The Nurture Revolution Professional Certification My Learning Journal- Week 2

What did I learn this week?

Brain changes happen for ANYONE who spends a significant amount of time with babies. Mothers, fathers, other parents, grandparents, allo-parents etc. The higher the involvement and the higher the levels of touch, the higher the level of brain changes that can be detected.

Are brain changes good?

Yes, and they are extremely necessary and yet they can feel VERY uncomfortable and hard to navigate.

Why?

Because they form part of a monumental life transformation- matrescence or patresence. The transformation can take years to fully complete. The process of brain changes begins during pregnancy for birth mother and commences from birth for the father/ other parent/ allo-parent with changes detectable from around 12-14 weeks after the baby’s birth for the father/ other parent. This time can leave us feeling like we’ve lost ourselves and uncertain of who we are and where we are going in this new identity. The shift to feeling comfortable in our new identity can take a really long time with many stages to navigate before we feel fully ourselves. We need to give ourselves bucketloads of patience and compassion during this messy, gooey phase and we need to trust in the process as we fall apart and re-form just as we need to be at the other end of it all. It is exhausting and a marathon, not a sprint so we need to be kind to ourselves and protect opportunities to rest. We are growing and developing as parents alongside our growing and developing baby/ies.

" Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay”. Rebecca Solnit

What is changing?

The grey matter in our brain shrinks but this isn’t a bad thing. By getting smaller, it allows the connections to get closer and for the brain to concentrate in very particular ways to prime us for caring for our baby. They also happen to be the same areas that are under construction in our babies … the stress system. This means that while our baby is constructing their brand-new stress system, we have the opportunity to potentially renovate our own stress system alongside them! Our brain is more open to changing this than it has been since our own period of infancy.

This is an opportunity.

During this unique period, our brain is primed to enhance our:

1. Auditory system- prompting us on a biological level to hear and respond to our baby’s cries

2. Empathy and make it possible for us to respond to our baby’s emotions with understanding and care

3. Threat detection system to help us protect our baby

4. Motivation to be with our baby- feeling good when we are with them

5. Sensitive caregiving by feeling in-tune with what is going on with our baby

6. Emotion regulation abilities are enhanced even if it is still really hard

7. Intuition and the body signals and feelings we get that tell us whether something feels right or wrong.

Sometimes these brain enhancements can get disrupted by inhibitors in our environment. How we were handled as an infant is a core memory of our body and so if we experienced low-nurture, it may be harder to access in our brain and we may need to more consciously enact nurture to override. Similarly, if the stories about babies that we hear from our own parents, close family, dear friends, or in the community/ culture around us seem to contradict our drive to nurture, it can be hard. If low-nurture is a norm in the environment around us, we may experience doubts or worries that we are spoiling or holding our baby too much. It can be helpful to recognise when other people are contributing to our inner struggle. It’s okay to understand that this was their experience, but it doesn’t have to be ours or our baby’s.

Just as there can be inhibitors, there can also be enhancers for our parental brain. These are those who are/were the nurturers in OUR life. Those who made us feel safe, seen, heard and cherished. Who do we have who fits that model? If we haven’t got anyone, how can we go about finding someone?

The parent brain is malleable, and it is primed for nurture. It’s not just the baby who gets a lovely bath of oxytocin when we love on them … our parent brain gets a good old soak, too!

This time may be full of newness and uncertainty, but one thing is for sure, no amount of time spent nurturing is wasted. Nurture on and give yourself time and space to grow into this role. You’re already way better at it than you know.

Carly.

And to wrap up this week’s learning, I’d like to share my own journal piece I wrote back in 2020 about emerging from my gooey, messy new-mum self … 6 years is how long it took me to get there. I’d love to hear how it went for you.

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Matresence

Finding myself after becoming a mother

I was someone before I had a baby.

I was confident, satisfied, stimulated, happy and loved. I felt valued, productive and capable.

I liked me.

The old me.

The pre-kid me.

I wanted a baby so badly. I wanted to grow a family with my beautiful husband. I wanted to hold my baby and watch him grow and learn. I wanted to learn how to mother. I wanted this big life-change.

But, in all honesty, I never wanted to lose my old pre-child self. I really liked her.

I wanted her AND to be a mother.

So, when my precious little sparkler came along and blew my pre-conceived ideas about how life would be with a baby in the house, I felt completely lost.

Becoming a mother stripped me completely bare.

Over the 30 years of my life that were child-free, life had layered layer upon layer of detail to my identity. Layers of who I was. Layers of how I understood myself to be. What made me, ME.

Birth, Labour and Delivery were the first part of the stripping process.

The vulnerability, the strength, the uncertainty, the power, the completely raw, unfiltered, primal part of me I had no idea was even there was suddenly a new part of my identity. It was equal parts pride and confusion, as I had to process what my body had just experienced, all mixed in with the sudden realisation of what it means to have your very own precious human relying on you.

My body felt foreign to me.

Every day in the immediate postpartum was full of strange, unfamiliar changes taking place within my body. This body I thought I knew so well, was now unpredictable and uncomfortable.

I was tired to my very core and yet strangely energetic and charged.

My heart felt like it was expanding with love too quickly for comfort.

This piece of perfection before me, had I really helped create him?

I was amazed and impressed with the way my body managed to grow, birth and now feed my baby, how incredible was it to know my new powers.

But the days melded into night back into day, back into night again.

I hated the smell of the milk that seem to hang on my clothes. I hated not knowing if what I was doing for my baby was right or wrong. I hated when we couldn’t seem to stop the crying. I hated that I couldn’t put my baby down. I hated that he seemed to be becoming more unsettled and awake every day. I hated that I couldn’t seem to achieve even seemingly basic tasks. I hated our filthy house. I hated that I felt like I should be coping better.

Surely something was wrong?

And this was only the first few weeks. Surely things would get better. Easier somehow.

Surely one day soon, I’d be able to feel rested once more.

But the weeks crept on.

Then the months passed by.

I was stripped, further and further.

Layer by layer.

Until I could see nothing in myself that was there before.

I was a shell.

That pre-baby me, I loved so well?

She seemed to have vanished entirely.

So, who was I then?

Just a mother?

Well I seemed pretty sh%$ at that (though my baby was pretty darn incredible so I couldn’t be all bad, could I?).

Maybe I was just my breasts? They did seem to be the only thing that made my baby happy.

Oh, but he also loved my arms. He needed them to hold him tight.

Maybe also my voice, my humming, singing and whispered words, they did seem to bring some peace.

Then I guess my face, that seemed so gaunt, unembellished, pale never seemed to fail to make that baby’s eyes sparkle the moment he’d see me. Sometimes, with the biggest of smiles and other times with arms outstretched and tears streaming down, like I was the only one who could make things right.

And I was tenacious …

For months, I had tirelessly (despite being tired to my bones) sought help to try and help him with his sleep until I finally found surrender in acceptance that a part of his unique perfection was his wakeful nature.

My tenacity continued but now in the form of my vow to be constant.

More months passed by and still I was constant.

He maintained the waking and I kept on responding.

There was no break. Not one night to breathe.

My stripping back continued, despite being convinced there was nothing left to lose, as I shed anything and everything I could to lighten my load and maintain my focus.

Two of the things I shed would change my world for the better-

1. keeping up the appearance that I could cope on my own

2. my tightly held pre-conceived ideas of what mothering should look like.

I started to seek active help for myself (not to fix my baby) and I became open to ideas that would allow me to mother the way I needed to mother, not the way I had decided was needed before I had even met my child nor the way society liked to tell me to do it.

I started to consciously find the light and value in my baby, our day and vitally, in me.

I came to see what was left in me once all the pretense had been stripped away.

Me, when I was pared back to my core.

I started to try to see myself the way those who loved me did.

This process, this extreme stripping of layers, gave me the space to re-evaluate, reinvigorate and redefine myself in a way I had never been able to do before.

Turns out, pre-baby me that I loved so well, well she had plenty of baggage. Her identity was clouded by a mix of things that mattered and things that were just things … superficial.

In the process of losing myself, all that was truly lost is the stuff that didn’t really matter.

That was 6 years ago today, and I can honestly say I no longer miss the old me. I am no longer grieving for my pre-child life.

I am absolutely in love with the newfound me.

She is the best mix of the important stuff that made me, me before as well as the learning and wisdom I have gained from the process of becoming a mother.

The incredible part is, I know that I will continue to grow and evolve as my babies grow and their intense needs lessen or shift and the space to just be ‘me’ opens up once again.

Relinquishing control, finding beauty in embracing the flow of life with a baby or toddler, surrendering to the needs of another and making space in my heart and mind.

It’s been one hell of a ride.

This fleeting season where our babies seem to consume all of us and more, provides such an important opportunity for self-growth if only we can free ourselves up to be vulnerable and open to the process.

Carly Grubb, 2020

Little Sparklers Founder