When Mother’s Day is hard!

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a company that I’ve bought stuff from in the past and therefore am on their mailing list.  The email stated that Mother’s Day was coming up and they know this can be a sensitive time for many and they wanted to acknowledge that.  They also wanted to share they would be sending out emails related to this holiday in the weeks to come but if I would like to opt out of those emails, I could simply click a link and they would not send those.  I LOVED this email.  I am thankful that people/companies are beginning to recognize that this day is hard for many, and also taking accountability in that their advertising material may be hurtful to some. 

Mother’s Day is presented as a happy, joyful day to celebrate moms.  But for many this is a day that may stir up lots of hard emotions, whether it’s from a loss {of a child or a mother/mother figure}, or a strained relationship, this day can be complicated for many.  If this is your reality, my hope for you is that you know that you are not alone! This Mother’s Day may elicit big emotions for you, and that is okay but I also wanted to share some ways to take care of yourself if it is a hard day for you.

Make a Plan

Know in advance how you are going to spend the day (or weekend), knowing it’s going to be a hard day you can be intention to make yourself a priority.  You know yourself the best so set yourself up for success.  Maybe that means that you need to surround yourself with safe people, or maybe it means that you need to be alone doing something you enjoy.  Also try to identify those things that may be hurtful and try to avoid those things on this day, This likely will include setting some boundaries (see below)

Find something joyful

Try to fill your day with at least one thing that brings you joy.  This might be a warm cup of coffee/tea in the morning, or going for a walk, or cuddling up with a good book. Make a list of things that bring you joy and try to add those into your day. 

Let Yourself Feel

Emotions are neither good or bad, they just help us realize what we are feeling.  I would encourage you to give yourself time to grieve.  If Mother’s Day is hard for you, it’s likely because of a loss of some sort, and it’s okay to grieve that loss.  If you have a strained relationship with your mom/mom figure, give yourself space to grieve the lack of that relationship.  Maybe this is the first (or fifteenth) year since your mom passed away and this day brings up that wound for you.  Maybe you have longed to become a mother yourself and life circumstances haven’t allowed that to be a part of your story. Or maybe you are a mom and your child is no longer in your life.  In all of these scenarios, there is a loss and it’s okay to grieve those things, and it’s totally normal to feel sad, or angry, or frustrated.  Let yourself feel whatever emotions you need to feel!

Set Boundaries

If Mother’s Day is hard for you, you might need to set some boundaries for yourself.  That might include not being on social media for the day, not communicating with people who have hurt you in the past, or not attending events that will bring up those hard memories.  It’s okay to say no to things, give yourself permission to be safe on this day!

Ask for Support

Know that you don’t have to do this alone.  You will hear me say this again and again, you do not have to navigate hard things alone!  Find those safe people in your life and let them know how you are feeling about the day, and ask for help when you need to.  If you don’t have safe people in your life, seek those out!  If you are not in therapy, maybe this is a great time to think about stepping into that and beginning your healing journey so that hopefully a year from now the sting of Mother’s Day can be just a little less than it is now.  If that is where you are at, I’d love to chat with you!  You can schedule a free consultation here.

National Infertility Awareness Week

National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW) is typically the last week in April, this year it falls from April 22-28.  This week provides us with the opportunity to shine a light on the facts surrounding infertility in hopes of reducing the stigma surrounding the topic. It is a week to raise awareness about infertility, the non-existent support structures, and the challenges of those facing a hard fertility journey.  One in eight couples are affect by infertility, and it does not discriminate by race, sexuality, gender, economic status or religion. This week is often a time for people to share their fertility journey stories, and for communities to come together to support one another to hopefully make the journey a little easier.  Nobody should have to walk this journey alone.

Although fertility struggles are common, it is still often stigmatized and not talked about openly.  Those struggling with infertility can often feel powerless and alone, NIAW helps to connect communities and create a platform for people’s voices to be heard. This is a topic near and dear to my heart.  I have walked alongside countless people during their fertility journeys and have been there for the ups and the downs.  I have cried tears of joy and sorrow with many, and hope to provide a space of felt safety.  My hope this week is to bring a voice to the topic and I would love for you to join me in that, {but also recognize that you may need to practice some self-care this week and silence social media and we 100% support that also}. If you would like ideas of how you can participate, please visit https://www.infertilityawareness.org/niaw-challenge

If you are in the midst of an infertility struggle {regardless of what that looks like for you} I want you to know I see you, I want to walk with you and I will use my voice to speak up for you. I know the mental toll that infertility can take on someone, and I want to do what I can to lessen that.  If you are walking this alone, I would encourage you to seek out a mental health professional.   I specialize in perinatal health and would be honored to walk alongside you, but there are lots of others who would gladly walk with you also, I believe therapy works best when you are with the right person so I encourage you to find that person.  You can find a list of trained perinatal mental health providers near you at www.psidirectory.com. If you are looking for an online support group to connect with other people who are walking a similar journey, you can find a list at https://www.postpartum.net/get-help/psi-online-support-meetings/

Jen’s birth story…

I dreamt of being pregnant most of my life and that finally happened for me in my late 30’s.  For years I had heard stories of labor and delivery, from friends and loved ones, and fictional stories in movies or books that I read.  I wasn’t naive to think it was going to be easy, but according to all I knew and heard, the pain was temporary and it would be worth it when I got to go home with a sweet little baby. But my story started to look differently around early on. Two days after we found out at our gender reveal we were having a sweet baby girl we had our third ultrasound. It was during this ultrasound that we found out we were having TWO girls, identical twins is what the doctor said! A twin pregnancy is always a higher risk pregnancy and so I was trying to prepare myself for all outcomes. Overall I had a pretty easy pregnancy but my doctor started to get worried about my increasing blood pressure. I was put on bed rest at 25 weeks and then at 32 weeks my doctor shared she wanted me on in-hospital bedrest until delivery.  I knew with a twin pregnancy I would not make it full term, but we were hoping to make it to 36 weeks. After being in the hospital for a little over a week I found myself in the OR for an urgent c-section. My girls were 3lb 11 oz and 4lb 5 oz when they were born and were taken to NICU immediately.  

When we started to think they would come sooner than 36 weeks we began to prepare ourselves for a short NICU stay as we knew that was a high likelihood.  But what I was not prepared for was the fact I would not be able to see or hold my babies for over 24 hours after delivery due to not being medically cleared. I was not prepared to be awake for over 36 hours post-delivery and receive NO pain medications.  I was not prepared to see my sweet little baby girl on a breathing machine. This is not what I was told this experience would be like! Our girls spent 25 and 30 days in the NICU and I can say those were some of the hardest days I’ve ever experienced.  The hardest day (one that is still so hard for me to talk about 4 years later) was day 25 when we were planning on bringing our sweet babies home.   We arrived at the NICU and were told that one of our girls had stopped breathing for more than 30 seconds and would need to stay an extra 5 days in the NICU, this news absolutely DEVESTATED me.  I had so many emotions and frustrations about the situation and was really sad we weren’t going to be able to bring both babies home together. Leaving that day was so bittersweet as we got to bring one girl home while the other stayed behind. Those next five days were split between home and the NICU and we rejoiced when we got to all be home together as a family 5 days later. My girls are almost 4 and half years old now and they are both healthy beautiful girls. In those moments, days and weeks after I gave birth I don’t think I would have identified my experience as “traumatic” but as I have reflected over the years I know that it was. It took me years to be able to tell this story without being emotionally and physically brought back to that time and space of the NICU room. I had amazing support from my friends, family and medical team and yet it was one of the hardest experiences of my life.

What is birth trauma?

I often get the question, “What is birth trauma?” and to be honest it’s kind of a hard question to answer.  Technically Birth trauma refers to any distressing event that happened during labor, delivery, and/or the first few weeks of postpartum. But even that definition leaves a lot of room for interpretation, which makes sense because Trauma is subjective, meaning the mom or the non-birthing partner decides whether or not it was traumatic for them.  From the moment we get the positive pregnancy test (and even our journeys up to that point) to everything that follows can differ for every person, and every pregnancy.  When it comes time to giving birth we know one thing, birth is unpredictable! For some, child birth is an amazing experience and for others it can be really HARD, traumatic and/or heartbreaking. For some, such as myself, it can be all of those things.

Your birth story does not need to be complicated or life-threatening to be considered traumatic.  Trauma is a nuanced subjective experience, as I said before the mom or the non-birthing partner decides whether or not it was traumatic for them.  Everyone’s story is different and there are no boxes to check to decide if a birth was truly a traumatic experience.  When we think about birth trauma it’s not about what happened, it’s about the way it feels. When our ability to cope becomes overwhelming, our brains can encode those experiences as traumatic.  It doesn’t have be life-threatening or chaotic, it just needs to be perceived by our brain as a distressing event.

All of that said, here are some events that are commonly referred to as birth trauma:

·      Unplanned or emergency c-section

·      Real {or perceived} threat of harm to mom or baby

·      Feeling a lack of control or helplessness

·      Unhelpful {rude or upsetting} comments made by medical professionals, visitors, or anyone present during labor and delivery

·      Feeling like your providers didn’t communicate well with you during labor/delivery

·      Very short {or long} labor

·      Pregnancy and/or infant loss

·      Having to be physically restrained during labor/delivery

·      Baby staying in the NICU

·      Severe complications due to birth {Postpartum hemorrhage, preeclampsia, 3rd or 4th degree tearing, unplanned hysterectomy, etc.}

·      Previous trauma

·      Disappointment about one’s birth or early postpartum experience

·      Witnessing the pain and/or helplessness of your birthing partner

 If any of these are true for you, or you’ve experienced a different distressing event in this time period, know you are not alone! Some studies found that 1 in 3 women have experienced some type of birth trauma in their lifetime.  Also know you don’t have to walk through this alone. I want to encourage you to talk to someone you trust, a friend or family member, and if needed talk to a mental health professional.  You can heal from this pain, and my hope for you is that you are able heal from this trauma and put it in the past in a meaningful way.

What is EMDR?

EMDR Therapy (or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy) is a therapy technique that helps people heal from distressing or traumatic life events. To understand EMDR you must first understand how the brain processes memories. Let’s imagine that your brain is made up of multiple mini filing cabinets. At the end of the day all of your memories from that day are filed into the appropriate filing cabinets and during your REM cycle of sleep these memories are moved to your long-term memory, where they start to become consolidated.  It takes about 3 months for your brain to fully consolidate a memory.  For example, you likely remember what you ate for lunch yesterday, but it’s less likely you remember what you ate 2 weeks ago and I’d be very impressed if you remembered what you ate 3 months ago.  That’s because at three months those memories have been fully consolidated to your long-term memory as they were stored correctly.  But when we have a hard event in our life, our brain does not store that memory correctly. So, if you had a distressing event on this date three months ago, you would likely remember what you ate (along with all the other details from that day), That’s because the information did not get stored correctly. This incorrect storage can lead to past memories feeling very present. Related or unrelated stimuli in the present (triggers) can lead to us to feeling like we are in the midst of that memory.  We may feel the exact thoughts, emotions and body sensations we did at the time of the event; our brain feels as if the past disturbing event is happening currently.

EMDR therapy is based upon the fact that our emotional well-being is interwoven with our physical (somatic) state. Therefore, EMDR employs a body-based technique called bilateral simulation (BLS) during which a therapist will guide a client through eye movements, tones, or taps in order to move a memory that has been incorrectly stored to a more functional part of the brain. Using BLS has shown to help relieve the anxiety associated with the trauma so that the original event can be viewed from a more detached perspective, like watching a movie of what happened. This allows you to access positive ways of reframing the original trauma (reprocessing), and to release the body’s stored negative emotional charges around it (desensitization). During the process the painful memories associated with the trauma will begin to lose their charge, allowing you to react to stimuli in the present without the past interfering.

EMDR therapy may be used within standard talk therapy, as an adjunctive therapy with a separate therapist, or as a treatment all by itself.