The Transition to Motherhood....
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The transition to motherhood is very under rated and leaves a lot of women feeling like they have no idea what they are doing, and they also don’t know that this is completely normal to feel this way and its okay. There is so much information out there for pregnancy, labour and birth but there isn’t a whole lot about what happens immediately after birth. After birth, known as postpartum or the transition to motherhood is actually known as matresence (Sounds similar to adolescence right?)When you are a teenager going through adolescence, you feel moody, hormonal your body’s growing in different places and fast and people expect you to just a grown up and know how to handle all these changes. The same changes happen to women when they have a baby. But in reality just like during adolescence, some things don’t come naturally and you don’t know what to do, or you don’t feel how you expected motherhood to feel. So many women feel that this discomfort isn’t normal or think they could have something much more serious, Postpartum Depression.
It is much harder for mothers to create their village now, with most families living away from their immediate family and having a high expectation of themselves that they should be able todo it on their own, But that is not the case.Not that long ago birth was attended by mothers, grandmothers, aunts and other daughters. Women who had extensive knowledge in birth and postpartum (Sometimes known as doulas) and most of those women were around for weeks after the baby was born. In some countries still now women are expected to spend the first few weeks in bed bonding and learning to breastfeed their baby. Their families care for other children, cook, clean and care for the mother who is caring for the baby. So why is it so different in Australia? If we did accept more help and learn to ask for it when we need it the transition to motherhood would probably be a lot smoother and enjoyable. This is also a reason some families seek doulas now, because they have no family around them and they want to enjoy that time with their newborn because they know they wont get that time back