 Okay. Hello everyone. This is Gretchen Elias, Executive Director of Good Beginnings and I'm here to welcome you to our fifth annual Climb Out of the Darkness. So we are here on the Statehouse lawn and we're really excited to have this virtual component this year thanks to Dr. Hauser and All Brains Belong. So we hope that those of you who are joining us from the comfort of your homes will enjoy participating in whatever way feels best for you and so I'm just here to welcome Dr. Hauser and kick off her portion of this event and again thanks so much for All Brains Belong bringing this important component to our event. Thank you. Take it away Mel. Yeah. So are you going to start your rounds? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. If anybody is interested we are going to start a little conversation about things people don't talk about the myths of new parenthood. I think we can just start having our conversation then. Yeah. I have the kind of brain that when I'm not looking at someone it's hard to talk into like the abyss. So I'm glad that you are here because there's like there's folks on Zoom but I can't see them. Yes. So yes. Yeah. What I thought that that we would talk about today is that there's lots of things that people don't talk about about becoming a parent and when we're in it sometimes we have like things we think it's going to be like and then it's not that way at all and it can feel really isolating to feel like you're the only person going through a thing but I think when we look around here today I think now we know that's not true because one in five people experience postpartum mood and anxiety challenges it's very very very common. Thank you for being here. Yeah. My own story was that five and a half years ago I as a I'm a family doctor takes care of babies through older adults and I with a special expertise in child development so I thought I was like I had it all set. I knew what I was going to do. I'm going to have this baby. Everything's going to be great. Turns out I didn't know anything about what to do about this baby and it was chaos. I had never really experienced this kind of chaos before and I think that I don't know if you know if folks know the work of Brene Brown. Brene Brown is a shame researcher who talks about the power of vulnerability in recognizing shame. Shame is the powerful negative emotion of feeling defective and deficient and I think for me my postpartum experience was marked by shame and when we think about you know Brene Brown says that one of the most powerful ways of addressing shame is to tell your story and almost always person you think you're talking to will say me too and then just like that you're not alone and hi. So I take care of patients of all ages many of whom think learn and communicate differently than the so-called typical brain even I'm not sure there really is a typical brain and so many people grow up thinking that they are alone thinking that they are the only ones who go through an experience and when people come together and find other people who've had these shared experiences they feel less alone and feel less shame and so I think that in my own postpartum experience which was marked by depression intrusive anxiety like really a very difficult time functioning at all it was a shock a shock because I had never thought that this was going to happen but it did hi so I think that part of the conversations about new parenthood need to be about these things that people don't talk about the experience of your own like your executive functioning skills where you like plan and organize your day when all of a sudden you are not sleeping and you didn't realize how much your brain needed sleep in order to function and your the the demands of your 24-hour life experience far exceeds your capacity what that feels like to not be able to plan like how am I going to feed myself how am I gonna shower like just not being able to execute those daily life tasks so many people experience that there are so many myths of new parenthood like the myth that you're gonna immediately bond with your baby so many people don't have that experience so many people bonding takes place far later and in the moment when you're going through it and you're looking at all the pictures on social media of everybody snuggling their baby I felt shame because that was not my experience my experience was everyone in the house screaming because there was just so much chaos the other thing people don't talk about is sensory processing so we all have different brains that process information differently but we all take in information from the environment through our senses and when whether that be the sound of a screaming baby or the sensory experience of the hormone shifts of sweating and like all the things anyway people don't talk about that one in five people process sensory information differently and a lot of times people don't know it until they're in an experience where what they're going through doesn't meet their sensory needs that was my experience too when my baby would cry and I love my baby my baby somewhere here my baby's five and a half but in the moment when my baby cried I felt like my brain was gonna explode just explode and I felt shame about that other things people don't talk about I think that people get the message through their lives that there's one right way to be a parent and that there's one right way to experience connection there's one right way to be strong there's one right way to be brave there's one right way to be safe and we know of course that's not true either I think that looking back had I known that so many people experience this where they're feeling defective and deficient because their idea of what it meant to be a good parent a calm and safe person was not what their experience was I think this would have been so different I wonder if this is resonating with anybody did anyone also experience something differently than they thought new parenthood was gonna go yeah me too hi Luna hi baby yeah yeah do you want to talk to the audience no okay yeah I'm I'm talking about brains hi baby oh I'm not oh who's gonna talk on the microphone then no one okay I'll just talk yeah thank you baby you know I think that another thing people don't talk about is or rather I'll change that my experience about what people did talk about as a new parent a lot of people said savor these days they won't last forever remember these moments I'm like oh my gosh I hope this doesn't last forever this is like the worst time of my life so I think that if I could do it all over again I would know that it's okay that you don't want those early days to last forever another thing people don't talk about is that I thought that if I were going to experience postpartum depression anxiety in all kinds of things that I would know I would know that I needed help and I would know how to reach out I'm a doctor who connects people with resources but in the moment I I didn't know that's what's happening I I couldn't even like it was just so much chaos so I think that we need to tell our stories when it's safe and we need to tell our stories as often as possible because anytime someone's feeling shame sometimes all it takes is to connect with another human who is experiencing that shame because then we don't feel so alone I think that another thing that people don't talk about is like what the most important thing is like in the moment I thought the most important thing was to like feed my baby in a particular way and like be really on top of all these things but really if I could do it all over again I would have I would have recognized that the most important thing is to learn to feel safe and we can't help our babies feel safe if we don't feel safe in our own bodies and so if I had to do it all over again I would have known that the most important thing is to feel safe and connected and to and and that looks so different for different people I wonder if that resonates with anyone shifting priorities thanks I also think that people don't talk about how we all have different brains that learn think communicate socialize connect differently and I think that um I had a lot of what I call brain rules brain rules are like the things we think are universal life truths but we really made them up or someone else made them up and lots of other people propagated them on social media they are brain rules not world rules world rules are like don't hit people in the head they don't like it you know like an actual objective life truth but the brain rules about what it means to be a connected family like my brain rules were that I was gonna leave the house and go on adventures with my baby and go to parties this is before COVID of course um but like we were just gonna like walk around all day and snuggle my baby and hang out with all my friends yeah that didn't happen we didn't leave the house for two years so I think that there's no right way to connect and whether that is um you know coming to something like this or finding a virtual group about your interest connecting asynchronously through you know social media forums of people who don't necessarily live where you live but who are going through what you're going through I think that we all need connection it just may not look like what we thought connection was quote supposed to look like I think that when we can finally achieve safety and not just with our baby but first with ourselves I think then we can begin the process of attunement like when I was before I gave birth to my baby I thought about how like oh yeah I'm going to be this like perfectly attuned and connected parent but I just had too much chaos to like even be connected to myself because attunement really it's it's that space that we can hold when we're accessible to observe and interpret and and understand our own nervous systems communication before we can understand our babies and I think that um knowing your own brain and your own needs your own access needs to fully participate in a simple conversation um or let alone participate in life outside the house are really really important and I think that we might talk about being attuned to our children but giving ourselves permission to be attuned to ourselves first people don't talk about that not enough I think that um more brain rules of parenting um you know the brain rules like uh you know we have to sit down at the dinner table to be a family that's a brain rule not a world rule um more brain rules uh I should be able to do whatever anytime there's the I should be able to that's usually a brain rule not a world rule I think that um you know world rules I have value as a human being I have autonomy to set boundaries those are world rules there's no right way to do this that's a world rule I wonder if anybody else has had any brain rules of parenting things you thought were supposed to be that kind of gotten away sometimes see if there's anybody on zoom with any brain rules I forgot to look at the chat I think that um as as I wrap up this conversation I think that if we can give ourselves permission to be vulnerable and share our stories show up authentically in the world when someone asks how we're doing we don't follow the brain rule of that you have to say oh yeah it's going great when it's not going great like at all um that's how we shift the community conversation of true and genuine and authentic conversation that we can show up and say when things are hard and then almost always someone else will say me too thank you I will say goodbye to I wear the cameras over there I can say hi okay okay I'll say I'm happy to take any questions from the zoom folks first or comments if Anna Anna sorry um if Anna can text them to me if there's anything so there's a comment in the chat thank you I also felt so alone in the early days of parenting and I thought I should like it but it sucked me too thank you Anna oh there's more me too