Melanie

Swimming Upstream

“When I think back to my own mom, she always seemed so on top of things. I feel dismayed and guilty that I’m not handling things as well and feel a lot more frazzled than she seemed to be.”

We’ve heard this comment from many mothers, and it’s both poignant and sadly unfair to the women who feel this way, since times have changed so dramatically. In response, we’d like to offer this excerpt from our book Mother Nurture: A Mother’s Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships by Rick Hanson, Ph.D., Jan Hanson, Lac., Ricki Pollycove, M.D.

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Let’s step back for a minute and look at how we got here. During more than 99% of the time that humans (or our close ancestors) have lived on this planet, mothers raised families in small groups of hunter-gatherers. If you had been among them, your life would have moved at the speed of a walk while you provided for your needs and fulfilled your ambitions with a child on your hip or nearby. You would have eaten fresh and organic foods saturated in micro-nutrients and breathed air and drunk water free of artificial chemicals.

Most important of all, you would have spent much of your day with other mothers, surrounded by a supportive community of relatives, friends, and neighbors. These are the conditions to which your body and mind are adapted for raising children.

Unfortunately, while the essential activities of mothering–pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, worrying and planning and loving with all your heart–have not altered one bit, our world has changed profoundly, and evolution hasn’t had time to catch up. You and we are genetically identical to the first modern humans of 200,000 years ago, and nearly identical to our earliest tool-using ancestors, who lived over two million years ago.

Nonetheless, at odds with this basic genetic blueprint, most mothers today must rush about stressfully, constantly juggling and multi-tasking. Few modern jobs can be done with young children around, so working means spending much of the day separated from your kids and the stresses of the unnatural schedule and pace they must then handle affect them in ways that naturally spill over onto you.

Compared to our ancestors, most of us eat much fewer vegetables and whole foods, and much more white flour, sugar, and artificial chemicals, and we can’t help absorbing some of the billions of pounds of toxins released into the environment each year, which even leave traces in breast milk. The so-called village it takes to raise a child usually looks more like a ghost town, so you have to rely more on your mate than did mothers in times past, but he, too, is strained by the unprecedented busyness and intensity of modern life.

If you feel like you’re swimming upstream, it’s because raising children was not meant to be this way. Many of the problems that seem purely personal or marital actually start on the other side of your front door.

Of course, the world is not going to change back to the time of the hunter-gatherers (and we’d miss refrigerators and telephones too much if it did!). And those times certainly had their own difficulties, such as famine or disease. But, like every mother, you can’t help but feel the impact of the whirlwind we’re all living in. Just how you’re affected is as individual as a baby’s footprint.

Some mothers are fortunate to have low demands, substantial resources, and low vulnerabilities. All too often, however, the demands are high, resources are low, and resilience gets worn down: a mother’s “cupboard” gets emptied out and shaken and it’s an uphill struggle to get anything back in. No wonder that, over time, some signs of wear begin to show.

That’s why we think it’s so important you and every mother to take active steps to lower her stresses and increase her resources: that’s mother nurture.

Carrie also has a newsletter for moms called Motherhood Muse. Go to this link to sign up for a free subscription.

Here are some of my favorites from the 92 tips:

21. Bathroom time – When you have a baby, you are vigilant about her all the time. You take her in the bathroom with you while you shower. The bathroom door is always open and privacy is a thing of the past. I want to suggest that you teach your kids early on that your time in the bathroom belongs to you. This is not to protect your modesty, but to protect your sanity. This does not mean that you should ignore problems or be completely unavailable, but it does mean that you might get 10 minutes to yourself without being interrupted for snack requests and announcements about the letter of the day.

76. Be honest about your feelings – What is really going on inside your heart and head? Are you living the best life you can? Are you happy? What needs to change? Take time to check-in with yourself and figure out how you feel. Without taking the time to do this we are all in danger of becoming a little “Stepford Wife-ish.” That is to say we may all become robot mamas who continue to say that everything is “fine” when things are most definitely not fine. Stay connected to how you feel. It informs you. If you are angry most of the time, or sad, or numb, it is a clue that something needs to change. Use your emotions to guide you (but not rule you.) When emotion and intellect are used together you become wise.

Enjoy the list and stay sane.

It’s common for a mom to be lying awake in bed while her baby or toddler is snoozing blissfully. Unfortunately, low quantity and poor quality (= depth) of sleep erode a mother’s health and well-being, and give her a strong shove down the slippery slope toward depression.

Getting plenty of good sleep is a crucial aspect of replenishing oneself and preventing depletion. Happily, there are plenty of good methods:

• Try to reduce caffeine overall, eat dinner early, avoid late night chocolate (it contains a caffeine-like substance), and restrict alchohol (which relaxes you at first but then can keep you awake).

• Do everything possible to lower stress. Cortisol hormone normally rises in the morning to prepare you for the activities of the day, but, with too much stress, this hormone will kick into gear extra early, waking you at three or four a.m. (You can also test cortisol pretty inexpensively to see if this is happening to you.)

• In the hour before bedtime, do relaxing activities like listening to music, meditating, doing yoga, taking a bath, singing to your baby, etc. Avoid arguments with your children or mate.

• If your mind is worrying or obsessing, try writing down your concerns and promising yourself you’ll do what’s possible to deal with them in the morning. Or extend compassion toward yourself or toward the people you are worrying about.

• Relax your body by imagining your hands are very warm, progressively relaxing each part of your body, or imagining you are in a very peaceful setting.

• Make sure you are getting enough magnesium and calcium, both of which are needed for sleep. The Daily Value (DV) of them is 320 milligrams (mg) and 1000 mg, respectively. You could try a slightly higher dose, 500 and 1200 mg respectively.

Mother Nurture is: Rick Hanson, a clinical psychologist, and Jan Hanson, an acupuncturist/nutritionist. With Ricki Pollycove, M.D., they are the authors of Mother Nurture: A Mother’s Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships. You can email them with questions or comments at info@nurturemom.com. Unfortunately, a personal reply may not always be possible.

Asking for Empathy

Q: My husband’s good at solving problems, but I wish he listened better when I want to share how I’m feeling or talk about our relationship. Is there something I could ask him to do?

A: All of us could probably get better at empathy, but men in particular tend to be raised in our society to focus on facts and solutions rather than feelings and relationships. If approached with respect (and some empathy as well), many fathers welcome a gentle suggestion about what to actually do in order to be more empathic. One dad actually asked his partner to give him a list of questions to ask her, and this is what she came up with:

Can you say more about ____________?

How mad were you? (Or worried, hurt, alarmed, sad, etc.)

What was the most upsetting part? (The most irritating? The most worrisome?)

What do you wish would have happened instead?

What do you feel underneath all that?

Did you also feel hurt (or embarrassed, ashamed, helpless, etc.)?

What does ___________ remind you of?

How does the history of __________ affect how you feel about __________?

Deep down, what is really bothering you about ___________?

I’ve been doing a lot of contemplating/meditating on where to focus my creative energy. I don’t want to post just to post. I want to have compelling information or insights to share that make it worth your while to visit Spit-Up On My Shoulder. I’ve had so much to share in the past and am extremely proud of this blog, but am finding myself straining to maintain momentum the last few months.

I read a quote by Julie Morgenstern recently about the need to unload the past for the sake of the future. I’ve been questioning if I need to let go of the blog to free my energy up for other creative pursuits. I still haven’t made a decision. I won’t post here though unless I feel what I have to say will help make your life better in some way. We’ll see what happens.

Belkin’s search for balance led her to the conclusion that it can’t be done. The book is filled with her own stories and those of people she interviewed including a father-to-be who restructured his entire company to have more time with his new baby, and a young couple who placed a bet with a friend just to insure that they would meet for lunch twice a month.

I love this piece from the introduction to the book:

“Not a one of us seems to be able to give 100 percent of themselves to their job and 100 percent of themselves to their family and 100 percent of themselves to taking care of themselves. Small wonder. Yet we all seem to think someone (else) out there is getting it right; people who work full-time think people who work part-time are doing it, and people who work part-time are thinking people who don’t work at all are doing it, and those who left the office to tend to home think that if only they could escape back to an office, they might find sanity. But all of this misses the point. No one can do it, because it cannot be done.”

So true! So let yourself off the hook and sit down with Belkin’s book for an honest and humorous read. Another great thing: because these are pieces from Belkin’s newspaper column, each chapter is around four pages long. Perfect for a new parent who doesn’t have more than a few minutes free at a time.

New Mom Central interviews Melanie Bowden, author of Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me? True Stories of New Motherhood on Blog Talk Radio. Ms. Bowden is a registered postpartum doula and a mother of two children living in Davis, California.

In addition to her book, Ms. Bowden has published a workbook called Get Your Articles Published and has been freelancing for magazines and websites since 1999. Her articles have appeared in over 100 publications including Vibrant Life, Jugglezine, Parents’ Monthly, and Writers Weekly. She also teaches magazine writing classes, coaches writers, and speaks to writing and parenting groups.

The show airs on Friday, May 23, at 9:30 a.m. PST. The topic of the show will be “Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me?” Ms. Bowden and I will be discussing some of the things that we wish someone would have told us before we became mothers. Ms. Bowden will also be sharing information from her interviews with other mothers about the things they wished someone would have told them when they became mothers for the first time.

One of the most difficult aspects of the transition to motherhood can be the difference between a first-time mother’s expectations of “life after birth” and the reality. Ms. Bowden and I will shed some light on the underreported and rarely talked about major life transition called “motherhood.”

Click here on Friday and then look for our show listed under “Featured Today” to learn some things that could make your transition into motherhood, especially the first three months, a little easier and even more joyful. You can call in with your own questions, or join the discussion with your own stories. The listener call-in line is (347) 945-6211.

If you can’t listen in on Friday, look for a blog post here at Spit-Up On My Shoulder afterwards with a link to the taped show.

Then I read an article in The Dollar Stretcher by a mom with five kids who found a solution. Every day her family has a 30 minute clean-up where everyone cleans like crazy for a half hour. They don’t worry about cleaning any other time of day.

Five kids and only 30 minutes of cleaning a day? Woohoo! I decided to propose the plan to my family and see how it went. Since I only have two children, we decided twenty minutes of clean-up right after dinner should do it. I’m more than happy to make the list every day of what needs to be done since I learned long ago that I’m the only one in the house who sees dirt!

I reminded my girls that this would keep me from nagging them throughout the day about chores. Each person picks which chore or chores they will do on that day’s list. This gives the kids the chance to learn how to do a variety of tasks instead of being stuck in a rut with a chore chart.

This system is working so well I can’t believe it. It’s amazing what four people can do when they all work hard for 20 minutes straight.

Since I work from home, it’s been a huge help to me during the day in managing my time. Whenever I notice a chore that needs to be done, I just put it on the list for that night’s clean-up, and get back to my writing work.

Every night I go to bed relaxed knowing my house is looking good for the next day. I’m not snapping at everyone to do things during the day, and we’re all happier. So crank up the music and set your timer for whatever of amount of time works for your family.

Even if your only child is a newborn, I can see this system working with two adults. How nice not to have chores hanging over your head all day when you’re home with your baby since you know you and your partner will get them done during that day’s clean-up time.

Do you have a household system that has been successful for your family? One that’s lowered your stress, or helped you manage your time better? I’d love to hear about it. Please drop me a line.

Marcus guides you through discovering your strengths and weaknesses. Once your know what they are, the goal is to build on your strengths and manage around your weaknesses. Since we’ve been taught our whole lives that we should spend more time improving on our weaknesses, I found his philosophy so refreshing.

Strengths are tasks that we love, that invigorate us, and ones where we find we lose track of time. Weaknesses are any tasks that drain you and you find difficult to concentrate on. Most people don’t like their jobs because, although they may be good at the tasks, they are doing things that drain, rather than energize, them.

Wouldn’t it be great to feel excited more of the time about your job, and I’m including parenting, instead of feeling drained? Of course, every job is going to have parts that are not energy-producing. Marcus shows how you can rework your job though, or find a new one, so you can focus on your strengths most of the time and feel invigorated about what you’re doing.

When you’re home with your baby, which tasks do you find energizing? Is there a way you can do more of those tasks and minimize or delegate the tasks that drain you? Maybe you and your partner could both take Marcus’ course, then make a family plan together that lets you both focus on your strengths whenever possible. I’m using the course to examine how I can use my strengths more in all areas of my life–work, parenting, managing my house, volunteering–and it’s been a revelation.

Your energy will increase because you’ll be doing more of what you love. What could be better than that?

Less electricity used.

Less exposure to consumer ads which leads to unnecessary purchases that use up resources.

More time to enjoy nature.

More time to do something to save the planet like plant a tree or clean up a park.

Every year my family participates in TV Turnoff Week, and I remember how nice it is to have more time to sleep, read, exercise, and enjoy friends. Give it a try–you just might like it!

For more ideas on how your family can cut back on TV watching, check out my article, TV Turnoff Week is an opportunity to go low-tech

Have you found ways to reduce your TV time? Drop me a line so I can share them with your fellow blog readers. Thanks!