In a world of information overload always available at our fingertips, it’s hard to choose what information is right for us.
The good news is that research suggests that you don’t have to be a perfect parent to raise healthy, happy children who go on to be happy, healthy adults. The theory of “good enough” parenting was put forward by Dr. Donald Winnicott (psychology and attachment legend) in the 1950’s and it still rings true today. As he famously said, “There is no such thing as an infant.” A baby cannot meaningfully exist outside of the relationship on which they depend for survival, usually the mother.
If we can be attuned to our children’s needs, and respond accurately more often than not, then we are doing good enough. At Primal Motherhood, everything we do is supported by evidence and protective of the mother(parent)/baby dyad and a secure attachment relationship. Everything we do is deeply rooted in decades of sound developmental psychology, and kept current with neuroscience and epigenetic research. Ironically, several lines of research converge to suggest that parenting from our most basic and cavewoman instincts is, in fact, what’s best for babies and mothers.
When babies are born, they enter the most fundamental stage of development, in which they learn whether or not the world is a warm place where their needs will be met (Erikson 1950). We understand that getting to know your unique baby and learning to respond to their cues is a process that takes time. We can help you identify the unique temperament, signals, and needs of your baby so that responding to them is intuitive and natural.
Your baby’s brain forms more than one million new neural connections per second for the first three years of life! Just because humans do not have explicit memories of early childhood and infancy does not mean that early experiences do not matter. In fact, research suggests the complete opposite. It is well known in the scientific community that human experiences in the first three years of life are determinant of many long-term measures of well-being (Hodel 2018).
Our mission at Primal Motherhood is to connect you to the intuitive power within to help you find balance, peace, and power as you make decisions for your child(ren). To release the pressure of the constant streams of conflicting parenting advice that’s constantly swirling around us, much of which is false. We have the empirical light to shine on all the dark shadowy falsities swirling around in parenting spaces that will free you to reclaim your power as the expert on your unique baby and mother in the way your heart truly desires. As much as your baby’s experience in early life matters, your experience as a new mother/parent matters just as much. How we move through early motherhood affects how we relate to our children for the rest of their lives.
We are all born with a certain genetic potential, and how our environment interacts with our genetics determines where in that range we fall. There are mountains of decades-long research to support the philosophy that children who are securely attached, who are nurtured and responded to as infants go on to reach their full potential. There’s a lot of newer neuroscience and epigenetic research to support the philosophy that nurturing infants buffers stress, shapes mental health outcomes, can shape epigenetics to reduce inherited mental health effects, and has a direct impact on sleep.
Unfortunately for us parents, babies’ needs do not simply disappear once the sun has gone down. Fortunately for us parents, the lie that you must teach your child to sleep by leaving them alone in a room to cry it out is just that- a lie. Sleep is a biological function, not a skill to be taught. It is developmental, which infants do at their own rate. They are born full individuals, a complete unique human with their own genetics, and unique gestational and early life experiences. If you do absolutely nothing to help your baby, they will eventually sleep through the night on their own. This is nature’s design.
A common narrative is that if you don’t teach your baby to sleep, you are creating a rod for your own back, your baby will depend on you forever, and you’ll never feel like yourself or get sleep again. None of this is true. There is no evidence to support the safety of cry it out techniques. There are mountains of evidence to support the importance of responding to babies’ needs. And there are many techniques to move babies toward independent sleep that don’t involve turning your backs on them. There is plenty of land between being a martyr for your child and leaving them alone. That’s where we come in.
At Primal Motherhood, we take a completely holistic evidence-based view of sleep. We understand that sleep is multi-factorial and influenced by many things including genetics/epigenetics, the senses, health/development/growth, relationships/attachment, responsiveness/psychology, parents/family, mental health/stress, activity/play, sleep biology, sleep hygiene, sleep techniques, what level of support is or isn’t available to you, and of course biologically normal patterns and variations. Our aim is to work with your baby’s biological needs and individuality to incorporate gradual changes that lead to sustainable change without any need to compromise connection.
Our sleep support is completely tailored to fit your unique circumstances. We will never prescribe an arbitrary, old school, one size fits all regimen. Get in touch below to see how we can help you become less exhausted and more empowered today!
