By Figen özer, alumni of our Self-Reg in Early Childhood Development program
New Born Stress
When I think of stress, the most stressful period in my life comes to mind— when I became a mother for the first time. I was a new mom with little twin boys. My stressful period began in the hospital. One of my sons had to stay in the NICU for two days because he couldn’t poop the first day he was born. We never expected our babies to stay in the NICU. I remember how sad I was that day, as if it were yesterday.
The inexperience of being a first-time mother and the challenge of taking care of two tiny babies at the same time had exhausted me during the postpartum period. As if that wasn’t enough, one of my sons had colic. That made everything more complicated.
Exhaustion, Colic & Stressors
When I think about that time, I remember how stressed and tired I was. One of the main stressors was the excessive crying of my son due to infantile colic. Both my babies were dependent on me. They needed to be breastfed at shorter intervals than normal babies because they were born with lower weight. This meant even more sleep disruption. I remember feeling very exhausted. Not being able to soothe my colicky son made me feel helpless.
I was on edge every day around 5 PM. Each day he started crying at 5 PM and cried for at least two hours. As he cried and I couldn’t soothe him, I felt stressed. As I was stressed, he felt it and became more stressed. It was like being stuck in a vicious cycle. Failing to calm him made me feel like an inadequate mother, which added to my stress. I experienced a lot of emotional ups and downs, with my mind in a chaotic state.
Reframing Coping with a Self-Reg Lens
Looking at what I experienced through the Self-reg Lens, I see I had many stressors in my life. Lack of sleep, fatigue, feeling helpless, and my baby’s excessive, inconsolable crying, were significant sources of stress for me. My colicky baby was also stressed, although I wasn’t aware of it at that time. I only had one focus: trying to make him stop crying. No one, including doctors, could tell me why he was crying. Now I understand that he was stressed. Maybe light, noise, or any smell were stressors for him..
Dysregulation Begets Dysregulation. Calm Begets Calm.
Calm begets calm. I had to be calm first to calm him down, but unfortunately, I wasn’t. I tried every possible way to soothe him, and when nothing worked, my stress level increased. I even remember crying myself. Despite having my mother and relatives around to help, their assistance didn’t work. I remember eating a lot of sweets and junk food to cope with this stress. It provided instant relief but was not a permanent solution.
I’d like to know what I would do if I returned to that time with what I have learned in Self-Reg so far. When we fly on an airplane, the flight attendant instructs us to put our oxygen mask on first before helping our children. In other words, as a mom, I have to take care of myself in order not to experience burnout, stress, fatigue, and reduced mental effectiveness. Otherwise, I feel depleted and exhausted. I can co-regulate with my child if I am regulated. Instead of maladaptive coping mechanisms, I would engage in restorative activities such as walking outdoors, spending half an hour with a friend, or listening to music. I would not be alone and I would talk to people who made me feel good. After restoring, I would be able to approach my baby with more compassion. I wouldn’t take my baby’s crying personally. I wouldn’t see it as my fault that I couldn’t soothe him. This way, I could try to understand and reduce his stressors.
“We Can Be Healed in Relationship”
I am not writing all these things in my blog post to blame myself or to wish I’d done all those things. It isn’t about mistakes that I may have made or things that I could have done better. It’s about now. The point is, as parents, we try to do the best with what we know now. As Harville Hendrix says , “We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship and we can be healed in relationship.”
2 Comments
Figen, thank you for the very courageous and open way you share your pain, frustrations, and vulnerabilities in dealing with the unrelentingly stressful experience of your son’s newborn colic. You write poignantly about the anguish of not being able to soothe your son, despite all of your very best intentions and efforts. And you write beautifully about your current understanding of the compelling complex layers of stressors leading to your anguish. I wish every new mother could hear your words, and benefit from the thoughtful way you came to see yourself and your feelings through softer and more understanding eyes. It’s fascinating to read this important blog in the context of what we’ve just learned about the CARE system (Gray Brain course), where we’ve learned that everything in a new mother’s physiology/neurobiology/neurochemistry has primed her, through a cascade of neurochemicals, to respond immediately to her crying infant, to reach out to soothe and protect her child from harm. This knowledge gives even deeper meaning to your astute words, “I only had one focus: trying to make him stop crying.” You’ve perfectly captured how it’s only natural for a new mother, without other resources, to see her inability to soothe her child as anything but a personal failing, that only further adds to the already overwhelming stressors in her life. This brings me back to one of my pet peeves in the culture we are immersed in — the failure of public policy to provide support programs to new mothers and new families that would ensure that every new mother has the benefit of the experience and wisdom contained in your blog.
These systems exist in many Scandinavian communities where new mothers and families have in-home support visitors or access to community programs that pass down the types of relationships, information, and interventions that used to get passed down from grandmother to new mother when we lived in more nuclear family settings. They were a natural and traditional part of indigenous cultures around the world. Similar programs have only recently started to be funded in the US through programs such as the Nurse-Family Partnerships.
Many of these programs now have infant massage programs as an integral part of the services offered. Grandmothers in indigenous communities for 100’s of centuries have passed down the tradition of infant massage. In this tradition, the grandmother massages the baby for the first 40 days and teaches the new mother the routine. The new mother also gets a massage each day, then takes over the massage of her baby after 40 days. I taught a modern version of the same routine as the infant and pediatric massage therapist at an inner-city children’s hospital for 16 years. One of my favorite parts of the routine is the “gas-colic-constipation relief routine”. My program started with the drug-exposed babies in the newborn nursery going through detox. The routine was so effective at regulating the digestive distress of these babies that we were invited to offer infant massage to families in the PediatricICU, where babies after surgery to repair heart birth defects, suffered terribly from the constipation caused by pain medications. Long story short, we ultimately offered infant massage to families in all departments of the children’s hospital – for children with pain and constipation from sickle cell anemia, Crohn’s disease, and children with cancer (Tiffany Field’s research at Univ of Miami Medical School showed greater numbers of Natural Killer immune cells that were more cytotoxically effective for children with leukemia who got massage).
Over the last 20+ years I’ve watched as more and more hospitals and community support programs include the simple and effective infant massage routine for new mothers. Through the perspective of the CARE system, it not only soothes the colic and digestive upsets, but opens the pathway for both mother (and all caregivers, father, grandparents, adoptive parents, etc…) and baby, to break down the blocks, enabling them to experience the pleasant sensations of touch and ultimately connection, that strengthen the bonds of relationships, and pave the way to more healthy developmental trajectories, starting from the gray brain up.
Thank you so much for your comment and for sharing about the Norwegian system. You’re making me wonder about different systems around the world and how they might support Self-Reg. Curious if others have information to share.
Aviva