Redefining ‘postpartum’
I have been having conversations with a lot of relatively new mamas in the last few weeks. They are all within the first year postpartum, navigating motherhood for the first time. They are knee deep in the process of BECOMING a mother, and so conversations have revolved around experiencing significant life changing shifts. Leaving their child with a caregiver for the first time. Managing their worries around breastfeeding. Navigating their relationships with a partner or close family member. And although I am well aware that matrescence is an ongoing process that is non-linear, this idea has hit me over the head a few times in the last while.
Why? Why does this keep coming up?
I think the answer is because matrescence is the process of becoming and BEING a mother. We have never been HERE, in this moment, under these circumstances before. Whatever is occurring in life as a mother at this moment is new. For example, at the same time that I’m having conversations with new moms, I’m also speaking with moms of adult children. Their children are moving back home after completing post-secondary school. They have never been HERE before, and so their role as mother is shifting once again. Their relationship with their children is different. Their relationship with their partner is different. Their understanding of themselves as mothers is different. All of these transitions or moments deserve our attention and support.
I recently started reading the book “The Fourth Trimester” by Kimberley Ann Johnson. I can’t help but notice that I’m absolutely eating up every last morsel of wisdom and information in the book. It’s not because I am in my fourth trimester per se, but because it is providing me validation of my experiences from five and ten years ago. Being given a space to explore what those experiences were like, even five and ten years later, offers me so much validation that empowers me in my role as mom today. Recognizing that my anxieties around my daughter’s sleep could be explained by the hormone and brain changes I was going through at the time makes me feel gives my current worries so much less power today. Over the course of the last ten years, there have been so many moments when I was made to feel like what I was feeling was silly or insignificant, like wanting her to wake up from a nap so she still went to sleep at bedtime. Now I know that those feelings and worries were completely valid and can be explained by the hormonal and brain changes that were taking place!
For those who think motherhood support is just about navigating the immediate postpartum period, I invite you to expand your definition of postpartum, which simply means ‘after birth’. ‘After birth’ is not just the first few months after a baby is born. Rather, it’s the period that extends indefinitely after a baby is born. This understanding has allowed me more compassion for myself in the experience.
If we are going to shift our definition of the ‘postpartum’ period, then what does that mean for motherhood support? It’s time to make space for how this monumental role is shaping who we are and how we be!
