A taste of our online meet-ups. Everyone's experience and opinion is valid. When we set our topics for our meet-ups we try to find topics that will be interesting to a wide variety of people. Often we talk about perinatal mental health and we sometimes find people aren't sure if that applies to them. Even people who have struggled with feeling anxious or low mood while pregnant or parenting can be given the impression by society and the healthcare system that they should just get on with it and not moan because other people have it worse. So for future reference, if you see mental health on our topic list and wonder, yes this is for you. Another important note when we're talking about perinatal emotional and mental health we're not just talking about mums and birthing people. Partners, dads, all parents can struggle during the year or more around having a baby and all of the same things about reaching out for and providing your self with support apply to all of us. Peer support matters.  Hopefully, the tide is turning and we're getting the message out to more people that we all deserve love and support and we don't need to reach a level of not coping to reach out for that support. Our meet-ups (and other groups that connect you with people who are pregnant at the same time or have a similar age baby) are one of the things that fill the gap between trying to struggle through alone feeling overwhelmed and being really unwell and needing medical care for mental illness. Never underestimate the importance of connection with other people (especially people at a similar life stage to you) for positive mental and emotional well-being.
One of the things that many of the people at our recent online meet-up (where we covered this topic) identified with was that they don't always know how to put into words how or why they feel anxious, overwhelmed or sad but when other people talk about how they feel they can recognise that in themselves. Just knowing they are not alone helps many people to feel a little better. Our favourite part of talking about mental and emotional wellness is everyone sharing the things that help them to develop healthy coping mechanisms in the long term and the things that help them pull through the tough moments.
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6/3/2024 0 Comments Normal for a new parent The original title of this blog was normal infant behaviour. But as I started to write it I realised that it’s not enough to just know what to expect your baby to be like. As a team when we talked about what we would include in this post many of us reflected on how it feels to be a new parent, especially for the first time. What would we like expectant parents to know? That parenting is hard & however prepared you feel, it will still potentially hit you like a juggernaut. You feel what you feel - There's no such thing as a perfect parent In modern western society, we're often not really used to being around small babies. When you find yourself pregnant, especially for the first time, there’s so much information on what you should and shouldn’t do it can be very overwhelming and feel like you’re being expected to achieve some kind of perfect parent status without any actual practical support.
You might be one of these people to whom parenting seems to come easy, you might have an instant rush of love as soon as your baby is placed in your arms, feeding your baby may go just as you hope, your baby may sleep for a good four hours every time and they may laugh and gurgle on their play mat whenever they're awake. Or any one or all of those things might not happen and that would also be perfectly normal. When we see parenting represented on TV or social media it can seem like there are two extremes. People are either hashtag blessed with a perfect baby and life or they are comically hopeless at everything. But the reality is everyone struggles sometimes. Everyone is trying to find their own way of parenting. It's completely normal to have some amazing moments and some moments when you just want to crawl back into bed and cry. |
AuthorPosts by team members who are doulas, antenatal teachers, placenta specialists and birth nerds among other things. Archives
March 2025
CategoriesAll Birth Birth Plan Mental Health Peer Support Postnatal Postnatal Plan |
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