What happens to women when they cross that bridge
over to parenthood? Whatever the answer most, if not all, would
say they feel all sorts of feelings. However, I wonder if there
is a “group think” that all mothers will feel mostly
happiness and contentment. Of course, we say, they will be tired
and busy with the demands of a new baby but it seems difficult
even for mums who have been through it to hold in mind what it
can really be like.
If a mother struggles with negative feelings or unclear needs
do we, partner, family, friends, professionals know how to help
them?
A mother spends her years before conceiving getting to know herself
and then she has another that is within her own body. If she is
lucky she sees this other as essentially good. If she grew up
in a family where there was not enough (e.g. love, time, energy,
money, food) to go around she may believe the baby to be insatiable,
a parasite that will take all of her if s/he could. Immediately
her self is under threat.
Where there are complications, there is often little time to
process or recover from traumatic labour experiences. Again her
self is under threat.
The immediate task of tending a newborn involves an immersion
in primal substances (e.g. blood, vomit, urine, poo) that remind
her of her most basic nature and creates echoes of her own past
dependency. She holds her new baby both physically and emotionally,
provides milk and removes poo, gives love and takes away distress.
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This is not a magical process but one which depends
on a network of support that feeds her love and provides a channel
to allow the distress to ebb away.
And then the baby smiles and it all seems worthwhile. There is
the magnetic electric flow of intimacy that vitalises and restores,
that energises even the most desperate of mothers. So what happens
for the mothers of colicky babies, or babies who are unsettled
because his/her parents are struggling, who have to wait that
extra period before their baby smiles? The oil in the machine
is missing. A mother often notices all the things she does badly
and rarely catches the (many million) moments where everything
went well.
A mother will do her best and when this doesn’t seem to
be working she needs others to see her striving, understand what
she intends by her actions. Her motives will be to protect her
child and herself. Her situation and her history will influence
her perception of psychological or practical threat. If we step
in to attend to the baby we undermine her and increase her distress.
If instead we accept a state of not knowing, our own helplessness
and hold her feelings an understanding will emerge. She will be
seen as OK. The threat subsides. Her internal frightened child
is mothered and she is free to be a mother to her own child with
more confidence and joy.
Gina Sweeting is an independent counsellor in Worthing
with a special interest in parents in the early years as a positive
complement to working with adults with problematic adaptations
from early life.
www.westsussexcounselling.co.uk |