mental health

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The Impact of Mental Health Disorders During Pregnancy and In the Year Following

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The Impact of Mental Health Disorders During Pregnancy and In the Year Following

Mental health disorders can make it extremely difficult for new and expectant mothers to get through the day, let alone manage during pregnancy, respond to the needs of their infant or attend to other children. 

Research outcomes from Beyondblue have revealed that many depressed mothers describe feeling no joy. Instead, they feel like they are down a black hole, numb, detached, alone and/or unable to cope or interact with their baby or their life. The sense of hopelessness can often feel overwhelming.

"All I wanted to do was to just crawl into bed and stay there, on my own, and everyone to go away - including my baby and my mum."

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Expect a Change in Your Relationship After Having a Baby

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Expect a Change in Your Relationship After Having a Baby

Mostly couples are unprepared for the reality of life with a new baby, despite googling, reading books, talking to other parents or family members and attending antenatal classes. The exhaustion, the 24/7 reality, the relentlessness of dependence and general lifestyle adjustment for any couple takes some time to negotiate and fine-tune. The resultant shift in relationship dynamic is often not an easy one. 

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How to Remain Calm During Parenting Challenges

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How to Remain Calm During Parenting Challenges

Being able to calm ourselves in the throes of emotional intensity is one of the most valuable parenting skills to develop. The wild behaviour that can happen when our rage hijacks us can seriously damage the relationship with our children, grow negative core beliefs in their minds, and inadvertently teach our kids to react in the same manner when they, too, get taken over by big feelings. If you haven’t heard of the term ‘negative core beliefs’ before, stay tuned, because I’ll be writing about that in the future.

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Does our Childhood Affect the Way We Parent?

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Does our Childhood Affect the Way We Parent?

Most parents look into the eyes of their newborn baby and see a clean slate. Yet attachment research tells us that the biggest predictor of how we will parent our child is how we’ve been able to make sense of our own past. So, whilst many of us don’t give much thought to our own childhood when we become parents, we should do so if we want to remain informed regarding our parental responses.

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5 things dads can do to raise emotionally healthy children

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5 things dads can do to raise emotionally healthy children

Sometimes I have the opportunity to work with men on issues of fatherhood including the themes of communication, commitment, identity, intimacy and trust. The men I work with often have difficulties in their personal lives relating to the people they love most. They yearn for their children to be happy and successful, yet they often lack the skills and ability to model a way to help them accomplish this.

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Does Anxiety Get in the Way of You Being the Parent You Want to Be?...

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Does Anxiety Get in the Way of You Being the Parent You Want to Be?...

A number of the parents I meet are frustrated (and possibly a little frightened) by their anxious responses to some of the day to day challenges of becoming a parent. They might find it difficult to respond with calmness to the sound of their waking baby, for fear of not knowing what they are going to do to re-settle their child. Or the parent may shout in response to their two-year-old child’s misbehaviour as they feel their frustration creep into anxious response. 

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Minimise Post-traumatic Stress after Childbirth

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Minimise Post-traumatic Stress after Childbirth

For many women, giving birth is a normal life event and, for some, it’s joyous and empowering. Other women, however, experience childbirth as frightening and life-threatening. Indeed, about a third of women report that, for them, giving birth was traumatic.

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The Emotional and Psychological Aspects of Breastfeeding

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The Emotional and Psychological Aspects of Breastfeeding

Any woman who has breastfed a baby knows that there is so much more to breastfeeding than may be viewed by the interested observer. They know that much of what they were told regarding breastfeeding before having their baby, looks somewhat different when truly in the space.

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In Pursuit of Happiness

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In Pursuit of Happiness

There is a lot that’s said about happiness. Money can’t buy it, others can’t create it for you, stuff doesn’t lead to it, and neither does isolation. So we meditate, eat right, exercise, pray (or not), try our best to make real and lasting relationships, have stable jobs, and try to be nice to the ones we love. But how do we know if we are really getting there?