The Vulnerability of Motherhood

Sarah Tobin - 22 Jan 19

The raw vulnerability of motherhood. Not many of us prepare for that. You know you want a baby, and to be a parent. You work hard at getting pregnant, you might even experience loss along the way. You then spend 9 months growing a baby, tracking its size, researching birth options and devising your ideal birth plan but you haven’t given any thought to the postnatal challenges that might arise. ‘After care’, what’s that? ‘Self-care’, that’s a regular face mask right?

Here are some thoughts around the concept of vulnerability for the postpartum mum, and I do believe that period can last anywhere up to 3 years. At the end I’ve a video with a Tapping Meditation, (to learn more about Tapping/Emotional Freedom Technique click here), to help really shift any negative thoughts and help you feel lighter and stronger…you’ve got this mama…

Maybe your negative thoughts and emotions aren’t because you can’t cope as a mother, maybe it is because becoming a mother has made you feel vulnerable.

Being vulnerable is exposure to the possibility of being attacked either physically or emotionally. Post birth we are just that. We’ve just given birth, we have new emotions, new responsibilities, our body is in a physical state of repair, our mental functionality is impaired due to stress, exhaustion, overload, overwhelm.

We don’t feel as strong as we did before, and we reach for coffee, sugar, other stimulants, but I believe a lot of us naturally and quickly question our own capability, our bond with our baby, our mental state (which is probably playing tricks on us now), and our physical ability.

Perhaps even this vulnerability is a trigger for an earlier time when you were also vulnerable and maybe not supported enough. Perhaps the trials of becoming pregnant are adding to the memory of vulnerability.

Maybe you are just doing the absolute best you can, but its the act of motherhood, the stepping into a new role, the rebirthing of you, your body, your emotions, your heart, your head – and everything that comes with motherhood that changes you forever in many ways. Many beautiful ways and many horrible vulnerable ways too. Nobody told you doing this amazing thing and birthing children would be so heart breakingly painful.

It is like cracking open an egg and all the insides just pour out. You’d locked these emotions away so you could get on with your life and do an amazing job being a human and becoming a mum and then bang, the egg cracks open and it all spills out and you don’t know where to start. Breathe.

Maybe the labour wasn’t the perfect birth you had planned? Maybe it was actually really traumatic and painful? Maybe that makes you feel like a failure in some way and you might feel some disappointment you didn’t get the birth you’d hoped for. All this negative emotion could make you think, ‘I must be a bad mother’, ‘I must not be able for this’, ‘something must be wrong with me’, ‘maybe I’m not bonding with my baby enough’, ‘maybe I need to give more’……breathe.

Maybe all of these thoughts trigger postnatal depression, PTSD or intrusive thoughts. Potentially you’ve lost sight of who you are, your confidence, your belief in your ability to learn and adapt to change, to fight your own negative thoughts. The tiredness is wearing you down and that little negative voice in your head is becoming louder and you’re not strong or alert enough to tell it to ‘shove off’. I believe vulnerability can trigger a deep routed belief of not feeling good enough.

No one prepared you for this did they? The FEAR of things we didn’t even know we were afraid of. The RESPONSIBILITY of looking after another human, my god that responsibility can be so heavy. The VULNERABILITY of recovery, not being able to do things you want to do, putting pressure on yourself anyway, not accepting help, not asking for help, feeling so alone…

Breathe. We must talk about this more, to let women know that this is all totally normal, that they can get help through this and that it’s ok to ask for help. Please know that you are doing an amazing job and are a wonderful mother – no matter how bad you really think you are.

Tapping Meditation
I’ve created this video to help you release some of that vulnerability (tapping starts 3 minutes in if you want to skip to it). It addresses the vulnerability, anxiety, fear, and ultimately feelings of ‘I’m not good enough’ and we get to a point where we let this go, making way for more positive thoughts to reprogram our brains. If you’d like to receive this tapping script by email please sign up for my newsletter here at www.tappingformums.com

I’ll leave you with this

I am vulnerable. I am strong.

Sarah Tobin

After losing her daughter Alice at just 5 days old, Sarah sought help from a technique called Tapping / Emotional Freedom Technique. It has been so life changing for her that she has trained in it herself and has set up Tapping for Mums to teach mums the same technique and to also support them 121 on birth trauma, PTSD, PND, anxieties, childhood trauma and more. Visit www.tappingformums.com for more info.

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