Author: Saratoga TODAY

In light of Mother’s day that just passed, let’s discuss some of the common aches and pains that new mothers commonly experience.

Most new moms expect to deal with their fair share of pain and discomfort during pregnancy, but some may be disappointed to discover that it doesn’t end there.  Those discomforts just tend to shift and change.  Repetitive bending and lifting can put strain on the low back.  Constant holding and looking down at baby can overwork the muscles of the shoulders and upper back and strain the neck.  Stiffness of the SI joints can occur as your body recovers from pregnancy and birth and ligaments tighten back up.  The good news is there are ways to combat and prevent these pains so you can focus more on enjoying your new bundle of joy.

• Bend from the knees and hinge at your hips to pick up the baby.
• Use a taller changing table when changing baby’s diapers so you don’t have to bend over. (Never leave baby unattended on elevated changing tables or any surface they could potentially fall off of.)
• Use a foot rest to elevate your feet while feeding or sitting with baby.
• Whether breast or bottle feeding, use a nursing pillow when feeding baby.
• Stretch daily to loosen tight muscles and ligaments.
• Go see your chiropractor to help with joint mobility and postural imbalances.
• Get a massage to work out trigger points and muscle tension.

Having just celebrated Mother’s Day this past weekend many individuals can feel a mix of dread, sadness, regret and pain. Mother’s Day can trigger a traumatic pain response if you have/had a difficult, complex relationship with your Mother.

Our first introduction into the world comes through our Mothers. Whether we feel safe, secure and valued starts the minute we are born as early attachment forms.  If this attachment is not formed in a healthy way, we can spend our adult lives trying to heal from something that feels incurable.

As we grow into adolescence and adulthood, the inner voice that we develop that governs how we think and feel models the voice of the parent we had the most conflict with.  If you had an overly critical, difficult to please Mother or Mother figure in your life, the inner voice you have will model that criticism and judgement to yourself and everyone around you.

The only way to heal from the inside out and move past poor parent attachment is to become the parent you wanted and needed.  For example, if every Mother’s Day you try to please your difficult Mother by sending cards, spending time with her, visiting her home and then feeling a giant emotional hangover from your time together, it’s time to let the healthy parent step in and offer some guidance and support.

This starts by becoming the parent you needed as a young child. For example, instead of spending another holiday trying to please your difficult parent, you stop and pause. How would I protect my younger self in this situation? You have to begin to work on forming a healthy bond and attachment with your spirit, heart and soul and begin to set the boundaries you didn’t have as a child.

When I work with individuals who have complicated relationships with their mother, the question I get the most is, “Isn’t that so mean, I mean this person is my mother, don’t I owe her?” 

No doubt guilt can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate; however, when you abandon yourself to please a difficult parent, you continue the cycle of dysfunction and pass the baton down to the next generation.

The most wonderful, healthy gift you can give yourself every single day when the sun comes up is to be the parent you wanted and needed. This means taking care of yourself in the small basic ways, healthy food, water, rest. It also means taking care of yourself in the more emotionally complex ways as well.  You would never want your child around a dysfunctional person so why continue to put yourself in toxic situations at the hopes of pleasing an impossible to please person?

The key to healing is to start with you. Don’t spend another Mother’s Day feeling guilty, stressed out, angry. Stop the cycle today and start to be the Mother you wanted and needed yourself TODAY and EVERY DAY.

You are worth it!

Meghan Lemery Fritz is a psychotherapist practicing teletherapy at Fritz, Stanger & Associates.  For more information visit www.fritzstanger.com

I was reading over my columns for the past few months, and was marveling at the fact that, while my January and February articles were pandemic-focused (like almost all of last year’s), I actually wrote about other things in March and April! I read an article recently that argued there wouldn’t be a “stop” to the pandemic — a particular day on which we’d all be free of this scourge — but that it would be a gradual process. Like, one day you’d realize that it’s been over, or in the process of being over, for a while. The fact that I found other things to write about for the last two months is, I think, one of those things — a part of the process of the pandemic ending in our part of the world.

In fact, my life these days is a definite mixture of Pandemic and Before Times (which I guess are technically After Times). My big boys played Fall sports in March and April, which was thrilling — watching them run Cross Country is one of my very favorite things.

They were all on the same team, which made my chauffeuring duties pretty easy, but now they’re playing baseball and they’re not on the same team, and each night as I drag myself to bed earlier than usual, I’m remembering how exhausting spring has always been with all the baseball teams and practices and games and who needs to be where when (usually at the exact same time that another boy has to be at his field across town). Since we didn’t do our normal spring stuff last year, I’d forgotten a little how intense it can be.

In February I wrote about how sorry I am that my youngest especially has missed out on seeing some of the people that have always been a part of my daily motherhood — our friends at the grocery stores and the Triangle Diner particularly — but since then, I’ve actually felt comfortable enough to bring him to the store with me a few times! And my mom and I are planning a diner date very soon.

At the same time that these marks of “normalcy” are back in our lives, though, the pandemic is clearly still with us. I can’t imagine that I’ll ever be able to remember without crying how it prevented one of my boys from running in the Cross Country League Championship. I know such a thing is small potatoes compared to the loss of life and other horrors of the last year both locally and globally, and my son himself has a better sense of perspective about the whole thing than I do, but the toll all this has taken on young people is heartbreaking to me. I had to buy new masks recently, as the slow losing of them in backpacks and in the wash finally caught up with us. I was really hoping that the last bunch I bought was, in fact, the last — that the end of masking would come before I had to buy more — but no. The fact that it’s spring allergy season and allergy symptoms are similar to COVID symptoms adds an interesting layer of nervousness to daily life. And the hold this horrible virus currently has in India is a stark reminder that the pandemic is not over and that suffering and death continue.

I heard on the radio recently some tips about easing back into normal life, because some people are experiencing anxiety now that things are opening back up. I saw that some (many?) vaccination sites are no longer requiring appointments — you can just show up. I was able to attend my boys’ Cross Country meets in large part because my husband was still working from home so I could leave some of the kids with him, but now he’s back to work at the office so attending the baseball games isn’t as easy. I check the COVID stats for Saratoga County every morning and have been watching the number of positive cases decrease and plateau and decrease again since the peak back in the winter. This time is such a mix of good news and bad news, cautious optimism and frustrating setbacks, things getting easier and things getting harder, but it all seems to be heading in the right direction.

A history professor I know said that he recommends reading diaries and journals from times of plague and epidemics to see how it affected the daily life of regular people — I think of this column that way, both Before, when it was a record of motherhood in Saratoga Springs in the first part of the twenty-first century, and now, when it’s a record of motherhood in Saratoga Springs during the COVID pandemic. I imagine one day someone will read this account of life here, now, and have hope that time marches on and bad things eventually end.

Kate and her husband have seven sons ages 16, 14, 12, 11, 9, 7, and 2. Follow her at www.facebook.com/kmtowne23, or email her at kmtowne23@gmail.com.