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A project from our hearts - how it grew into this.
Grow Parents is a project that comes straight from our hearts.
We, Amy and Laura, are both expat moms living in Madrid. Amy is a psychotherapist, Laura is a social worker and life coach. Love is what brought us to Madrid, love is what keeps us in Madrid, love is what we feel for our jobs, love is why we became mothers, love is what we live for. So as you can see, love is very important to us. And as we go on loving others so much, we often forgot to love ourselves.
After moving to Madrid, we faced the challenges that come with a big move like this. We started up our professional careers again, we looked for new friendships, we searched for a new balance in our relationships and we discovered the city until it became our own. On top of that, we decided to start a family. Amy has a little son, Laura has a little daughter and is expecting a son.
Becoming a parent is an adventure on itself. Doing it in a new city while not having your closest friends and family around, is a whole other dimension of difficult. Understanding the public and private health system, struggling with a foreign language, finding our way through the city to get to all the places we needed to go, searching for the right material to prepare our houses for the babies that were on their way, attending “preparto” classes and doing prenatal physiotherapy to get the practical and physical situation under control - we did it all.
Then, the days came our babies decided to come out and join us in our madrileño adventures. And that’s when it hit us. We had no idea what to expect from this new period in our lives. Suddenly we became mothers. Totally responsible for these tiny little babies. We had less time and less energy to invest in our relationships. Our bodies had changed. Our houses were never the same again. Our routine was nothing we could recognise. Everybody had opinions about how and what we should do. It felt like they had all the answers, because we had never done this. So we looked to others, compared and read. And we loved. We took care of our babies and of our husbands. We breastfed and co-slept. We made sure our families abroad got all the pictures and videos to stay up to date of every little change that happend in the development of our infants. We received visits, we travelled to show our babies off. But the one thing we didn’t do, was love ourselves. We forgot to check in with our own well-being.
Since we decided to create a new human being, our focus had been on the outside. We had been so busy with all the preparations and adaptations, that we never actually asked ourselves how we were doing or what is was we needed. We didn’t create space to be aware of all the changes that had happend to us and we weren’t conscious of how all of it impacted our well being.
Sure, we took care of our basic needs: we ate, drank and sometimes even slept and bathed. But how were we really doing?
When Laura stopped and asked herself how she was doing, she honestly had no idea how to answer. She had been managing. After a lot of self-inspection and questioning, she concluded two things:
I’m not enjoying motherhood as much as I had imagined. Am I even enjoying it at all?
I’m spending my few free moments in front of Netflix. Why is that? Isn’t there anything else I want to do when I’m not taking care of others?
It’s only now, 1,5 years after she gave birth to her sweet lovely vibrant daughter, that she started enjoying being a mom. It’s only now that she doesn’t need to hide behind the netflix adventures but actually knows what it is she wants to do with her life.
Worldwide, postpartum anxiety happens to 1 in 5 women. And 70% of them actually hides or downplays the symptoms. This kind of anxiety can come in many forms and intensities. Some are easily recognisable, but most of them are pushed aside as, for example, tiredness. The best way to prevent it is surrounding you with support. A support system that encourages you to reflect on your own needs and helps you to create space for your emotional journey into parenthood.
Both Amy and Laura experienced the isolation and anxiety that comes with becoming a parent and would have loved to get that kind of emotional support back when they went through it all. After doing extended research within the mom and expat community, it turned out to be a need of many parents. This is why Grow Parents was born. There’s a big gap in the parent care market. It’s time we start treating mental health as we do with physical health. It’s the base of a healthy and happy life that influences the well being of your whole family.
The conclusion of it all? Love yourself enough so you can love your kids even more. Don’t forget: Happy parents make happy kids!
Spread the word and/or join the project. The May-June edition of 2019 is starting this week!
