The Highs and Lows of Early Motherhood

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This post was written by Solara Calderon, Ph.D.

Time and time again, I’ve heard new moms describe their surprise at the intense range of emotions they experienced in the first days, weeks, and months of motherhood. The stack of pregnancy books that had sat next to their bed for the past nine months somehow did not quite capture the oxytocin highs, the sleep-deprived lows, and every other emotional state in between.

If this is your experience, too, you are not alone. Your identity and the ways in which you know yourself are shifting and evolving. It is understandable that you may feel joyful, anxious, fearful, angry, sad, guilty, and overwhelmed. It is also understandable that you might feel all of these emotions in a single day.

No book can accurately prepare a new mom for the varied emotions that are inherently a part of matrescence, the process and transition of becoming a mother. However, certain coping strategies from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) can help you learn to bring deeper awareness to your experience. Employing strategies like those described here will allow you to better regulate and manage your wide-ranging emotional states during this challenging period of life.

Whether your newborn is inconsolable at 3:00 a.m. or you are inconsolable on your first day back to work, here are three DBT skills to help you cope with some of the tougher moments.

STOP

The STOP skill allows you to temporarily pause in order to take an objective, outsider look at what you are experiencing before you choose how to react. This skill is broken down into four steps:

1. Stop. Visualize a stop sign and physically freeze.

2. Take a step back from the situation. Take a break. This break can be momentary or longer if needed. Take some deep breaths. Splash some cool water on your face. Drink a glass of water. Look out the window.

3. Observe. Notice what is going on inside you and also outside you in your surroundings. How are you feeling? What are you thinking? What role are others playing in this situation? Learning how to notice yourself from the perspective of an objective observer is a skill that can be developed with intention.

4. Proceed mindfully. Before reacting out of intense emotion, ask yourself, “What do I need right now? What will be helpful to me at this moment?” You have the power to act with awareness. Maybe you need to ask a friend to drop off some groceries. Maybe you need to strap the baby into a carrier and talk a walk around the block. Maybe you need to calm yourself down by self-soothing.

Self-Soothing

In the early days of motherhood, much focus is on the baby—how many ounces your child is drinking, how many pounds your child is gaining, and how many hours your child is sleeping. No one seems to be as concerned with how much sleep you are getting, whether you are eating and drinking enough, and whether you are mentally and physically able to care for yourself. Emotions are high, and self-care may be low. For these reasons, self-soothing using your five senses might feel especially beneficial.

• Sight: Can you spend a moment looking at something beautiful, like family photographs or flowers? Can you close your eyes and visualize your favorite place in your mind?
• Sound: Can you listen to soothing music? Can you sing your favorite song?
• Smell: Can you open the window and smell the fresh air? Can you deeply breathe in the smell of a cup of herbal tea?
• Taste: Can you spend a few moments focusing on the taste of a warm drink or your favorite food?
• Touch: Can you take a shower or wrap yourself in a blanket? Can you ask someone for a hug?

Sensory Awareness

Picture yourself in the throes of a brutally long feeding or pumping session where you feel eternally tethered to the couch. Or in tears, as you try to figure out how to get your newborn, a heavy stroller, and a haphazardly packed diaper bag into your car to make it to the pediatrician appointment on time.

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These are some of the moments of early motherhood in which it is easy to believe that life going forward is always going to feel as overwhelming as it does right now. It is hard to hold onto the fact that you will make it through this moment and that this moment won’t last forever.

One way to ground yourself in this reminder is to practice moving your mind away from the thoughts spiraling in your head by bringing your awareness to yourself right now in the present.

• Feel your feet planted firmly on the floor.
• Feel your body supported by your chair.
• Feel the weight of your arms dangling at your sides.
• Feel your stomach rising and falling as you breathe.
• Feel any physical tension in your body, and feel what it is like to let it go.

Grounding through sensory awareness can help re-center you in yourself and in the present moment. This strategy can also help bring you back to an important reminder: This moment and every moment still to come is temporary and shifting.

A well-meaning relative has probably already recited to you, “The hours are long, but the days are short….” While these three coping strategies, unfortunately, can’t help shorten the very long hours of early motherhood, they can help you become more aware of your experiences and your needs and can help you learn new ways to cope with some of the understandable emotional challenges of matrescence.