In the current issue (Spring 2009) of My Child magazine, you’ll find my article on how to navigate the emotional rollarcoaster that is pregnancy.

Here’s a snippet:

In pregnancy there are obvious physical changes. But the emotional changes are no less significant.

You experience a range of feelings and emotions during pregnancy which may surprise or even worry you.

But rest assured that pregnancy is the beginning of an amazing transformation from person to parent.

And all those feelings and emotions are helping prepare you for the journey ahead.

The article covers these common but sometimes confronting feelings:

Ambivalence
There is at least one point in every pregnancy, every labour, and every first year of parenthood where you ask yourself, what have I done?

Expectations
Do you dream what life will be like with your new baby? Do your dreams involve sipping lattes in the sun with other mums while your perfect cherub sleeps peacefully? Or do they involve endless nappy changing, cleaning up vomit and feeling like you’ve been run over by a truck?

Guilt
Guilt is a parent’s almost constant companion. We want the best for our children. We want to be good parents. And we don’t want to stuff it up.

Change
When you become pregnant you cross a threshold. You leave behind the ‘I am a person’ world and you commence your journey toward the ‘I am a parent’ world.

Letting go
You change physically during pregnancy. But there is also a mental shift that occurs. Issues you used to worry about are no longer a concern. Activities you loved doing occur less frequently. People you used to spend time with feature less in your life.

Caring for yourself
When pregnant, caring for yourself means you are caring for your baby. But when your baby is born and your baby emerges as a separate person, caring for your baby can overtake caring for yourself.

Becoming a parent
We all have images of the perfect parent. But how realistic is that?

And you can find more in my book Full Belly: Comfort and inspiration for pregnancy and birth.

By Marie-Josée Salvas
Courtesy of Positive Psychology News Daily

On the outside, busy seems to rhyme with happy. Busy people seem successful, needed and important. Busyness is, after all, serious business.

Yet on the inside, busy is often a cousin of misery. We make it through the day, run to soccer practice, shorten our night’s sleep, survive through the week, and finish off what is left on our to-do list over the weekend.

It is customary to describe our workload with words like crazy and expressions like “no time to breathe.” Before we realize it, we race through our lives and forget to verify whether what we are doing helps make us into the person we want to be.

We also discuss time in very financial terms. As Ilona Boniwell describes in Positive Psychology in a Nutshell, “We save it, spend it, waste it, we never have enough of it.” Time is now seen as a non-renewable resource, and as such, it is precious.

Time or energy?

But is time really our most precious resource? When facing increasing demand, the best response is to augment capacity, not time on task. The Power of Full Engagement authors Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz explain: “Energy, not time, is our most precious resource… Performance, health and happiness are grounded in the skillful management of energy.”

They suggest a new paradigm, which I believe to be much more interesting than its predecessor. Rather than go through life as if it were a marathon, they recommend we approach it as a series of sprints.The focus shifts from managing our time more efficiently with fancy blackberries and ever-shorter email strategies to managing our energy more effectively, avoiding both over and underuse.

In an economy driven by the innovative capacity of its workers, rather than making our mind the sole contributor to work and performance, their model recognizes that energy comes from four separate but related sources: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Neglecting one source will have repercussions on the others. Mind and body are one - as they are in real life.

Strive then rest

To build capacity, they recommend we strive to push beyond our known limits, thus setting them further back, which is the exact technique athletes of many disciplines have used for years and years. Following the effort, rest is necessary, not only for our subjective benefit, but also for our body and brain to process and register the information that a new boundary was established.

Downtime is no longer an unproductive indulgence, but a necessary procedure that prepares us for the next effort. While this equilibrium seems very much intuitive, it uncovers the less obvious conclusion that constant busyness impedes greatness.

I believe this new approach deserves consideration. If there is a small voice inside that is begging you for a rest, pay attention. You will engage and perform better after recovery. If you score high on the strengths of perseverance and achievement, learn to celebrate downtime - it’s your best ally!

For me, Mother Nature is most spectacular when the imposing structure of mountains meets the stillness of a water source. Likewise, peaks and valleys are equally necessary to make life optimally beautiful.

By Marie-Josée Salvas
Courtesy of Positive Psychology News Daily

I know some people don’t understand, get freaked out, or simply don’t like the idea of homebirths.

It is definitely not for everyone.

And certain segments of the medical profession have done a great job of scaremongering by suggesting that homebirths are unsafe and that people who choose homebirths are selfish and stupid.

But it is a legitimate choice for women with safe pregnancies who want to birth with the support of their own midwife, and in their own environment.

I had a homebirth with my son (my second birth), and it was the most magical, wonderfully empowering, perfect birth.

And if I wanted more children (which I don’t!) then I would definitely want the option of having another homebirth.

But unfortunately, legislation is afoot that will effectively make homebirths illegal.

For a long time private practicing midwives haven’t been able to access professional indemnity insurance so most have been working without insurance.

But from 1st of July 2010, private practicing midwives can be fined $30,000 for practicing without insurance.

This effectively outlaws homebirth unless it is attached to a hospital program.  Unfortunately, few hospital programs support homebirths.

For anyone convinced that every woman has the right to choose how and where she births, this new legislation is antiquated.

Elle McPherson said this about women’s right to choose as published on the Homebirth Australia website:

I enjoyed giving birth to my second son in a birth pool. My birthing room was warm and candlelit and I was lovingly supported by my birthing team. This made me feel emotionally safe as I birthed my baby gently.

I would love Australian women to enjoy a water birth just as I did. I am surprised to hear that less than 5% of Australian women can choose warm water immersion for pain relief and for birth!

I strongly recommend that the medical system in Australia give women the choice to be able to use a warm water pool during labour, for deep relaxation and giving birth.

I support Homebirth Australia’s work to enable all Australian women to choose where and with whom they share their intimate experience of birth.

If you believe every woman has the right to birth their baby their way, then you can do the following:

Sign the petition to save private midwifery.

Write to your local member of parliament or Nicola Roxon, the federal health minister.

Attend the Mother of all rallies in Canberra on Monday 7th of September, 11.30am.

or if you can’t get to Canberra, buy a virtual rally ticket and show your support.

Read more about homebirth at Homebirth Australia’s website.

And spread the word to anyone who will listen!

Homebirths should be a legitimate choice and not a crime.

By Jodie Benveniste, director of Parent Wellbeing.

I’ve always appreciated the benefits that meditation can bring - a sense of calm, contentedness and connectedness.

But I’ve never been very good at meditating.  I find the whole suspending thought thing very difficult!

Of course meditation is a skill that gets easier with practice.  And clearly I haven’t practised enough.

But I’ve found another form of meditating that I’m enjoying more.

It’s called Loving Kindness Meditation.

In their book, The Gift of Loving-Kindness, Mary Brantley and Tesilya Hanauer explain how Loving Kindness Meditation is about being friendly to yourself and others.

By practicing Loving Kindness Meditation, you develop positive feelings about yourself and others around you.

And this is what I particularly like about it.  When you practice Loving Kindness Meditation you repeat a series of phrases aimed at yourself, someone you love, someone you feel neutral about, a difficult person or all living things.

I find repeating phrases so much easier to focus on than no thoughts at all.

Loving Kindness Meditation How to

In their book, Brantley and Hanauer outline a simple beginning meditation of the following four phrases:

May I be happy.

May I be healthy.

May I be peaceful.

May I be safe.

You can also substitute ‘I’ for others you’d like to direct your meditation too.

And of course, you can play around with the phrases to find ones that suit you.

Lately, I’ve been concentrating on:

May I be happy.

May I be healthy.

May I be calm.

May I be connected.

I’ve also substituted the last two for:

May I be confident

May I calm.

The beauty about Loving Kindness Meditation is that you can do it almost anywhere - walking on the beach, lying in bed before you go to sleep, and of course in lotus position.

And you can even give it a go when stuck in traffic, in your lunch hour, or while waiting in line.

It is a very adaptable practice, and in their book, The Gift of Loving-Kindness, Brantley & Hanauer outline 100 ways you can use it.

Plus, most importantly, renowned happiness scholar Barbara Fredrickson, has found that practicing Loving Kindness Meditation has helped people savour more, be more mindful, accept themselves, find positive meaning, and trust others.  People have shown to become less depressed and to enjoy life more.

So if meditation is your thing, Loving Kindness Meditation might be worth a try.

by Jodie Benveniste, Director of Parent Wellbeing.

Forget Nintendo, Playstation and Wii.  Instead roll a real dice.  Board games, it appears, are good for family relationships.

As reported in The Advertiser:

“A national study involving 125 families who played board games together once a week for a month found the activity improved parents’ and children’s life skills, such as spelling and maths, and increased the amount and quality of time they spent together.

Other benefits included greater patience, sportsmanship between siblings and self-esteem in children.”

I love these findings.

When I was growing up we had summer holiday Canasta championships, rainy day Monopoly marathons, and in the car travel Scrabble.

I love board games.  Which ones can you play with your kids?  Or your friends?

We’ve all probably experienced it - resentment - particularly aimed at our partner.

“You go off and work and I’m left to do everything at home.”

“You don’t understand what kind of pressure I’m under at work.  You get to play with the kids and be at home all day.”

“I work too.  But I’m still expected to do more of the housework.”

These are all legitimate feelings and complaints.  But if left to fester they can become toxic.

Our partners are an easy target for our angst.  And there is angst aplenty when you are trying to raise a family, pay off a mortgage, build a career and overall, live a good life.

That’s why I was fascinated to read a brave and revealing letter to the editor in the latest issue of Adelaide’s Child magazine.

The letter was from a dad who believed his stay-at-home-wife’s resentment ruined their relationship.

We often don’t hear the dad’s perspective so it was very interesting to hear his point of view.  (To understand the complete story, we would of course need to her view as well.)

But we often think we have it worse off - when really we both are experiencing difficulities.

It also saddens me that this couple did not get counselling earlier to see if they could resolve some of their issues.

Support, understanding and communication are the way through any relationship challenge.

Below is an extract from the letter.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this issue.

“I’d like to respond to Mary Kirby’s article At Home and Not Happy (July 2009). The words could have come directly from my wife - the same resentment and anger about being stuck at home with small children. All very understandable and explainable. There is, however, another party involved: the husband and the situation impacts on him too, particularly when his wife is so unhappy.

When our second child was born, my wife became steadily more resentful towards me. If I went away on a business trip, it was labelled a ‘junket’ or a ‘holiday’. Being late home from work was greeted with a frosty atmosphere. Needing time on my own (a common need for males) was tantamount to a declaration of war. Two hours spent with a mate once every three weeks playing snooker even attracted disapproval and subsequent punishment.

House tasks were done by her before I’d even noticed they needed to be done, then I was resented for not doing them. The tension increased steadily, and I started drinking regularly to escape. I was told most days about my lack of contribution, about how easy my life was in comparison to hers, about my ever-growing list of inadequacies.

One day after about three years, all of a sudden I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t stand the tension, the bitterness and resentment and the constant psychological attacks. So I walked out to save my sanity and remaining semblance of self-respect. Our marriage ended on that day, despite subsequent attempts to renegotiate behaviour.

I’ve since re-partnered, and my new partner has two small kids too. But there is no tension, and we are yet to have an argument. I do stuff around the house without needing to be asked because I’m not stressed, under attack and needing to escape all the time. I’m no longer resentful for being resented…I no longer have the constant guilt that goes with having an unhappy partner who tells you it’s your fault…

The pattern of blaming males is particularly destructive. Men tend to initially avoid the problem, which makes it worse. Then they get down and depressed. Then if pushed too far, they will eventually seek to escape - through alcohol, drugs, going on trips, having affairs or leaving their partner permanently…

Love needs kind words and actions to survive and grow, or it slowly dies and fades away.”

Courtesty of Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

A few days ago, I was extremely upset. It’s too complicated to explain the whole situation, but an encounter left me feeling anxious, agitated, under attack, and sad. I did what I could to resolve the situation, but I still felt terrible.

When I have a day like this, I try to make it a Good Bad Day. I take the steps that tend to make me feel better or, if they don’t make me feel better, at least give me the kind of day on which I can look back with satisfaction.

To have a Good Bad Day, I made sure to:

1. Exercise.
For me, exercise is a key element to managing my moods. It calms me and energizes me at the same time. Its rituals are comforting. It’s productive but not intellectually or socially demanding. Also, exercise is so obviously a key to good health that if I manage to exercise, I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile in my day, no matter what else happens.

2. Do something nice for someone else.
The first part of the Second Splendid Truth is “One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy” (also known as the “Do good, feel good” provision). I sent out some emails that I knew would be useful for other people. Doesn’t sound like much, but it took a lot out of me.

3. Stop ruminating.
My inclination was to go over and over the details of the upsetting episode and to conduct imaginary arguments. Instead, I tried to keep my resolution to Find an area of refuge. Studies show that dwelling on negative thoughts amplifies their power in your mind. In fact, some researchers suggest that a reason that more women suffer depression than men is that women are more likely to “overthink,” while men are better at distracting themselves from negative thoughts.

4. Connect with someone important to me.
I called my sister.

5. Tackle a nagging task.
Crossing things off a to-do list is energizing and cheering. I took the time to clear my desk - not just physically removing piles of papers, but also doing the tasks that the papers represented. Copying research notes from various sources, making a dentist’s appointment, and making progress on my blog re-design gave me a feeling of control and accomplishment.

6. Do something silly and lighthearted with my children.
I videotaped my four-year-old as she danced and sang in her mermaid costume with her new mermaid doll, and we had a family bubble-blowing extravaganza. And throughout all these steps, I tried to…

7. Act the way I want to feel.
Research shows that although we think that we act because of the way we feel, in fact, we often feel because of the way we act. I get worked up very easily, but I tried to act cheerful instead of allowing myself to get agitated, wring my hands, etc. My mother often reminds me, “Stay calm,” and I need that advice frequently.

8. Ask for help.
I said to my husband, “I really need to talk to you. I’m really upset, I want to tell you what happened today and talk to you about it, okay?” Being a sympathetic listener isn’t my husband’s strongest point, and truth be told, he wasn’t very comforting — but I think that by explaining that I needed him to try to do his best to help, I did help him do the best he could.

But nothing really worked. I still felt lousy. So I made sure to…

8. Go to sleep early.
It’s true, everything does look better in the morning. Also, the longer I work on my happiness project, the more importance I give to sleep. Getting enough sleep just makes a tremendous difference to happiness.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt better. The situation still upsets me, but not as much as it did. When I have a bad day, it helps to have a good bad day.

Have you found any strategies for making a bad day better? What works for you?

Courtesty of Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

Courtesty of Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the problem of drift in happiness. Drift is the decision you make by not deciding, or by making a decision that unleashes consequences for which you don’t take responsibility. (”Drift” isn’t an actual psychological term, like situation evocation or emotional contagion; it’s just a word that I use).

I fear drift. Drift feels small, but once unleashed, drift is a powerful, often almost unstoppable, force.

An engaged friend couldn’t have made it more plain that she didn’t want to get married. I asked her, “Imagine that something happened, and you couldn’t get married next month. Your fiancé absolutely had to move to China for a year, alone, or you had to have a big operation. How would you feel?” “Relieved,” she said. And yet she went through with the wedding, and got divorced a year later.

I drifted into law school. I didn’t know what else I wanted to do, it seemed like a legitimate, useful way to spend a few years, it would keep my options open…I didn’t really think much about the decision. As it turns out, I’m very glad I went to law school - drift sometimes does lead to a happy result, which contributes to its dangerous appeal - but I didn’t approach law school mindfully. And many, many people who go to law school are not happy they went.

Just taking one drifting step can you set you in a course that’s very hard to stop. In my case, I drifted into taking the LSAT (the law-school application test). “Why not, might as well, could come in handy, maybe I’ll be glad I did,” etc. This is a good example of the fact that drifting doesn’t always mean taking the easier course; it was a lot of trouble to prepare and take the LSAT, but it was still drift.

Some situations look like drift but aren’t. You may be following a pathless path — and that’s fine, if that’s what you intend to do. Or you may have to choose between multiple courses, with their pros and cons, and you can’t decide which you want, and while you’re deciding, life continues rolling along. This isn’t drift, because you’re actively weighing your options. Sometimes, it’s helpful to postpone making a decision, either because you get more information or because your own preferences reveal themselves. However, if this goes on too long - and it’s hard to know what’s too long - it can become drift.

The tricky thing about drift is that people rarely want to admit to themselves that they’re drifting. So what’s a good way to catch yourself in drift? I tried to make a list of warning signs for myself:

Drift warning signs

Thinking “This situation can’t go on,” but then it does go on.

Complaining a lot about a situation without working to find ways to make it better.

Hoping that some catastrophe or upheaval will arise to blow up a situation, e.g., fantasizing that you’ll break your leg or be transferred to another city.

Feeling that other people or processes are moving events forward, and you’re being passively carried along.

Getting the urge to do or have something because the people around you are doing it or want it. One of my Secrets of Adulthood is “Just because something is fun for someone else doesn’t mean it’s fun for you - and vice versa.”

Have you ever caught yourself in drift? What are some other warning signs?

Courtesty of Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project