These challenges that most new parents face will surprise you
The dream:
We all hope that we will create a warm, nurturing home for our children. We want the time and space and support that we need to bond with our babies. We want a peaceful postpartum.
The challenge:
But the truth is that most of us underestimate the stress that a new baby causes. In fact, 2/3 of couples experience significant increases in hostility when their baby is born. To help couples to set realistic expectations, I am hosting a free pregnancy date night.
So why do couples fight? Dr. John Medina in his book Brain Rules for Baby describes what he calls the four “grapes of wrath”: sleep deprivation, isolation, depression, and unequal division of labor, .
Baby factors:
So what are some of the factors that make the newborn period particularly stressful for new parents? Newborn babies need to eat 8-12 times in 24 hours. That means that they need to eat every 2-3 hours after they are born. My goal for new parents is that they each get 3-4 sets of 2 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. That’s a lot less than what they were used to before becoming parents!
In addition, when we are pregnant, we rock the baby all day long as we move about our days. Before they are born, babies often are more quiet during the day when we are moving about, and they are often more active at night when we stop rocking them. This means that when they are born, babies often start out with their days and nights reversed.
Babies tend to want to be held all the time in order to be calm… and however much we hold them, it will be less than what they were used to!
Babies cry a lot. New babies are born when their heads will fit through the birth canal, meaning that they are born less mature than babies of other species. Babies go through periods of time when they “cluster feed” - meaning that they have many feedings close to each other. In our society, we tend to not have a lot of experience with babies, making it harder for us to know why they are crying. And research shows that about 10-15% of babies go through extended periods of fussiness that are defined as colic. If a mother is breastfeeding on top of this, there is a chance that she may feel like she has to be responsible for the baby 24 hours a day.
And on top of all of this, the mother is physically recovering from labor and/or a c-section. Many new mothers struggle to even get close to my bare minimum of 3 sets of 2 hours of sleep per day! And we haven’t even started to address the partners yet!
So what happens if the mother is feeling responsible for her baby 24 hours a day and can’t sleep more than 1-2 hours at a time? Here come those grapes of wrath! She is sleep deprived. She feels isolated and overwhelmed by the responsibility. She may feel resentful of her partner—especially if it’s 3 in the morning, the baby is crying, and their partner is sleeping! And sleep deprivation alone has been shown to bring on depression - even without a baby!
If the new mother is overwhelmed by the grapes of wrath (isolation, sleep deprivation, unequal division of labor, and depression), she can start to feel that the normal methods for getting her needs met are not working, so she may resort to one of the behaviors that predict divorce such as criticism or contempt.
The divorce predictors:
In his research, Dr. Gottman found that there were 4 behaviors that predict divorce: contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling. When we feel overwhelmed, we often may resort to criticizing our partner, blaming them and judging their character. The Gottmans call this a negative bid - we are expressing our needs in a negative way. Contempt is criticism but with an air of superiority. It includes sarcasm, mockery, and eye rolling. When we feel contempt or criticism from our partner, we are likely to respond by stonewalling or defensiveness. With defensiveness, we are responding to an attack with another attack. With stonewalling, we are so overwhelmed with emotion that we shut down and use the silent treatment, leaving our partner feeling abandoned. In order to get their needs met, that partner often responds by pushing even harder, and it backfires. But it’s not a lost cause. There are so many things that we can do about the divorce predictors, and this is exactly what we will be covering in my free Pregnancy Date Night and more in depth in the Gottman Bringing Baby Home class and in my coaching program.
The partner also brings along a perspective of his/her own. The partner has had their own experience of labor and parenting. They need a support team that is going to truly support both parents. We need to remember that when a baby is born, the parents are also being born. A 3-day old baby also has parents who are 3 days old as parents. One of the concepts that we talk about in the Gottman Bringing Baby Home program is that sometimes there is a “society of women” that come to support the new mother and may inadvertently communicate that the partner doesn’t know what they are doing or isn’t as qualified. But the truth is that a new parent is a new parent, and both parents need to learn to be a parent and to shift into embracing their new role. The birthing parent needs a lot of support, and they need experienced women who can help them, but they need people who are going to support the family as a whole - not just the new mother.
To learn more, this is what I will be talking about in my upcoming Pregnancy Date Night. Learn more and register at www.pregnancydatenight.com. This is a free opportunity to connect with our partner and to get to know them as parents. I look forward to seeing you there and exploring what kind of a family you want to build.
Also check out my follow-up blog post: Three types of support new parents need to create a warm, caring environment for their baby
