HELPING YOUR PARTNERSHIP FLOURISH AFTER BRINGING BABY HOME by Gina Hassan, Ph.D.
(This piece originally appeared in the
BirthWays Newsletter  - Winter 2010)

One of the most common complaints following the arrival of a new baby is, “I had no idea how much having a baby would impact my relationship.” Even couples with a solid relationship can experience mounting conflict, along with a sense of drifting apart, following the arrival of a new baby. In fact, Drs. John and Julie Gottman, renowned for their research on couples relationships, report in their 2007 book And Baby Makes Three: The Six Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives, a 65% decline in marital/partner satisfaction after the birth of a new baby. Why should this be so, and what can partners do to strengthen their bond during this joyful and yet challenging time?

When a baby is born, a parent is also “born.” But the job of parenting, unlike most other jobs that involve sudden, exponential increases in level of responsibility, is one for which we receive no prior training. In fact, with less sleep and probably more stress than we’ve ever known, we are expected to move into our new role with grace and ease, and yet the transition can leave us feeling both overwhelmed and under-supported. While we may be accustomed to turning to our partner for support during stressful times, our partner now is suddenly less available and more needy than ever before, leaving us feeling progressively more isolated.

During the early period of parenting, partners often feel depleted, left out, isolated from one another, misunderstood, under-appreciated, disinterested, and neglected. (Of course none of these feelings are familiar to you or your partner.) While our relationship, may have felt like a source of comfort and support prior to having a baby, the stress of a newborn can leave us feeling like we have nothing to give, and yet need more from our partners than we have previously. Arriving in this place can be particularly difficult for partners who have prided themselves on being independent. Negotiating new roles, coming up against unrealized expectations and disappointments, can put stress on a couple’s relationship, especially when they are simultaneously dealing with sleep deprivation, loss of alone time, diminished sexual intimacy, stress of conflicting wishes and expectations from extended family, and more.

So how can we smooth out this transition and make the ride less bumpy, while strengthening what is best in our relationships, so as to feel both more supported and more gratified in the transition from partners to parents? Three key strategies that may seem obvious when we think about it, but are not always accessible to us when we are sleep deprived and desperate are;

• Improving communication
• Tending to our relationship
• Thinking about parenting as a collaborative versus a competitive endeavor.

As stress can cause us to regress towards our most primitive ways of being, we may find ourselves behaving, without awareness, in ways that are destructive to both our relationship and ourselves. Increasing our awareness of these potential pitfalls can improve our overall sense of well-being as well as the quality of our partner relationship. In an effort to work towards our best ways of being it may be helpful to make use of the following practices.

Be Aware of How You Are Communicating:

• Make time to communicate clearly with one another.
• Speak about what you need in positive terms, as opposed to letting lathings fester and blaming one another.
• Be clear about what you want/need and don’t assume that your partner can read your mind,
• Don’t bring things up in the heat of the moment: your partner may be unable to receive what you have to say when you are angry and agitated. Find a time when you are both calm and capable of listening to one another.

Tend To Your Relationship:

• Speak words of appreciation.
• Make time to be intimate even if this just involves holding hands or cuddling,  without necessarily being sexual.
• Make time to do things together that you can both enjoy, like taking the baby for a walk in the evening as a way to connect and to talk.
• Check in with your partner on a regular basis.
• Support one another in getting some time alone.  (It is hard to give to a partner when you have no time to give to yourself. This is a gift to your partner and your baby and a necessity for everyone’s well-being.) 

Parenting As A Collaborative Rather Than Competitive Endeavor:

• Remember that you are in this together. Try to figure out how to make things work, as best you can, taking everyone’s needs into account, and making sure that everyone gets some of what they most need, some of the time.
• Take pleasure in your baby together and avoid getting into a competitive stance regarding who is doing more. You are both doing more then you ever imagined possible.
• Keep in mind that you and your partner are each having “different” experiences: This is not a battle over who has it “harder” and/or who is “right.”
• Respect your partner’s different style of coping, and try to find ways to meet in the middle.

If we can remember to make use of these three practices—minding our communication, tending to our relationship, and thinking in terms of collaborative rather than competitive parenting—our relationships are bound to improve. Relationships are rather like gardens: without tending to them, weeds take over. No one benefits from an overgrown garden choked with weeds and lacking in the nourishment that makes gardens thrive. We may have gotten into a comfortable groove before baby arrived, but to preserve a healthy relationship after baby arrives takes some effort. While it can be hard to put the effort in when you are feeling depleted, a little effort can go along way. If you put something in, there will be more to go around. Try it and see!

Gina Hassan, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in working with pregnant and postpartum women, and has a particular focus on working with mothers and couples around the transition of early parenting. She has a private psychotherapy practice in Berkeley, and runs Mindful Mothering and Mindfulness-Focused New Moms Groups. For more information go to www.ginahassan.com

MINDFUL BEGINNINGS: THE BENEFITS OF MINDFULNESS IN EARLY PARENTING

"This piece originally appeared in the Birthways' Newsletter in January of 2008 www.birthways.org"

When my first daughter was born, nearly 10 years ago, I remember a level of anxiety that I carried with me wherever I was, and whatever I was doing. Was I doing things right? Would my decisions as a parent serve her well? Would she grow up to be a well-adjusted person, at ease and self-confident? Being in the field of mental health, these things were of primary importance to me. I would often ask myself whether I was stimulating her enough, was I providing her with an optimal amount of external stimuli, or was I stimulating her too much, interfering with her ability to soothe herself? The answers from developmental and parenting experts were contradictory and confusing; from, never put your baby in a crib as this is the equivalent to being “put behind bars” to, if you do not teach your baby to soothe herself by the time she is several months of age, she will have difficulty developing a sense of independence and self-reliance.

I was, as many new mothers are, vulnerable to the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” that were expressed all around me, both from experts and from other new mothers. Our culture is one which places a lot of pressure on new mothers to parent their infants in a way that both provides a more advanced and fine-tuned form of stimulation than we were parented with, (from Baby Einstein to readings of Ulysses in utero,) while at the same time criticizing them for raising children who are “too needy” and “self- absorbed.” 

What I wish I had known at this vulnerable time -- and which sadly seems all too obvious in retrospect -- is that more important than whether I was providing this kind of stimulation or that, or whether I purchased the car seat with the absolute highest safety rating or not, was my ability to be present with my children, and that giving them my presence was more important than any other decision I might make as a parent.

What does it mean to give one’s presence? In short it means to find moments, and more moments, to leave one’s thinking/analyzing/judging brain behind and to just be with one’s baby, staring into their eyes, smelling their scent, trusting one’s intuition, and being available to respond in a spontaneous and loving manner to the cues they inevitably provide us with.

In my work as a psychologist with pregnant and postpartum women, what I have seen repeatedly is women’s lack of ability to trust themselves and their babies to know what is right for this mother-baby dyad, and this particular family. Just like the birthing process itself, which has become so heavily “medicalized,” early motherhood and parenthood have become the domain of scholarly experts rather then living mothers.

So how is a new mother to protect herself from the commercialization and anxiety of motherhood? First and foremost, limiting external input from books, magazines, websites, and professionals, may be important, though perhaps it seems counter-intuitive, at this vulnerable time when your emotional membranes are unusually permeable. Rather than looking outside for generic advice and direction, it may well be better to turn inwards-- allowing yourself to listen to what feels right in this moment, for you, and your particular baby. Making time to sit with your feelings, paying attention to sensation, and making room to name the feeling and to observe how it may change with moments of meditative awareness. Asking yourself the question: “What do I most need in this moment, and what does my baby most need?” Trusting that babies are powerful resilient beings who need spacious mommies to give them the room to learn to communicate their needs, who model self-care, and who allow moments of spaciousness to color their days rather then lists of “shoulds.”

Below is a list of suggestions you may find helpful. What is right for you, however, is different then what will be right for any other new mother. Breath, pay attention to sensation, and …

EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES OF THE REPRODUCTIVE YEARS:   PART I - INFERTILITY & PREGNANCY LOSS

  GINA HASSAN, PH.D., DONNA ROTHERT, PH.D. & LEE SAFRAN, MFT
of Perinatal Psychotherapy Services - A collective of psychotherapist who
specialize in issues facing women during the Reproductive Years.

(These articles originally appeared in the Alameda County
Psychological Association Newsletter, Fall and Winter
issues of 2006, www.alamedapsych.org)

Infertility, defined as the diminished ability or the inability to conceive and have  offspring  after  a  year  of  regular  intercourse  without  contraception,  affects  about 10-13% of heterosexual couples.  (Medicinenet.com 2006) Infertility is first and foremost a stressful experience, often including physical, social, financial and psychological challenges. An  infertility  diagnosis can give rise to a profound sense  of loss including: the monthly disappointment, miscarriages, the loss of conception  being natural and without intervention,  the loss of intercourse being spontaneous  and romantic as opposed to on demand or  technical, and sometimes the loss of the  idea or dream of pregnancy.

 Women’s individual experiences of infertility vary, yet there are a number of  common  factors  which  most  women  will experience: feeling that one is being left behind, that one is being denied  a biological right, that one’s body is failing, that one is failing one’s partner, and  that one’s sexual identity has become a  merely physical identity - a constellation  of  sexual/biological  organs  which  are  prodded and probed and treated as scientific objects. Additionally, single people and same sex couples may face insensitivity and discrimination in their efforts to conceive. Given the sense of exposure during this process, both to the medical world and well-meaning friends and family inquiring about pregnancy status, many women feel like they are under the microscope.

Grief work may be an important component of working with women experiencing infertility; however, unlike grieving a pregnancy loss, which is a known outcome, infertility grief exists in relation to an uncertain outcome. It is one that involves recurrent hopes and disappointments which over the course of time can lead to anger, shame, vulnerability, feelings of hopelessness, poor self esteem, social isolation, anxiety, and depression.  Acknowledging and making a place for women to speak about their anger, sadness, hopelessness and lack of control, are similarly important features of treatment with women seeking counseling for infertility.  Stress reduction techniques such as meditation or progressive relaxation can be helpful for managing recurrent and ongoing stress.

 Normalizing the tendency to feel envious  of others and helping women find ways  to  address  their  need  to  protect  themselves from painful situations, for example attending baby showers or children’s  birthday  parties,  while  not  becoming  overly isolated, will be important goals  in therapy. Identifying primary triggers  and helping each woman to identify and  articulate the kind of support she needs is  important, as well as helping her figure  out how best to communicate her needs  in a way that feels acceptable to her, and  most likely to achieve the desired results.  While individual therapy can address many of these issues, groups can be invaluable in helping women feel less alone and isolated during this struggle.

 Couples work can be helpful in supporting healthy communication between partners. Men and women often experience and cope in different ways and it is important to make room for individual differences. Sex and money, challenging  issues for many couples, may be particularly stressful for couples who are not  only undergoing scrutiny of their sexual  and reproductive life, but going into debt  to do so. Therapy can also be helpful in supporting the strengths of the couple such that they do not become overly focused on family building, but can continue to make room for enjoying their relationship for what it is.

A significant number of wanted pregnancies end without a baby. Approximately  15-20%  of  known  pregnancies  end  in  miscarriage  (before  20  weeks  gestation) and about 1% of pregnancies end  in stillbirth (a loss at 20 weeks gestation or later). Additionally, couples may decide to terminate a pregnancy after a prenatal diagnosis of serious illness or be advised to undertake a selective reduction of a multiple (twins or higher order) pregnancy for medical or other reasons.  Although there are very significant differences in these experiences in terms of length of pregnancy and whether or not there is an element of decision-making, all types of pregnancy loss may lead to strong emotional responses and psychological complications.

As research since the 1980s has shown us, the vast majority of women become significantly attached to their babies prior to birth, and indeed, it is considered a major psychological task of pregnancy to do so. Although responses vary, and typically are more intense following later losses or recurrent losses, any neonatal death may lead to a significant grief response with a wide range of feelings including depression, guilt, anger and confusion.

References

Kohn, I. and Moffit, P.L. A Silent Sorrow  Pregnancy Loss: Guidance and Support  for You and Your Family, Routledge, New  York, 2000

Peoples, D. and Ferguson, H. Experiencing Infertility: An Essential Resource,  Norton & Co, New York, 1998

Speckhard, A. Traumatic Death in Pregnancy: The Significance of Meaning and  Attachment, Ch.4 in Death and Trauma:  The Traumatology of Grieving, Figley, et.  al ed.s, Taylor & Francis, Washington,  D.C., 1997 Resolve: The National Infertility Association www.resolve.org

  GINA HASSAN, PH.D., DONNA ROTHERT, PH.D. & LEE SAFRAN, MFT
of Perinatal Psychotherapy Services - A collective of psychotherapist who
specialize in issues facing women during the Reproductive Years.

Pregnancy can be a time of profound physical and emotional transformation, and a time rich with symbolic meaning. It is a time that may be filled with hope and expectation, fears and conflicts, growth and regression. For many women attachment begins instantly, for others fear and anxiety are predominant.