#Matrescence

[caradoulasupport]

The Benefits of a Postnatal Doula 

How can a doula support you after the birth of your baby?

What is a postnatal doula?

A postnatal or postpartum doula can be defined as a non-medical professional who provides support to new parents and their families. Their focus includes post-birth recovery, changing family dynamics and newborn care. They provide informational, practical, emotional and physical support. It can be difficult to define the role as it is ever-changing and constantly evolving according to the needs of the family at a particular time. Oftentimes it requires a careful observation and response to what is happening in real time, possibly throwing well laid plans out the window after a sleepless night or in response to something unexpected coming up. This is the magic of a postnatal doula - whatever you need support with in a particular moment is exactly the reason for them being there. 

The other magic of a postnatal doula is that - yes, they are there to support you to the best of their ability AND they are completely impartial, providing a calm, well-informed undercurrent of evidence-based information to let you assess any tricky situations that arise and come to a decision that suits your family. A postnatal doula who can quickly give you the correct information from reputable sources can prevent new parents from disappearing down the rabbit hole of questionable internet searches! 

So when is the ideal time to start thinking about a postnatal doula? Ideally, during pregnancy equal consideration should be given to planning for the postpartum period, or 4th trimester, as in planning for the birth. There is a considerable amount of time and money invested in planning for the ideal birth, however, very often postpartum can be seen as a bit of an afterthought, although it lasts considerably longer than the birth! Some independent antenatal education classes will now focus more on how to prepare for the postpartum period as well as preparing for the birth. The end goal of pregnancy has been portrayed as a healthy mum and baby - however this is just the beginning of the journey for this new family! The postnatal period deserves to be given the same, if not more, consideration as planning for birth. 

What measures are currently in place to support the mother once she has given birth?

Once a mother in Ireland has had her baby, she receives a visit from the Public Health Nurse within 72 hours which involves a neonatal examination and a maternal health assessment. This is followed by one postnatal check-up by the GP at 6 weeks post birth. If there is anything that requires further examination or treatment within this 6 week period the mother will be referred for further support, however outside of this period the onus is on the mother to follow up on any issues she may be experiencing. While the postpartum period is defined as the first 42 days after birth (or 6 weeks), it can also be referred to as the 4th trimester, if you consider the first 12 weeks postpartum. The postnatal period can actually last much longer than this, up to 12 months after the birth of the baby. The care that is provided by a postnatal doula can be crucial in filling the gap that currently exists for women in their postpartum care and may be essential in identifying underlying physical or mental health issues that would otherwise be missed in a perinatal health system that is overworked and under-resourced.

The mothers place in society

In today's society the idea of individuation and striving for independence has won out over community and building relationships outside of our immediate nuclear families. We are not supposed to parent in isolation, yet in many parts of the Western world, including Ireland, this is how it is evolving to be - parenting in our own little pockets of isolation. This is a major change from only a few decades ago, where Irish demography was often multigenerational in form, large in size and supported financially by a single male breadwinner. 

Where does the mother fit into this society? While it is largely acknowledged that fathers are taking a much more active role in their children’s care than ever before, the main, day-to-day care of the children still remains with the mother. If the mother is not well supported, particularly in the 4th trimester, there is a much greater chance that her mental health will suffer in the long term, and the current 6 week window of care is not sufficient to support mothers and their mental health. Postnatal doulas are very well placed within the community to observe and provide a link between the mother and appropriate healthcare service providers in a timely manner if needed. The postnatal doula can also provide a link to community groups and help the new parents to feel integrated within this community enabling them to feel connected and confident in their new role as parents. 

Embracing the 4th trimester as a rite of passage

In Western countries the notion of a “resting period” or a dedicated postpartum period of recovery, which uses traditional remedies and practices to help the mother to recover, is seen as a luxury and possibly a bit self-indulgent. In this social media age there is monumental pressure to “bounce back”, to be out and about with the baby instead of resting and recovering from a huge life event. 

Matrescence is defined as the process of becoming a mother, and includes the physical, hormonal, emotional, psychological and relational changes that occur during this process. It was first described in the 1970’s by anthropologist Dana Raphael but as yet is very under-researched although more light is now being shone on this process thanks to emerging research in the area. Matrescence essentially highlights the importance of recognising the rite of passage of motherhood, and the right of every woman to honour their birth story and pass through this liminal space of the 4th trimester with acceptance and a sense of being held and supported by a network around you. One of the greatest benefits of a postpartum doula is this gift of being held as the mother. A doula will listen to, honour and support you through processing your birth experience; validate your feelings and eliminate any sense of isolation, shame or guilt around your personal experience of birth and motherhood or indeed celebrate a joyful birth experience. She will allow you to fully appreciate your birth so that you can then move on without holding on to parts of it that may impact your mental health later in your motherhood journey. 

In areas of the world where traditional postpartum recovery practices are the norm the reported cases of postpartum depression are significantly low - Malaysia has a well established tradition of postnatal recovery, where the rate of postpartum depression is only 3.9%. The recent MAMMI study carried out in Ireland looked at maternal mental health in the first year postpartum and found that within this large Irish cohort that one in ten women reported moderate/severe anxiety symptoms (9.5%), more than one in ten reported moderate/severe depression symptoms (14.2%) and one in five reported moderate/severe stress (19.2%). This is in line with a rate of postnatal depression of between 10-15% internationally. This would suggest that the current model of 6 week postpartum care is insufficient to detect and provide adequate support for women’s mental health needs, with long-term implications for women and children.

Mothering the mother - the role of the postnatal doula

Much of the current research on the benefits a doula can provide has been conducted in the US and is primarily focused on the benefits of birth doulas on the type of labour a woman has. However there is also some research emerging on the benefits of postnatal doulas, particularly among those mothers with a low socioeconomic status, and the effects that a doula can have during the postpartum period.

It has been found that the presence of a postnatal doula with a first-time mother greatly enhanced the mothers self-confidence and that postnatal doula care can benefit mothers regardless of their socioeconomic status, particularly if they are supported well during the first month postpartum and have built a good relationship between the mother and her doula from late in pregnancy. Some of the main areas or domains of care that have been observed to benefit from postnatal doula care include:

Emotional support

Physical comfort

Self-care

Infant care

Information

Advocacy

Referral

Partner/Father support

Support mother/father with infant

Support mother/father with sibling care

Household organisation

I believe that one of the most important roles I have as a postnatal doula is within the domain of emotional support. Talking about matrescence and all of the parts of motherhood- including the parts that may carry shame for us - is the only way to help mothers feel less stigmatised and more normal in all aspects of becoming a mother. Of course experiencing matrescence without a support network, and without understanding the complexity of what is happening in your brain as a new mother only adds to feelings of not being enough, not being a “good” mother and a sense of failure that can lead to a diagnosis of postnatal depression. But the question is how much of maternal mental illness is biological and how much is an understandable response to the design of modern parenthood? One way to claim back the rite-of-passage of motherhood is to surrender to it, embrace every part of it and honour the transition that you have gone through as a mother and as parents. Planning for this postpartum period and putting the framework in place that allows you to be nurtured as the mother is fundamental to the process of matrescence. It is time to honour this monumental transition and enter into motherhood empowered, nurtured and with the confidence that the changes that are happening are normal and expected. Mothers should also be supported in such a way that if they do experience mental health issues that require medical support, that they are referred as quickly and efficiently as possible to the right health care professional - postnatal doulas are well placed in supporting families during the 4th trimester and beyond, to link mothers in with appropriate support when needed. 

[salonnierealexis]

The myriad stresses of caregiving, including the way in which it often reinforces traditional gender roles, aren't the only challenges for couples who have a child. The birth of a baby also often brings on an identity shift for each parent individually as well as together, which can pose significant challenges.

"You have no idea how your identity will shift until you have that kid," says Sherrell. "So, all of a sudden, I care about things that I didn’t before. And my partner's, like, 'Who have you become? Why do you care all the sudden that I’m playing video games?' You become a new person – and your partner has to accept a new partner."

The phenomenon is well-studied among mothers, in particular, in whom it is called matrescence. And these changes, which can range from hormonal shifts that affect behaviour to body image, often start in pregnancy. For the non-birthing parent, seeing their partner change even before the baby comes can be confusing and disorienting. Having a baby can rock a marriage – and life post-children can be a challenge https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230628-why-couples-fight-after-having-a-baby?utm_source=bbc-news&utm_medium=right-hand-slot

[gogonis]

3 Herbs to Keep Your Holidays Merry

The holidays can be overwhelming for people on multiple levels. Below are a few tried and true herbs to support your overall wellness this month. This is not medical advice. Never start an herbal regimen without checking in with your physician and trusted herbalists to ensure that these herbs are safe for you. 1. Rhodeola Rosia 𓇢𓆸 2. Lemon Balm 𓇢𓆸 3. Magnesium 𓇢𓆸 See infographics for more!…

[postnatalpen]

[parentingroundabout]

An article suggesting more widespread use of the term "matrescence" for the transition to motherhood got us (well, one of us, especially) ranting about fancy words for common experiences. But we can all agree that when you become a parent, finding your people is essential.

[apenitentialprayer]

Women Are Physiologically Primed for Parenthood (And So Are Men)

In 2017 The New York Times published a short piece called "The Birth of a Mother." It explored something anthropologists have termed matrescence, or the process of becoming a female parent. The writer noted: "[T]his transition is also significant for fathers . . . , but women who go through the hormonal changes of pregnancy may have a specific neurobiological experience." The nod to fathers is cursory. The "but" that follows makes the sentence's point: that women are the sex hormonally primed for parenthood. This notion is so generally accepted that it escaped the fact-checker's scrutiny. Like most of the conventional wisdom about the hard-core nature of maternal versus paternal parenting, it's also misleading. Men undergo their own neurobiological experience as their babies-to-be gestate. Throughout the prenatal period, men in close contact with pregnant partners are physiologically primed to care for infants. Expectant fathers experience a rise in the levels of the pregnancy-related hormones prolactin, cortisol, and estrogen in proportion to that of their baby's mother. Additionally, testosterone, associated with competition for mates, declines. Second-time fathers produce even more prolactin and less testosterone in the company of a pregnant partner than do first-timers. [...] Throughout their children's lives, involved fathers continue to experience hormonal changes. In North America, men in long-term relationships like marriage and fatherhood almost uniformly have lower testosterone levels than their single and childless counterparts. [...] As anthropologist Sarah Hrdy observes in Mothers and Others: "Men are physiologically altered just from spending time in intimate association with pregnant mothers and new babies. To me, this implies that care by males has been an integral part of human adaptation for a long time. Male nurturing potentials are there, encoded in the DNA of our species. [...] [In the late '70s], psychologist Ross Parke and colleagues studied fathers of newborns in maternity wards. For most of the behaviors his team measured, fathers and mothers hardly differed. Men spoke to babies in high-pitched voices and responded with sensitivity to infant cues during feeding. They also exhibited patterns similar to their wives when holding their children. The major difference Parke observed was that fathers, unlike mothers, took a step back from their child's care in the presence of their spouse. [...] In a study that measured response times and hormone levels in parents listening to infant cries, mothers and fathers were equally reactive to wails of distress (recordings of baby boys being circumcised). When the cries were fussy rather than pained, mothers' physiological responses and then also their reaction times were a little quicker than fathers', though fathers' responses were quicker than those of childless adults.

- Darcy Lockman (All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership, pages 82-83, 83, 84, 85, 86)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Morgan Jerkins at Mother Jones:

Last year, despite minding other people’s business online, I didn’t know what a “trad wife” was. Now it seems like every time I log in to Instagram or TikTok, there is another video of a beautiful woman cleaning her home or making an extraordinarily long and needlessly difficult meal. These trad wives, short for traditional wives, are women who post online content showing themselves adhering to patriarchal gender roles while keeping house and raising children—and making it look easy.

[...] I wanted nothing to do with her or any self-identifying trad wife in my own small piece of digital real estate, but their immense popularity (and algorithmic dexterity) had allowed them to trespass, and I find myself unable to turn away. Chances are, neither can you. But while it might be easy to write off the trad wives as a silly meme or a guilty pleasure, they should not be taken lightly. Given the misogynistic messaging and white-centric ideals some of these influencers peddle, they are indicative of larger forces at play—henchwomen in an ongoing effort to functionally erase modern women from the public sphere.

To fully understand the rise of the trad wife phenomenon, it helps to look at its origins. In some ways, trad wives resemble the mommy bloggers of the mid-aughts to early 2010s. Back then, momfluencers like Dooce’s Heather Armstrong and Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother commanded massive audiences through confessional posts about breast pumps and postpartum depression. As writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton pointed out in a 2020 New York Times piece, mommy branding was different back then: These bloggers were messy; they did not hold back in revealing all of the stickiness and ugliness in their matrescence. But then the vibe shifted. In 2016 and 2017, when Seyward Darby was doing research for her 2020 book, Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism, she noticed an ominous subculture gaining prominence, one in which women were performing this highly curated image of wife- and motherhood. “It was aggressively anti-feminist, anti-diversity; some of it was proudly pro-white,” Darby says. Trump’s rise helped give these women a larger megaphone.

Of course, many influencers bragging about being stay-at-home moms are not white supremacists, but, as Darby points out, “it is a slippery slope—and sometimes there’s no slope at all—between ‘I’m just a nice woman who wants to be a wife and mom’ and having a very white nationalist agenda. Whether they realize it or not, those are the waters they are swimming in.” Watching trad wife content can pull viewers into territory they didn’t expect. “What’s scary is that there is a subtext in all these videos,” Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz tells me. For example, a trad wife might advocate for “natural living” or homeschooling, and then veer into anti–birth control rhetoric or religious indoctrination. “When you engage with these videos, because they are so adjacent to fascist, far-right content, you are quickly led down a rabbit hole of ­extremism.”

Not all trad wives have direct links to the far right. But what unites them is a romanticized vision of domesticity, or, as Darby calls it, “June Cleaver 1950s cosplaying.” As self-proclaimed trad wife Estee Williams, who rejects any associations with white supremacy, declared in a 2022 TikTok video, “We believe our purpose is to be homemakers.” It’s not simply about looking pretty. Their aestheticizing of housework is a throwback to the mid-20th century, when women weren’t even allowed to get a credit card or a loan. Publications such as Ladies’ Home Journal were responsible for promoting a certain kind of wife as a way to reestablish social order after World War II, when many women had entered the labor force. As Ann Oakley puts it in her 1974 book, Housewife, “a good wife, a good mother, and an efficient ­homemaker­…Women’s expected role in society is to strive after perfection in all three roles.” Most trad wife content is marked with this desire for perfection.

[...]

So why are many millennial and Gen Z women an eager part of the trad wife audience? Here’s my theory: We’ve given up. The popularity of the trad wife content is demonstrative of a psychological resignation. In the past several years, we’ve experienced a pandemic, the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the end of the Girlboss­­ Era. The rise of the trad wives marks what Samhita Mukhopadhyay, author of the 2024 book The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning, believes is “a response to the failures of a neoliberal workplace feminism” stretching from the 1960s to the present day—one that focuses on individuality. “What women fought for was an entry into the workplace,”­ Mukhopadhyay explains, but “being a mother in the workplace was almost untenable.” Even after decades of supposed progress, she points out, “we’re still not paid equally, and most women still don’t have resources commensurate with how hard they work and how they contribute to their families.” According to a 2023 report from the liberal research and advocacy organization the Center for American Progress, women were 5 to 8 times more likely than men to work part time or not at all because of caregiving responsibilities. Maya Kosoff, a content strategist and writer who admits to me that she has become obsessed with trad wives herself, says their popularity is “a reaction to perceived systemic failures” that seem like they “can be easily solved by turning to the simpler life of homesteading.”

And look, escapism isn’t anything new. When life gets harder, it’s only natural that one would daydream about a different time. But fantasies are dangerous when the stakes are so high for American women right now. We have only started to feel the effects of the Dobbs decision. “We have not seen how bad it’s going to get as women are pushed out of public life over the coming years,” journalist and MeToo activist Moira Donegan tells me. “Our main educational institutions, our workplaces, our elected officials are going to start to look more male.” Sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom similarly argues that attacks on reproductive rights represent an erosion of women’s place in a democracy. “Women only get to be full citizens if they have control over when and how they have babies,” she says. “When that changes, your citizenship becomes vulnerable, so you attach yourself to a citizen: men. I think this reclaiming of being the traditional wife is here so long as there’s a threat.”

Mother Jones does a solid report on the explosion of tradwife culture in the wake of the Dobbs decision, in which abortion bans serve as a tool to drive women out of the workforce.

Tradwife influencers romanticize the 1950s aesthetic, and most of them tend to have far-right political views (especially on gender roles).

Read the full story at Mother Jones.

[caradoulasupport]

Matrescence - becoming a mother, no ‘bouncing back’ required

Becoming a mother for the first time is a great transition in your life, a rite-of-passage. And not only the first time, but for each time that you become a mother you transition again into a new version of yourself. Each transition is just as significant as the one before. In Western cultures, the focus is largely on the baby that has been born, however the mother is also born each time she gives birth, and this "becoming a mother" piece has largely been left out of our culture entirely. In the same way that we nurture and care for a new baby, we would really do well to remember that the new mother also needs to be nurtured and cared for during this transition.

This critical transition period is Matrescence, and was first coined by an American anthropologist in 1973, Dana Raphael. And although this was first written about in the 1970’s the concept of matrescence has gone completely unacknowledged and unexplored in the medical community, until very recently. There is still so little known about the psychological and physiological effects of becoming a mother - how it affects the brain, the endocrine system, cognition, immunity, the psyche, the microbiome, the sense of self. At a time when a woman is going through a significant rite of passage and is going through massive changes in her physical state, her status within her wider group, her emotional life, her focus, her own identity and in her relationships with everyone around her, she is expected to transition through this stage with ease.

As the author of the recently published book "Matrescence", Lucy Jones, has alluded to - each time that I write the word "matrescence" a red squiggly line immediately appears below it as if to say - this is not real, it doesn't mean anything, it's made up! But it is very real, and the only way to make it even more real is to bring more and more awareness to it, to speak about it to everyone you know. Maybe people will use the argument that they don't want to scare new mothers with horror stories, or that everyone has to go through it for themselves. But there is a huge difference between scaremongering a new mother and presenting her with a term and an explanation for how she is very likely feeling anyway. And if women were to even grow up hearing about this normal transition that happens on entering motherhood, have evidence based information on how it affects your thoughts and emotions, your hormones, your relationships, your sense of self - how much better would they go on to cope with the reality of motherhood if it happens for them? Instead of getting completely side-swiped by a wave of unknowing, of being lost and totally adrift in what we have come to understand as modern motherhood.

The sense of social isolation that can stem from women being ashamed of what they are experiencing and not realising it is actually normal can even trigger feelings of postnatal depression. There are such complicated feelings that can co-exist - having a sense of worry, disappointment, guilt, competition, frustration, anger or even fear alongside the joy of new motherhood. And it is now thought, according to reproductive psychiatrist Alexandra Sacks, who has reintroduced the concept of matrescence in a New York Times article in 2017, that just even knowing that and being aware of what matrescence is can prevent women from getting ill. If you can watch the TED talk given by Alexandra Sacks in 2018 describing matrescence, it will astonish you.

Talking about matrescence and all the parts of motherhood- including the parts that may carry shame for us - is the only way to help mothers feel less stigmatised and more normal in all aspects of becoming a mother. Of course experiencing matrescence without a support network, and without understanding the complexity of what is happening in your brain as a new mother only adds to feelings of not being enough, not being a “good” mother and a sense of failure that can lead to a diagnosis of postnatal depression.

But the question is how much of maternal mental illness is biological and how much is an understandable response to the design of modern parenthood?

One way to claim back the rite-of-passage of motherhood is to surrender to it, embrace every part of it and honour the transition that you have gone through as a mother and as parents. Planning for this postpartum period and putting the framework in place that allows you to be nurtured as the mother is fundamental to the process of matrescence. It is time to honour this monumental transition and enter into motherhood empowered, nurtured and with the confidence that the changes that are happening are normal and expected.

[ukrfeminism]

3 minute read

Right now it feels like every public service employee is having to resort to strike action to gain acceptable standards of employment. Who’s next? If we’re talking about labour that is woefully undervalued and unsupported, it should be mums.

Statutory maternity pay, at £156.66 per week, is less than half of minimum wage (£384 for a standard 40-hour week). New mothers (and their child) have to survive on 41 per cent of the minimum we consider acceptable to live on. 30 hours per week of subsidised childcare is available for three-year-olds, but maternity pay ends at 39-weeks-old. During that two-year gap, nursery fees cost 65 per cent of the average parent’s wages, and many mothers are falling into debt, or dropping out of the workforce, as a result.

Moreover, 54,000 women lose their jobs in the UK every year because of maternity discrimination. Maternity is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, but only for the first 26 weeks. Any claim for maternity discrimination must be brought within three months – almost impossible in the midst of the physical and mental upheavals of matrescence. During which time, 31 per cent of mothers didn’t have confidence in their postnatal care. And, according to the Office of National Statistics, in heterosexual couples women still perform 77 per cent more childcare and 62 per cent of the domestic work.

Surely that’s reason to strike!

There is precedent. In Iceland in 1975, women refused to go to work, cook, clean or perform childcare, during what was termed “the long Friday”. Many schools and nurseries had to close, forcing fathers to bring their children to work. Banks, factories and shops simply couldn’t function. Even the next day’s newspapers were shorter than usual. 

Ninety per cent of women in Iceland took part and the next year Iceland’s parliament passed a law guaranteeing equal rights to women and men. Five years later, Vigdis Finnbogadottir became Iceland’s president – the world’s first democratically elected female head of state. She insists this couldn’t have happened without the strike, which paralysed the country and demonstrated women’s importance to society. She served for 16 years, and, having introduced initiatives such as all-women shortlists and paid paternity leave ahead of the curve, Iceland became known as the world’s most feminist country.

Collective action amongst mothers is happening here. Women’s Strike asked women to refuse all work on International Women’s Day 2022. Then, just six weeks ago, charity Pregnant Then Screwed led 15,000 parents onto the streets across the UK in March of the Mummies. Founder Joeli Brearley told me, “There is such power in protesting. We were under no illusion that the Government would immediately fix the issues, but it is a signal that unless they act soon they will lose votes at the ballot box. Make no mistake – Westminster heard us that day.”

So, what do we want? I propose: maternity pay brought in line with minimum wage; childcare free for parents (and properly paid for by the Government) from birth until starting school; parenthood made a protected characteristic for life; and parents given 12 months to bring discrimination claims. When you consider that more mothers in work could be worth £28.2 billion to the UK economy, this is just sensible. The birth rate has now dropped below the level needed for a stable population, fuelling fears of economic decline. We need investment in motherhood.

As Iceland showed, when women stop, everything stops. In the UK, women are the vast majority of childcare workers, administrative staff, care workers, cleaners, hospitality staff, HR professionals, teachers and nurses. If they refused to work for just 24 hours, the impact for society and the economy would be crippling. Then there’s women’s domestic work, which is estimated to be worth 56 per cent of GDP. Strike once – that includes paid employment as well as cleaning, childcare, cooking, organising and so on – and it’s unlikely we would need to again.

What made Iceland’s strike so successful was so many women took part. But mobilising primary care givers is a nightmare, given the burden of domestic responsibility. We’re missing the cornerstone of effective industrial action – a union. Unions provide support, mobilise large disparate groups, and lobby for members’ rights. We need a union for parents. There are amazing campaigning charities, but unions are protected by legislation, forcing employers (or governments) to negotiate, and keeping workers’ jobs safe if they strike. Unions have teeth.

When do we want it? According to research from YouGov more than half of women say they do the majority of Christmas tasks, 51 per cent of women feel stressed at Christmas and according to Action for Children one in six parents said they would cancel the whole thing if they could. Ancient Anglo-Saxons celebrated Modranicht (“mother’s night”) on 24 December. What if mothers honoured themselves this Christmas Eve by doing absolutely nothing?

No last minute shopping. No festive food preparation. No present wrapping. No stuffing of stockings. No ringing round to coordinate family members or clarifying dietary requirements. Just putting our feet up with a mulled wine and watching It’s a Wonderful Life while someone else takes responsibility for the over-excited, sugar-hyped children. We baulk at the idea, because Christmas would fall apart. But isn’t that exactly the reason to do it? To show how much motherhood matters.

Allegra Chapman is a diversity and inclusion consultant, and co-founder of Watch This Sp_ce.

[dhr-ao3]

Matrescence

Matrescence https://ift.tt/B3cgqYR by Hanniesalwaysreading Matrescence: The process of becoming a mother. A great, terrible, and strange transformation both universal and unique. It doesn't always come naturally, despite being an entirely natural occurrence, and unfortunately for Hermione, no amount of preparation will make it any easier. - No one even mentioned it. In nine whole months, not one person said, “You’re about to meet someone entirely new and it’s not your baby, it’s going to be you.” – Fourth Trimester Collective Words: 5124, Chapters: 1/12, Language: English Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: F/M Characters: Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Scorpius Malfoy, Harry Potter, Ginny Weasley, Molly Weasley, Luna Lovegood, Padma Patil Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley Additional Tags: Domestic Fluff, Eventual Smut, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Pregnancy, postpartum, Postpartum Depression, postpartum anxiety, brief mention of previous miscarriages, Slice of Life, Hermione Granger Needs a Hug, POV Hermione Granger, Happy Ending, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, DILF Draco Malfoy via AO3 works tagged 'Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy' https://ift.tt/f3IicBS July 18, 2024 at 12:47AM

[alexsfictionaddiction]

The Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 2024 Longlist is here!

I'm sure that long time readers of my blog or followers of my Instagram will know that I have been following the Women's Prize for Fiction very closely for the last few years. I was really excited to discover that they were launching a sister prize celebrating non-fiction written by women (because it definitely tends to get lost in the very male-dominant sphere that is non-fiction). I am not a big non-fiction reader but as I get older, I have found myself becoming more interested in it. I think I'll always be a much bigger fiction reader but there are some genres within non-fiction that I am fascinated by, so it made sense for me to take a look at what the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction longlist had to offer.

The Women's Prize for Non-Fiction is open to non-fiction books written by women in English and published between 1st April 2023 and 31st March 2024. I believe it follows the same rules as the Fiction prize, in that books have to follow a narrative and that translated books are not eligible.

So, here are the 16 books on the first ever Women's Prize for Non-Fiction longlist!

Intervals by Marianne Brooker. Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions on 28th February 2024.

Thunderclap by Laura Cumming. Published by Chatto & Windus on 6th July 2023.

Shadows at Noon by Joya Chatterji. Published by Bodley Head on 13th July 2023.

Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life by Anna Funder. Published by Viking on 17th August 2023.

Matrescence by Lucy Jones. Published by Allen Lane on 22nd June 2023.

How To Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair. Published by 4th Estate on 3rd October 2023.

Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista. Published by Grove Press on 2nd November 2023.

Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia. Published by Picador on 28th March 2024.

Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon. Published by Hutchinson Heinemann on 12th October 2023.

The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia. Published by Allen Lane on 19th October 2023.

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, A Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles. Published by Profile Books on 13th July 2023.

The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie. Published by Chatto & Windus on 7th September 2023.

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein. Published by Allen Lane on 12th September 2023.

Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom by Grace Blakeley. Published by Bloomsbury on 14th March 2024.

A Flat Place by Noreen Masud. Published by Hamish Hamilton on 27th April 2023.

Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power by Leah Redmond Chang. Published by Bloomsbury on 11th May 2023.

So, there's the longlist. There is a good mixture in terms of theme and I'm sure a lot of people will be excited about that. I'm afraid that for me, I'm really not very interested in many of them. I have copies of Eve and Some People Need Killing, so I'll be reading them. I am also interested in Doppelganger and Wifedom but they're both very expensive in all formats at the moment, so I'll see if I can get library copies. However, almost all of the others just aren't speaking to me!

The shortlist will be announced on 27th March and the winner will be announced on 13th June, which is the same date as the winner of the Fiction Prize. So, I imagine the award ceremony will be a very big celebration of women's writing, which is always an exciting event.

What do you think of the longlist? Will you be reading any? Have you read any? Should I pick up any that I don't think I'm interested in? Let me know!

[maaarine]

The Nurture Revolution (Greer Kirshenbaum, 2023)

"Patrescence starts as soon as a father has contact with their baby and continues in the first few months of infancy.

The introduction of the baby causes a release of oxytocin in the father’s brain and this is essential to create changes in the brain to augment special abilities for parenting.

The vast changes in fathers’ brains happen through active involvement in childcare in what we call a “dose-dependent relationship.”

The more time the father spends with the baby, the more oxytocin they will have and the more their brain will change.

More brain changes in these early days help fathers’ and partners’ parenting skills long-term.

In the early days, when many fathers and non-birthing parents may find it challenging to bond with a baby, know that being with your baby by holding, feeding, bathing, and changing their diaper is the bonding.

It is a quiet beginning on the outside, and a dramatic beginning in the brain, toward building a profound relationship of play, interaction, and connectedness.

In the first three months of infancy, oxytocin increases in fathers, testosterone lowers, and brain structures change.

The more time a father spends with their baby, the more oxytocin is present, the more testosterone is lowered, and the more the male parenting brain develops.

Similar to matrescence, the brain areas that change in men are also related to emotional bonding and nurturing babies.

One study looked at brain changes in primary caregiving homosexual fathers in families with no maternal involvement.

These fathers showed changes to their brains that were more similar to primary caregiving mothers than to secondary caregiving fathers.

This research supports the concept that brain changes are different in primary and secondary caregivers regardless of sex or gender, with more pronounced brain changes and abilities for primary caregivers.

It also suggests that contact and time with their baby in the early days will change the brains and parenting abilities of queer parents, adoptive parents, and parents through surrogacy —more evidence to support substantial parental leave for all people who become parents."

[lissetsphotography-blog]

Today my second baby turned one.

It has been a purposeful year. A year of love and growth and so many blessings that I'm endlessly grateful for. I love my babies infinitely, endlessly. They're my greatest joy and strength. That being said, matrescence is real and hormones suck.

From pregnancy depression to postpartum blues. It constantly felt like I was pulling up for air. Ripping at the current for a taste of it.

I wondered endlessly when it would be okay to be not okay and there never was. Not for me.

I was raised resilient.

I was raised on silent strength, on swallowed pride, on clenched fists and bleeding palms.

I was raised on grinding my teeth and pits in my stomach, fear stitched in my chest and smiles pulling on my face.

I was raised to nod, "Yes I'm okay." Please help me.

I was raised with my face buried in a pillow to cover my sobs and screams.

I was raised vigilant, maybe scared.

So I couldn't understand how or why my heart hurt so heavy for the past year and a half. Why my tongue was made of lead, why my brain felt lost in some fog or maze, how I desperately yearned to reach out and tap on someone's shoulder and scream- Im drowning!- I never did.

I didn't know how. I did what I had always been raised to do, I dug deep, I reconfigured, I persevered and smiled, and found joy in the trenches of this postpartum fog. I struggled. Deeply. Personally. Silently. Constantly reaching into the fog to find her- to find me.

I'm grateful to have had therapy, for books and writing, and for everything in between then and motherhood that has braced me for impacts. I'm grateful for support systems, for having a partner that's an equal in all things parental.

Not many of us ask for help, not many people have the resources to do so. I am fortunate to have gone to therapy before having children and in many other ways.

Sometimes people don't ask for help, not because they don't need it but because they don't know how. Check on your people that seem okay🩷

[carharttlesbian]

@matrescence and @exdivine tagged me thank you both!!

1. Nickname: mk/carhartt for tumblr purposes

2. Sign: gemini

3. Height: 5’ - 4″

4. Last google search: corkcicle

5. Song stuck in my head: featherweight fleet foxes

6. Number of followers: 1700s

7. Amount of sleep: 8 hours or so

8. Lucky number: 7

9. Dream job: mechanical keyboard designer

10. What are you wearing: flannel pj pants and pokemon tshirt

11. Favorite media: chainsaw man rn

12. Favorite song: thunder clatter by wild cub. it changes

13. Favorite instrument: viola

14. Aesthetic: dyke version of guy whose apartment has 2 chairs and a mattress on the floor

15. Favorite author: arkady martine

16. Favorite animal noise: rabbit purrs!

17. Random: hi :)

@rwde do this and also anyone else who want to. @feedbackest @jawz @popcorngoddess no pressure!

[teddykaczynski]

yiv matrescence and the terrible horrible no good very bad day

[fffarore]

tagged by @matrescence thanks boo 😚

nickname: ryan

sign: virgo

height: 5’9

last google search: company name of the company i taught for a private party

song stuck in head: knight of sword by unlucky morpheus

number of followers: 1033

amount of sleep: like in general..? need at least 4-5hrs to be able to function nowadays

lucky number: 7 is too cliche isn’t it lol. fine, 420

what are you wearing: black leggings and black paint-stained work shirt

fav media: berserk

fav song: this is such a difficult question cuz fav songs really do come and go. i guess spring day by bts considering i’ve avoided listening to it for years cuz it makes me cry

fav instrument: hmmm. cello

aesthetic: ladies i just work here….i wear all black and i have visible tattoos and facial piercings. do with that what you wish

fav author: -_- ok so i’m dyslexic and for a majority of my life i thought i was too stupid to read so i never did. so uhh idk i only recently started reading books a year or two ago. no fav authors yet. that being said i love reading manga lol so my fav mangaka is naoki urasawa. i recommend - monster, billy bat, 20th century boys, and pluto

fav animal noise: kitty chirps ❤️

random: did you know that the black death entered europe via the mongolians catapulting their infected dead over an italian settlement’s walls, the corpses exploding on impact and infecting everyone and everything. it’s one of the first known recorded cases of biological warfare. no one knows where the black death truly originated tho, even to this day. the more you know ^w^

tagging: hmmm @butchviking @cuntaloupes @sykoyo @underliv @irlydidntthinkthisthru @gethcolossus no pressure ladies. and anyone who wants to do this say i tagged you 😚