Heritage Family Wellness

My friends at La Leche League Newmarket posted a great question from a new parent with a 3 month old who is feeling pressure to agree to holiday meetups with their baby. Here’s my reply: Mine was the first grandbaby in a massive, close-knit extended family. The pressure was real! It can feel so high stakes to say no when people want to share your joy. But, your instincts matter. And your baby’s health matters. This baby might be loved and celebrated by a whole family, but th...ey are yours to mind, and that means what you say goes. Even if others don’t understand or agree with it- and even if their feelings are hurt by it. There are two clear options for sticking with your decision and communicating it clearly: self-led, and invoking the power of authority. The first would be something like I/we have decided it’s safest for us to stay home this holiday. We know it’s disappointing not to get to be with the baby in person for their first holiday season. We are so excited for you to meet them when the pandemic is resolved. The second option might go something like I/we are so excited for Baby to meet their people. Right now, public health guidelines say it’s not safe for us to bring them to meet folks outside of our home because Baby’s immune system is still vulnerable. This will be a bummer for holidays, but we know we’ll get to be together soon. With a new baby (and during COVID!), there is enough going on that spending too much time tending to someone who isn’t respecting your no (if you’ve clearly said no) isn’t a good use of resources.. You can add something like This is hard for everyone, but this is what’s best for my new family, and I’m not open to talking more about it. How about you? Are you feeling the pressure to Lion King your new baby despite pandemic times? How are you navigating holidays with your adoring fans?

We seem to have agreed not to talk openly about how welcoming in the new means letting go of something else. Our expectations, our daily routines, our abilities, our dreams, and, especially, our relationships - all of these realms host elements needing to be shed. It’s true: even though we may not acknowledge it, humans undergo the same seasons as the natural world around us. We each have seasons of awaking and rooting, of blossoming and expanding, of slowing down, and of ...dying/going dormant. Paying attention to the rhythms of the natural world can teach us how these seasons fall one into the next. No matter where the circle starts, it is always the same way. There is interconnectedness. The new thing cannot awaken without the soil that has been made by the old things releasing, dying, transmuting. Dear one, perhaps no one has told you that as you anticipate the birth of your baby, you follow in these rhythms. Maybe you can feel them, but you criticize yourself for feeling grief or sadness when you should be happy. Perhaps the sense of loss you feel - over your changing body, your changing relationship to self and loved ones, your jobs or career - are taking you by surprise. Know that the feelings you feel are part of this season and the way to go through a personal autumn or wintertime is to go through it. You can't get it wrong. Your spring and summer will come- and their richness will be informed by the attention you give now to your less impressive seasons. Give yourself permission to acknowledge that as you anticipate the new baby earthside, you also feel sad about not having your house or your bigger kids to yourself anymore. It’s okay to wonder if your baby will be as fulfilling as your career, or to worry that you’ll lose professional headway. It doesn’t mean anything about you to have these feelings except that you are human- doing those things that humans do, participating with the rest of Life in the seasons.

I wanted to share with you a beautiful email I received from the folks at Birthing From Within this Pride month. If anyone in my networks is confused about Pride or has LGBTQ* related questions, you're welcome to DM me. To my beautiful LGBTQIA community, those questioning, in hiding, unseen, those with the privilege to be out and visible, those somewhere in between, and to our co-conspirators, our co-strugglers, and our allies: Happy Pride. In the United States, June is the...Continue reading

(Note: Leaking *is* okay- but it's a symptom that can be tended to!)

Yes! And, unanimously, their parents *all* parented through traumas. This means we all live with a legacy of trauma that our parenting work includes and must tend to. Even with the amazing tools and awareness we now have, we aren't suddenly going to ace being parents who don't pass on pain; we need to free ourselves of this expectation (although it's a very noble goal). We are still learning the second language of feelings. (The good news is that we also inherited our parents and grands' resilience.)