What is matrescence?
Matrescence is the term used to describe the physical, mental, and emotional changes that you experience when you become a mother.
I created a free workbook on navigating matrescence. You can get your copy by clicking on the image below.
How can I support myself during matrescence?
Acknowledge that it’s happening: Recognising that you’re going through a transition can help you approach it with patience and self-compassion. This is a very hard adjustment, it will ask a lot of you. Knowing this can help.
Accept support: Ask for and accept help from loved ones, friends, or even a therapist or coach. This isn’t always easy to do, especially if you are used to being independent and haven’t needed help in the past. Start with asking for small things and build it up over time. If you would like to explore coaching, that is something that I offer. You can book a chat to talk more about it or find out all the information you need here.
Practice ACTUAL self-care: Make time for activities that nourish you, and let go of activities (and people) that don’t nourish you. What makes you feel good will be unique to you. It might be movement, beautiful food, warm company, walks, time alone, a good book, beautiful scents, candles, blankets and movies or a favourite TV show. There are no rules here, do the things that lift your mood.
Motherhood can feel lonely at times, the feelings can feel overwhelming and dark and it is easy to think you are the only one feeling this way. You aren’t. I’ve been working with mothers for years now and everyone I have ever met has struggled with this. Some women, understandably, find it too difficult to talk about while they are experiencing it. Some won’t have the confidence to bring it up early on in a relationship. However I can promise you that you aren’t alone and there is a wonderful connection to be found with the right women. You might like to take a look at The Gathering. This is a group space for postpartum mothers.
What did I do differently second time around?
I really struggled with matrescence. I found it incredibly hard to navigate. When I was pregnant with my second child I spent a lot of time considering how I wanted to support myself during this transitional phase.
The key things were;
Sleep. The less I slept, the less I could sleep. I found that the sleep deprivation contributed to my anxiety which left me feeling really, really wired and then even when the opportunity was there to sleep, I couldn’t get rest. So from the start we put measures in place to ensure I was getting at least two, two hour stretches of sleep in every 24 hour cycle. Ideally more but this was a non-negotiable, especially with two children to care for.
Doing less stuff. Newborn babies take up a lot of time. Newborn babies are in arms for an average of 8-12 hours a day. Feeding between 8-12 times per day. Newborn babies will need somewhere around 10-12 nappy changes each day, plus a fair few outfit changes. The NHS website has normal newborn sleep ranging between 8 - 18 hours per day. If you are at the shorter end of this window, it will be very difficult for you to do anything other than care for your newborn. Eating and dressing yourself will be something you fit in.
So housework, cooking, shopping, socialising, self-care, time with your partner, time with your friends all have to magically fit in somehow into zero hours per day. So you will have to do less, make choices about what matters most to you and accept that some days will be about survival. We chose for my partner to take unpaid leave during the early weeks so he could be around to care for our eldest child, cook, clean and manage family and social things. This really helped. It meant all I had to do was clean myself, eat the food he prepared (picked up) and tend to our children. We did this for six weeks and by the end I was feeling ok. Not restored but ok. Whereas last time we were both completely depleted and broken by the time he went back to work.
Understanding that the intensive mothering model which we seem to culturally favour, isn’t realistic without a village. So while this is held up as the best possible way to do things, if you are the only person doing it you will always fall short and always be carrying guilt around this. So I put lots of effort into remembering that I am a human being, with needs of my own. My time is a finite resource and while I love my children and would do anything for them, that doesn’t mean I can also be everything for them.
There is a lot out there about mothers' intuition. That we don’t need experts, we are the experts and we should automatically know what is best for our children. I found this very unhelpful the first time around. When I had my daughter, I had spent years actively overriding my instincts (working while tired, dealing with difficult colleagues, not eating to appetite, not moving my body). So absolutely trust yourself but it’s also okay to find comfort from others. There are lots of wise, warm women out there who can support you during this time. You aren’t supposed to be doing it alone.
What is happening physically during matrescence?
Physically during your matrescence there are some big shifts;
The hormonal drop after birth represents a huge shift in hormone levels, the biggest in our lifetime. This can explain why most new moms feel in a complete haze over the first few days – and sometimes the first few months/years – postpartum.
Your body is healing. The placenta is on average the size of a dinner plate and you will have a wound this size in your womb. Your pelvic floor will have been stretched and weakened during pregnancy and birth and will need time to heal.
The physical shifts will have an impact too, your digestive organs have been moved and manipulated. Your womb is returning to its pre-pregnancy size. If you are breastfeeding this will bring further physical changes.
But the biggest thing is that instantly, the baby that was inside your baby is no longer there. There is a dramatic change. A shift. Unlike the changes that happened gradually over nine months, this one happens quickly.
During pregnancy you had the time to tend to your body, time to navigate those changes. This monumental shift happens quickly and you are thrust straight into newborn care, without the time to fully process what this means for you. Without the time to consider those physical changes.
Traditional medicine speaks about this space in the body, references how vulnerable we are when we are ‘open’ in this way and how we need to be tended to while our bodies are healing and closing. This is why warmth, nurturing and nourishing new mothers is so important. For more on traditional healing postpartum, head to this blog post.
What is happening emotionally during matrescence?
Ambivalence - having mixed or contradictory feelings about something - is common in motherhood.
The transition to motherhood will bring a range of emotions from joy and excitement to anxiety and overwhelm.
It is normal to experience guilt, doubt, a sense of identity loss, anger and frustration. These feelings can be a shock and can be difficult to process. Especially when we also feel shame for feeling these, normal and expected, feelings.
Talking about these feelings in a safe space is the best way to understand and process them. If you’d like some support you can speak to me, your health care providers, trusted friends, or your partner.
How long does matrescence last?
There is no defined timescale. You will move through it in a completely unique and individual way. What is common is that it will feel most intense and bring the most amount of change at the beginning and that this rate of transformation and change will slow down and feel much more manageable as time goes on.
support for matrescence?
I wrote a free guide to matrescence that you might find helpful. You can access that here.
