is not a longer term solution and may very quickly lead to premature weaning: the baby will become used to sucking a bottle which has a faster flow, requires a different suckling action and may then refuse to breastfeed at all. This would create extreme distress for mother and baby.  

In 2000 a consensus statement regarding the nutrition rights of infants based on international human rights law and principles was developed (Kent, 2001). This consensus statement states that:

1.     Infants have a right to be free from hunger and to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health.

2.     Infants have a right to adequate food, health services and care.

3.     The state and others are obligated to respect, protect and facilitate the nurturing relationship between mother and child.

4.     Women have the right to social, economic, health and other conditions that are favourable for them to breastfeed or to deliver breastmilk to their infants in other ways.

5.     Women and infants have a right to protection from factors that can hinder breastfeeding in accordance with:

·        the Convention on the Rights of the Child

·        the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes

·        the International Labor Organization’s Maternity Protection Conventions

·        the Innocenti Declaration on the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding

6.     States, represented by their governments, have an obligation to:

Protect, maintain and promote breastfeeding through public educational activities

Facilitate the conditions of breastfeeding

Otherwise ensure that infants have safe access to breastmilk

7.     No woman should be prevented from breastfeeding

The outcome

After many phone calls (only to discover there wasn’t a single bed available in any public mother baby unit), a full day of negotiations and some help from two wonderful paediatricians (thankyou Gillian Opie and Cathy McAdam -it certainly helps to know people in high places!) as well as information provided by other professionals who are also concerned about legal separations of breastfeeding dyads (thankyou Karleen Gribble) this baby has been admitted as a boarder in the paediatric ward in the hospital where the mother is being treated. The mother is ecstatic and, for now at least, she can enjoy holding her baby close as she nourishes her child with liquid love from her own heart, through her breasts.  

If you are the parent of a crying baby, it may help to remind yourself that perhaps the stares your baby’s crying elicits from perfect strangers aren’t always glares of disapproval or judgement: it is natural to feel sensitive when your best efforts to protect and nurture your child seem less than perfect, but could it be possible that many of the stares and whispers that surround you and your crying baby are really voices of concern or even deeply felt empathy? After all, empathy (along with humility) can be one of the greatest lessons learned by parents who have a crying baby.

You have two choices when your baby cries: to respond, or to ignore the cries. By responding, you are not only teaching your to love, you too are learning about the greatest love of all -unconditional love: you are accepting the child in your arms just the way he is. There are many points along the continuum of parenthood when it is easy to wish our child was just a little (or a lot) more ‘this’ or ‘that’ (easier in some way, depending on our definition of ‘easy’ or our child’s fit with our own personality and expectations. If you have a high-needs baby, the struggle to accept your child might be great initially, but overall, loving your baby through his tears can teach you much sooner that all the wishing in the world will not give you a different child. This is unconditional love.

You will also learn compassion, tolerance and flexibility as you meet your baby’s needs. These too are strengths to draw on as your child grows. As you attend to his cries, you will discover resources you may never have believed possible: even as you reach the pits of exhaustion, you will gather new reserves of energy. You will learn to recognise when your own reserves are low and when you need nurturing yourself – you will learn to take care of yourself as you take care of your child, because you will be forced to.

A crying baby will teach you to prioritise: you will learn that people matter much more than ‘things’. As you sit and rock your baby, instead of becoming restless about that unfinished ‘work’, look deeply into those trusting navy-blue eyes and ask yourself how much these things would matter if your child were taken from you tomorrow.

Mostly, by responding to your crying baby you will have an opportunity to heal yourself: to overcome your own

feelings that crying is unhealthy, and perhaps to make a connection with your child that you may have missed out on yourself if your own parents were discouraged from holding you close as you cried. And as you hold your baby close in the dark of night, remember too you are not alone: out there, in another home, in another street, across the world even, another mother will also be holding her own baby close. Through your baby’s cries, you are connected through time and space to mothers everywhere.

If you are the parent of a crying baby - why not check out  100 Ways to Calm the Crying by Pinky McKay ( www.pinkymckay.com )

‘We’ll meet at the pool,’ they said. ‘Bring your bathers.’

They were twenty-something mums. I was a forty-something mum with a ‘bonus baby’ (the baby you have when your other ones are big enough to tie their own shoelaces, run their own baths or even drive their own cars).

I used to be a twenty-something mum. I used to spend most of the summer at the pool with my other babies. Then, ‘forty-something’ meant kilos to me. With a bikini top nicely rounded out by lactating bosoms, I didn’t have a body image problem. Nowadays, if it wasn’t all so soft (and so far south) I’d be nicely rounded all over. The babies I had when I was a twenty-something mum do nothing to enhance my fragile body image. ‘Blue goes with everything,’ they tell me. It’s the varicose veins they are referring to. Today I’m a mistress of camouflage. I know just what to wear to conceal my biggest assets. But – at the pool? T-shirts over bathers are fine – until they are wet!

Before the Bonus Baby became a socialite, I used to put him into the pool with the big kids. Later, he loved being taken to the pool by a big brother (the bonus for the big brother was that the Bonus Baby was a babe-magnet). But this time I was trapped. Big sweet-eyes with his curly lashes looked trustingly up at me. It was bathers on for both of us – no excuses – and into the pool with all the trim, taut, terrific twenty-something mums and their kids. And the nanas (or were they also mothers of Bonus Babies?). And the granddads (or were they just older fathers?). Splashing and playing, laughing and yelling and playing ‘ring-a-rosie’. Well, at least I could keep my face out of the water, couldn’t I?

Uh-oh. Big sweet-eyes with curly lashes looked trustingly up at me, begging me to go under. Down I bobbed, with all the tots and their young mums. Up we came again. There I was, hair dripping, mascara running – completely unmasked. Big sweet-eyes looked up at me, smiling. I was smiling too. It felt just as good as it used to when I was a trim, taut, terrific, twenty-something mum.

Being bashful about body image isn’t a bonus. And, just to remind myself, I cut out a passage from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams and stuck it on the fridge.

‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, then you become real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ said the rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are real, you don’t mind being hurt.’

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges or have to be carefully kept.

‘Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop off, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all because once you are real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’

My Mother-in-law called last night and when I told her my partner was in the kitchen cooking dinner, she said, “he is spoiling you!”  Then when she spoke to him, the first thing she said was, “you are spoiling her!”   Jacqueline, mum of a five week old baby says, “I felt as though it was a dig at me. I am finding it difficult enough to get through the day as it is, without managing cooking as well.  My confidence has plummeted – I worry about all the things I ‘should’ be doing and can’t manage and I question my mothering skills every time I receive some new information or a comment from somebody. Today, I was asked, “is she in a routine?”  I have just got breastfeeding sorted after a rough start and now I am being pressured about having a routine and letting her fall asleep on the breast and how long I should let her feed. I am consumed about doing things ‘the right way’ – whatever that is.

The absolute and total responsibility of caring for your tiny, vulnerable baby and an overload of information can be enough to send the most competent woman into a crisis of confidence and elicit feelings that you are living on some sort of neurotic knife edge. Advice, whether it is appropriate or not can create a serious obsession about the simplest things when it concerns your baby’s well-being, especially in the early months when your hormones are rampant and everyone else seems to want to share their opinion. Sarah, mum of a very alert five month old is beginning to feel more confident than a few weeks ago when a health professional advised her to start her fully breastfed baby on solids much earlier than the recommended six months because she could have ‘small baby syndrome’. Sarah says, “the word ‘syndrome’ shattered my confidence totally. I was became obsessed about her size, even though I am petite myself. Thankfully I got another opinion and did my own research. On the World Health weight charts my baby is doing just fine but it really played on my mind that I must be doing something wrong - even starving my child.”

With such enormous pressure to be seen to be ‘coping’ self doubt is often bottled up, leaving mums without the support that could help get things into perspective. Recently, a colleague who counsels mums with postnatal depression told me that she was seeing four mums all from the same mothers group. Due to professional confidentiality she couldn’t disclose to these mums that she was seeing the others but when she suggested, “have you talked about your feelings in your mums group? That could be really supportive.” The response from each of the mums was the same,” I couldn’t possibly discuss how I feel. Everyone else is so ‘together’.

As I encourage mums to reach out and share or seek support, there is a quote I love to share. It is by Jean Leidloff, a city woman from New York who spent time living with the Yequana Indians in South America. Her experience prompted her to write “The Continuum Concept’ where she says, “I would be ashamed to admit to the Indians that where I come from the women do not feel themselves capable of raising children until they have read the instructions written by a strange man.”

Perhaps you could copy this quote and write it on a mirror somewhere in bright coloured lipstick. Then each time you wonder, what am I doing wrong? Read this and remind yourself that every other mammal in the world instinctively knows how to rear their young – and so do you. Whatever advice you read or hear, you know your baby best. And if you still have doubts, look at the beautiful child in your arms, gaze into those deep navy blue eyes and tell yourself – my baby is proof, I am doing a wonderful job!

                                   This blog post is an edited extract from an interview with clinical social worker Lauren Porter in Pinky’s series of interviews with experts: ‘Early Loving Early Learning, loving ways to make your babysmarter’  (http://www.pinkymckay.com.au/earlylovingearlylearning/

                                    Attunement is a word that sounds like what it is - tuning in to your baby. The essential bit about attunement is that you need to always be doing a scan of yourself, trying to calm yourself and asking yourself, “Am I tuning in to me, or am I tuning in to my baby? Am I tuning in to advice I’ve had?”

                                    A lot of times, we will hear moms, dads and other people who are caring for babies talk about their babies in a way that, as an outsider, we can say, “Hang on a second! That doesn’t seem like that baby to me.”

                                    You’ll hear a mom say maybe, “He’s really stroppy and demanding.” Yet perhaps as a professional, we’re watching a mother who’s not feeding a baby when they’re showing signs of hunger. Then the baby does get quite grizzly and what would seem demanding and hard to settle.

                                    What’s happening for that mom is that she’s tuning in to herself, either advice that she’s had or just her own personal experience of possibly not ever being tuned in to as a baby herself.

                                    She thinks she’s responding to her baby and she thinks she’s reading that this baby is difficult or stroppy or whatever the word might be. In fact, she hasn’t achieved attunement. I don’t mean this as a judgment because we all fall down in this in various ways.

                                    I think the idea is to be quite gentle with ourselves, but also to be quite persevering and to try to question ourselves, not to the point of creating madness, but just taking a second and thinking, “What is my baby trying to tell me?”

                                    Throw out any notions you might have, and just for a second consider them more as wonderings or questions in your mind as opposed to certainties.

                                    Just say, “Let me just see how my baby responds. What does my baby seem to be saying? Is my baby settling when I do this? Now, the book might say that my baby should settle, but does my baby settle? Does my baby like to be held this way? How do I know?”

                                    How do you know what your baby likes? If you can ask yourself those questions or if you have already asked your baby those questions, that’s the process of attunement. It’s tuning in and getting on that wavelength where you just feel like you know your baby. That will change over time.

                                    It’s the type of thing when someone comes to visit your baby and says, “Can I have a hold?” and you say, “Yes, sure. He’s a bit colicky at the moment, so he quite likes to be held like this.” You may pass the baby over with hand on tummy, showing the visitor how to hold the baby. That’s simple attunement that moms and dads do all the time.

                                    You just instinctively are in step with what your baby’s needs are in that moment. Mothers don’t see this as a big deal, but it is quite a big deal because to the baby it says, “I’m understood. You get me. You’re there for me in a meaningful way.”      

                                     Lauren Porter is co-director of The Centre for Attachment (www.centreforattachment.com), a member of the external advisory group for the NZ government task force on child maltreatment, a member of the Attachment Parenting International research group and executive secretary of the Infant Mental Health Association of Aotearoa, New Zealand.  Listen to the complete interview –and others from Pinky’s series, ‘Early loving, early learning, loving ways to make your baby smarter’  at

                                      http://www.pinkymckay.com.au/earlylovingearlylearning/

The bonus baby was sound asleep. We fetched the trampoline that had been hidden in the neighbours’ garage for weeks waiting for us to assemble it in time for our youngest child’s Christmas morning surprise. But our anticipation was short-lived: when we opened the box and stacked up bars, nuts and bolts, we discovered there was no mat.  Because it was such a big present we hadn’t bought any other toys and there was absolutely nothing of the older kids’ stuff (they were all teenagers) that would be appropriate to share. It was so late by now that every single shop, even the milk bars, had closed for the holidays.   

After a drive to the factory where we had bought the trampoline, calls to the security firm whose sign was outside and the discovery that they no longer worked for the company, desperate calls to the local police had everyone racing to find somebody who could unlock a factory late on Christmas Eve. Luckily, we struck gold – an employee was tracked down at least an hour’s drive away. The vision of a small child without a Christmas present to open had obviously tugged at everyone’s heart strings and engendered the most tangible evidence that there were indeed angels on high.  

Long after ‘Carols by Candle light’ had finished, my husband arrived home with a new trampoline – complete with all the bits and pieces. A bit of Christmas cheer later, we decided it was far too dark to assemble a trampoline, so we stuck bows all over it and collapsed into bed for the few hours left before the first rays of Christmas sunshine woke our boy.

Although this Christmas saga had a happy ending, there has been a long list of Christmas ‘stuff-ups’ in our house.  From the time I forgot to thaw the turkey (because I had too many tastes of port as I made the Christmas mince), and the rainy Christmas day when the kids got new bikes (so had to ride round outside and track the mud back in!), to the time the dog got into the Christmas stockings and we woke to purple bubblegum stuck all over her fur, the carpet and the sofa (what was I thinking anyway –that Christmas would be a better time to allow bubble gum?).

Every year, as the ads come out weeks before Christmas showing tantalising visions of happy families in beautiful ( spotless) homes with dazzling (colour coordinated) decorations and sumptuous (hot) dinners, I promise myself I will capture the magic this year –I will plan earlier, get organised, write lists, whatever it takes.  However, while my Christmas spirit is willing, I don’t actually have any more time or energy in December, despite the doubled up workload I am embracing.  Sadly, the ads never mention that kids still have to be cared for (and they aren’t any more likely to pick up after themselves),  washing still has to be done and bathrooms cleaned (do Christmas fairies do housework?) as we bust our butts writing cards ( home made, of course), organising clothes (and haircuts) for the kids to attend Daddy’s work party with Santa (as we moan about spouses not being invited to the ‘grown ups’ version) and perusing cookbooks (late at night) to make this the best feast ever.

A stressed mummy is hardly conducive to happy holiday memories so it’s time to grasp at a little perspective.  Let’s ask ourselves, who is Christmas really for?   The kids would probably think it was Christmas if they could eat bread with sprinkles and drink lemonade for lunch and little ones are often more intrigued with the packaging than the gifts. So why do we repeatedly succumb to this pressure of Christmas perfection? Instead, why not plan a bit of cheer this Christmas by chilling out, doing less and playing and laughing a whole lot more. After all, this is what little ones remember the most fondly. 

What could be more affirming to a woman’s confidence than gazing into the deep navy blue eyes of her newborn, knowing that everything he needs comes from her –  security in her arms as he drinks in her smell, her loving gaze and her milk?

 Conversely,   a new mother’s self- confidence can be so easily undermined as well-meaning voices suggest, “ are you sure you have enough milk?” or “perhaps your milk isn’t strong enough,” any time her baby so much as whimpers (by the way, this second comment is never true, even though it was commonly expressed when your own mother was a new mum).

 A new mother’s vulnerability runs deep: no mother can bear to question her ability to nourish her baby or even worse, to feel that she could be starving her child. Feeding your child is the most basic instinct.   As a mother’s confidence is eroded, her breastfeeding experience can also be affected – as you become stressed about your milk supply, this tension can affect hormones that elicit milk flow and, if you begin to offer your baby bottles of milk as well as breastfeeds, it isn’t long before your body gets the message that it doesn’t need to make as much milk.  Then, sadly, your baby could be weaned before you are ready to let go of this special relationship.

Making milk

Breast milk production works on a supply and demand basis: Your baby’s sucking at your breast stimulates milk production which means that the more your baby drinks, the more milk your breasts will make and according to research by Dr Peter Hartmann and associates at the University of Western Australia, an empty breast will make milk more quickly while a full breast will make milk more slowly. This means that milk production will speed up or slow down according to how hungry your baby is. This is particularly important to remember when your baby has a growth spurt and wants to feed more often for a few days to keep up with his needs. Although it is fairly common for babies to have growth spurts and corresponding appetite increases at 2 weeks, 6 weeks and 3 months, these can happen at any time.

How often should you feed your baby?

After birth your baby’s stomach is only the size of a marble and about 10 days later is only the size of his tiny fist (or a golf ball). Also, breast-milk is very quickly and easily digested so your baby will need frequent feeds, at least in the early weeks. It is perfectly normal for a breastfed baby to need 8 to 12 feeds in 24 hours in the first few weeks. This could mean that he will feed as often as every two hours – and that means two hours from the beginning of one feed, to the beginning of the next - not two hours between feeds.

Hungry or Thirsty?

Whether he is wanting to feed because he is hungry or simply thirsty, your baby will be able to regulate the type of milk he needs, if you allow him to set the pace. The composition of breast milk changes throughout the course of a feeding. The first (fore) milk, is rather like skim milk. This will quench babies’ thirst, which is why they often have very short, frequent feeds on hot days (if you feed your baby according to his needs, he won’t need bottles of water). As the feeding progresses, the fat content increases and more closely resembles whole milk. Hunger will be satisfied by longer sucking periods when baby gets the fatty, hind milk (like a rich, creamy desert) that is squeezed down into your ducts by the ‘let down’ reflex . Your baby needs to ‘finish’ the first breast first, in order to get the hind milk, but if she is satisfied with only one side, you may need to express a little for comfort off the fuller breast. One solution, is to feed baby on one side until she chooses to drop off your breast, then burp her and/or have a little play and a nappy change, then give her the other side before you put her back to bed. This way she will seem to sleep longer before waking for another feed,

Watch your baby, not the clock

If you learn to identify your baby’s hunger signals (squirming, sucking on fingers and ‘rooting’ at the breast) and allow your baby access to the breast when you see these early signals, you will be able to avert hunger cries (crying is a late hunger signal for most babies) and you can be reassured that she will take exactly the amount of milk that she needs.

Above all, rather than worrying about how much milk your baby is getting, try to relax and enjoy each feed as a time of loving interaction between you and your baby. By watching, listening and getting to know your baby’s nonverbal cues that say, I am hungry, tired, I want to play or please give me some quiet space, you will realise that you are the expert about your baby and you will be able to turn a deaf ear to negative voices. This is self- confidence! 

Pinky McKay is an Internationally Certified Lactation Consultant and author of several books including, Sleeping Like a Baby and 100 Ways to Calm the Crying (Penguin Australia) as well as an ebook ‘Breastfeeding Simply’.   

“We were out for dinner with friends, when she leaned across to him and said, “what would Daddy like to drink?”  Jenna, now a mum of a toddler recalls, “this was before we had children of our own and I clearly remember my partner and I were mortified that our friends’ relationship had been reduced to them being ‘mummy ‘and ‘daddy’ to each other, especially when their child wasn’t around.  Jenna then chuckles as she confesses, “only the other day I caught myself saying, “Daddy, could you please take the rubbish out.”  Our child was there playing with my partner, but it was bit of a surprise to think we could be sliding down this slippery slope too.”

 The reality is, that no matter how prepared you are for the practical aspects of becoming parents, a whole freezer full of frozen casseroles can’t prepare you for the effects a baby will have on your relationship. Relationship counsellor and childbirth educator Rhea Dempsey  ( www.birthingwisdom.com.au) specialises in supporting couples as they become a family. According to Rhea, a lot of the difficulties that arise when partners become parents can be attributed to gender issues. She says,   “many contemporary couples plan to have equal roles as parents and this can be reflected in language such as ‘we are pregnant,’ or ‘we are going to breastfeed.’  In reality, the mother is the one who is pregnant, gives birth and breastfeeds and because of this, at least in the early weeks and months, parenting roles naturally peak strongly into gender roles. And, as the romantic notions of being a family conflict with the constant demands of caring for a baby, it is natural to have ambivalent feelings about your parenting role and your relationship. It can help to talk about the role models of your own parents and what expectations might be triggered under stress.”

Rhea explains that gender differences can also affect intimacy between partners. Using an acronym “CISS”, which stands for Communication, Intimacy, Sensuality and Sex, Rhea says, “the pathway to bonding and connection is biologically in opposite directions for men and women: for women, communication leads to intimacy, which leads to sensuality and then to sex.  Women want and need to feel connected through sharing the effort and joy of caring for their child and then they are more open to sensuality and sex. For men, feelings that they are on the outside of the close mother-baby unit which, of course is necessary for the baby to thrive, can see them also wanting to restore the connection with their partner. Men are programmed to do this through sex which, instead of being seen as a pathway to intimacy and communication by the mother, is often seen as a demand that can be overwhelming on top of the unrelenting needs of the baby.”

Rhea says, “when couples understand these differences, they can connect without judgement and resentment. It is important to check in regularly with each other about how you are feeling and after those intense early weeks, to .keep the connection alive by prioritising time and attention to your couple relationship.”

From the coalface of intense parenting of two little ones, Donna Sheppard- Wright, early parenting educator/doula (www.nurturebirthsupport.com.au ) and Melbourne facilitator of Beer and Bubs ( www.beerandbubs.com.au  - a program that helps fathers learn how to support partners during birth) says,   “it’s great to have a strong physical relationship, but even greater to be able to give each other unconditional emotional support as we journey into the period of sleepless nights, altered emotions and hormonal changes that make many days seem endless. We need to recognise that we may do things for each other we haven’t in the past, for the simple reason that we can see the other needs support, and can give them a boost by recognising that without even being asked. It is possible for a couple’s love to grow stronger while raising their children.  Parenting gives us amazing skills to master our emotions, and harness the love we came into the relationship for and this cam be reflected back to us in our daily lives through our children.”

“We were friends for about five years before we had babies -we worked together and at weekends we partied together. Later, we spent holidays together with our respective partners. Then we had children.  As we have journeyed through pregnancies and into parenthood, the differences between our styles of parenting are so glaringly obvious that it’s become uncomfortable, to put it mildly, “says Andrea, mother of a two year old and a newborn.

Children and friendships can be a volatile mix, whether your friends are also having babies or not. Katie, mum of a four year old says, “I felt as though my single girlfriends all abandoned me when I had my baby. They became stressed if she cried and I needed to interrupt a conversation to attend to her. I don’t think they could cope with my attention being focussed on my baby and they really didn’t understand that I had to plan around her to meet up.”

Katie is now comfortable with the reality that her parenting style has defined her friendships with other mothers as well as her former friends. She says, “I found the greatest differences for most of my friends with children were around feeding and sleeping – who was breastfeeding, who wasn’t and who believed in things like controlled crying and who didn’t. Later, when the children became toddlers who pushed and shoved each other, different discipline styles also came into play. Although we weren’t critical of each other, we skirted issues and tip toed around each other. This takes a lot of energy so while some friendships became closer, others gradually drifted apart as we found our groove as different kinds of mothers.”

Andrea has made wonderful friends within her local mums’ group- sharing children to give each other breaks or attend appointments and dropping off meals if somebody is having a tough time. She says, “this is a really nurturing experience for me as a mother.”  However, this isn’t the case for Andrea and her former work colleague. She says, “the right to make different “choices” aside, my partner and I decided that it is not worth making a big effort with friendships that are on different tracks entirely. Sometimes I felt that the only thing we have in common is that we both have children and live in the same city! It all came to a crunch in our minds when my friend’s partner got really angry with their daughter one evening. Their two year old was tired and ready for bed, but they were making her wait until it fitted with them to take her home. She got angry and started kicking and shouting, which was typical for a small tired toddler, but rather than compassion she was scolded and sent for ‘time out’ in a dark room alone. She was terrified!  Our toddler was also upset, seeing it happened in our house. We saw a lack of respect that night that made us wonder about the time and energy we put into friendships, and when to let go of ones that are heading off on a different tangent.”

If a friendship is really important to us, sometimes we can redesign that friendship and meet on terms that work for both of us. We can agree to disagree on issues that are sensitive and accept that each mother is trying to do her best for her children – her way – even though this isn’t necessarily the way we do things in our own families.  However, we also have a responsibility to protect our children. For instance, if you have a friend with a sedate baby who sits in her pram while you do lunch and your child is a climber, it is unfair to get cross with your little monkey. It may be better to meet in a park or catch up without children occasionally. Or, if maintaining a friendship feels too stressful, it may be time to examine what it really means to you.

As Andrea says, “it is better for us to use that time and energy to be happy with people who make us feel good and support our choices and for our friends to find people who support their choices too.”

Box

Playing nicely

·        Meet on neutral territory – in a park or playground (not a restaurant with white table cloths!)

·        Listen and acknowledge each other  - you can agree to disagree (at least some times)

·        If you feel pressured to compromise your values or your parenting style, move on, treading gently, without blame.

Pinky McKay is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Infant Massage instructor, mother of five and author. For information about Pinky’s  books ‘Sleeping Like a Baby’or ‘Toddler Tactics’ (Penguin),  or classes  for parents, visit www.pinkymckay.com.au