If you missed our amazing event at Dundrum Town Centre on Tuesday, fear not, we have the highlights right here.
Over fifty mums and their babies gathered Movies@Dundrum to hear Maternity Coach and work psychologist, Leisha McGrath and psychologist and journalist, Alison Bough share their wisdom with new mums with brilliant practical tips on navigating their new identities, and their new return to work after maternity leave. Key learnings and quotes from the talk:
Women struggle with their identity when they become a mum. The amount of judgement is unbelievable. There is no right or wrong; it has to be so individual. You are trying to get your head around those things. Then you go back to work; you have to get back into your work clothes, then operate at a coherent level on potentially four hours sleep!
My advice is have a tribe, there is a lot of judgement, and it comes from other women – it’s a female phenomenon, I don’t know where it comes from or why we do it, surround yourself with people who are going through what you are going through at that time. You need people around you who understand what you are going through.
Guilt – it’s always there – it’s there is you decide to go to work or stay at home, we go to work, and you get back into the swing of things, but the guilt is always there. The thing to do is eyeball the guilt, acknowledge it’s there, we can’t always make the perfect decision, nobody can, we are human beings and amazing to create humans and keep them going and keeping so many other strands going on. People will have guilt about different things – find out what it is that upsets you – if you are feeling guilty about something, and you’re going out with friends, and you’re feeling guilty about that, or you think the house is going to burn down without you, and when you come home, and baby is asleep, and the house is still standing, remind yourself that you didn’t need to take the edge off the fun, you didn’t need to stress out and recognise that you are more relaxed and more able to be yourself.
When you are on maternity leave, it’s ok not be be ok, it’s okay to say I need help – we feel like we have to be superheroes in work, gourmet chefs in the kitchen, but these tough moments with your babies – they will pass – they will all sleep, they will all walk, they will all go off to school, and a new normal will emerge, we need to give ourselves time to enjoy all these phases, give ourselves a break – mentally and physically – drop the guilt. It’s ok to be 90% at work. Have 80% of a clean house. DROP THE GUILT. Otherwise, we become tetchy; and then we’re tetchy around our babies and our partners, everyone suffers if you’re working around unhappy. If you look at it rationally, nobody wins. Carve out a niche amount of time to be yourself, not to be a mum, a partner, an employee – just to be yourself.
When you have a baby, people think you’re just gone for a few months from work, and that you’ll just slot back in on your return, but what they don’t know is that you are different, you don’t really know who the hell you are for quite a long time as you adjust to your new role as mum and career girl. With each child it’s different, but there’s the assumption that you can just slot back into being a mum on maternity leave again, but that’s just not the case at all.
The new thinking in psychology is that the glass ceiling doesn’t exist – women rose to a certain level and then they couldn’t anymore. But the new thinking is that this doesn’t exist, but it’s a glass cliff and that women rose to a certain level and then they are pushed off it, not through their own choice, they are the ones who organise the childcare, who make the sacrifices, they are the ones who are expected to go home when the child is sick.
Women change in terms of what they want to do or what is left open to you after having kids. Women have the right to come back and have the right to come back and have careers they have the rights to have support – look at Scandinavia – they have so much support.
90% of women are the ones who have to leave work when a child is sick. This does have an impact on how your boss sees you.
We need to trust our instincts more. Why are mothers not taught to rely on our instinct? Why don’t we trust our instinct? We give our power over to doctors and midwives and hospitals, who are well meaning, but we know so much more than we give ourselves credit for as a really basic level. Listen to your instinct, don’t lose that full identity and trying to hold on to who we are as individuals. Being a mum is overwhelming and you get so much conflicting advice, not knowing what to do when you become a mum, when you have more kids, your instinct gets stronger and stronger, if I could give myself a piece of advice, it’s to trust ourselves, it’s ok to acknowledge that it’s hard and it’s ok to say that. We are bombarded with images of perfection on social media, Instagram bubble, and Pinterest-perfect lives; it’s just not true, we put so much pressures on ourselves, and enjoy it.
Parenthood has never been perfect, it was always difficult and challenging, it doesn’t matter if you were a parent in the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, but the internet lifestyle has put a massive amount of pressure on us, we think these images are real, we have become so inundated with these perfect straight back into shape mums that are doing everything. Like the pregnancy announcements – we don’t just jump back into our size 8 s with our Pinterest worthy cakes. We need to get comfortable with the messiness of motherhood. It’s no coincidence that anxiety levels have gone through the roof, it’s very much that these things are linked. It’s so important to say motherhood is difficult and it’s hard.
Try your best to grab 20 minutes every day to yourself – it may sound crazy, but give the baby to someone and go and lie down, or to have a bath or get your nails done to recharge, just check in – ask yourself – How am I? Speak up if you need help and take some of the pressure off.
When you go back to work… outsource as much as you can, If you get a minder, you could ask your minder to batch cook, keep the conversation going, things will change as you go back to work, being able to talk about what you need, how can I support you, keep the conversation, having as much chats about it in advance will help. Take some conscious time to remember who you were before you had a baby, what used to make you happy, things like clothes – finding something that fits – even though it might sound frivolous, can make all the difference to how you feel each day, and acknowledge that you haven’t gone completely – you have changed, think about what the bits are that you want to keep and learn and explore about you, and the things that you happy.
The same version of you doesn’t come back after you have a baby, you can have fun rebuilding yourself after each baby, think of it as a re-brand – you can rebrand your tribes, there are times when you just have mum friends, at the time it was terrifying, looking back it’s half of the fun, it’s a brilliant opportunity to rebrand yourself. It’s good to do this regardless. Make sure there are other people around to have fun with. Embrace the change.
NEXT WEEK: Join us for an exclusive parenting workshop in Movies@Dundrum in the Town Centre at 9.30am next Monday 21st, February for some FREE advice from our parenting expert and psychologist, David Carey, on the best way to deal with your tween’s moodiness and how to be the best guide you can be to them as they launch themselves into the exciting, but often very scary, world outside of the family.
Learn how to connect with your child in a different way and how to keep those lines of communication open. They still need you – but just in a new way.
Bring a friend (or your partner) and we will bring the coffee. Sign up below, and we hope to see you on Tuesday.
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