Momwell

Motherhood can be an all encompassing journey. It’s hard to know when we’re not doing enough, and when we’re doing too much. The stakes have never been higher—you are protecting and raising a human being. The weight of the responsibility is real. But should motherhood have to cost your identity? Do you truly need to devote every cell of your being to your children? Our guest Dr. Sophie Brock is a...

Regulating our own emotions can be difficult enough. Adding a wonderful little bundle of joy who also wakes up at 3 a.m. and may scream loud enough to alert the whole neighborhood can really complicate matters. And there seems to be anxiety around how our triggered moments might affect our children and what they think of us. Clinical psychologist Dr. Tanya Cotler specializes in infant mental healt...

Parenting during a pandemic has been so hard! And now a swiftly developed vaccine has been rolled out, and members of my community have expressed a lot of anxiety about how safe these new vaccines might be during pregnancy and nursing. Dr. Marta Perez is an OB-GYN and she’s agreed to explain to us the risks of the vaccine versus not being vaccinated for pregnant or nursing people.  Show Notes: htt...

Has your relationship with your mother changed since becoming a mother? Author, international speaker, and transformation coach Bethany Webster has been here with us before to talk about the mother wound, and it really resonated with my community. So many people had questions about Bethany’s work, so she’s back today to answer audience-submitted questions. And as a special surprise, we’ll end with...

We enter into motherhood with the promise of a village of support, and when we get here it can feel surprisingly lonely. The isolation felt in motherhood is a topic that has come up a lot in sessions with my clients and with the pandemic forcing even more isolation, a season of life that could already be lonely to navigate has become even tougher for some of us. So, I asked Dr. Miriam Kirmayer her...

Codependent habits and behaviours can prevent us from having meaningful relationships with our children and partners. We all want our children to grow up to be independent, but should that really be the goal? And is there ever a point in childhood when codependency is an acceptable norm? Psychotherapist Sian Crossley is here today to help us understand the complexities of codependency and codepend...

From the outside, everyone saw her as a successful woman and mother. Melissa met her partner when she was 19, had six children, and co-founded a well-known global toy company. But her happiness was far from the truth as she battled depression and kept it hidden for many years. Melissa was feeling smothered and resentment was building as she was sacrificing her own dreams to serve others. Join Meli...

Nothing tests us more than being a parent. One of those stages is dealing with potty training, bedwetting, and accidents. As parents, we become overwhelmed from information overload and are anxious as we navigate this time with our child. Today, we will look at all things potty training, bedwetting, and accidents from a medical perspective. Join Steve and I as we discuss the time to start potty tr...

Screens have become such an integrated part of our lives and are so accessible. We can feel torn between using screens as a tool and feeling like we shouldn't use them because we've been told they're bad for our kids. Then to top it off, we have the pressure and worries of the pandemic as we navigate working from home and distance learning. Instead of approaching screen time as all-or-nothing, it’...

It’s time for a replay episode on a topic that raises so many questions for parents. Have you and your partner struggled to find your groove postpartum? Do you find it hard to prioritize each other and sex while juggling all. of. the. roles and responsibilities of being parents? Join the club! So many women I speak with wonder why they have no sex drive or why they struggle with arousal. Sex is a...

Our children are looking for and needing a connection with us, and our main job as parents is to foster a secure attachment with our children. Does disciplining our child and "making them unhappy" interfere with our bond? Is there a difference between respectful boundaries and being permissive? How do we handle discipline and still build that relationship positively? This can be done with respectf...

As you welcome your new child into your family, your identity and relationship with your partner instantly change. While navigating your new roles, it takes time to adjust our expectations of parenthood with the reality of our new roles. This can give birth to resentment, especially in new parents. A lot of this resentment comes from our needs being unmet and then how these feelings are communicat...

As women, the connection with our mother is typically the foundation of our relationship with ourselves. To form our own sense of self, as a young child we internalize deeply, even into our brain chemistry, so much about who our mother is as a person. A lot of this is unconsciously inherited from one generation to the next including pain which is referred to as the Mother Wound. This wound can bec...

As women, our bodies are constantly experiencing hormonal changes whether it’s during our menstrual cycle, pregnancy, postpartum, menopause, and so on. Did you realize there is a correlation between our hormones and how our brain functions? These shifts affect how our neurons work, the actions of our neurotransmitters, and the levels of our hormones which can result in fluctuations in mood for som...

Do you experience these thoughts?....I should be a better Mom. I’m a fraud. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a Mom. What am I going to do when others find out I have no idea what I’m doing? Why can’t I be a perfect Mom like everyone else? Then this episode on Imposter Syndrome is for you! Imposter syndrome loves to creep in when you are trying something new, different, and challenging. It can be especia...

We know that becoming a parent will bring worry and anxiety. It comes with the territory. You’ve never been responsible for something more important than this tiny human you are now caring for. But where is the line between normal amounts of worry and paralyzing amounts of anxiety? Do you worry and wonder whether it takes up to much of your focus? Do you get very stuck in over researching what is...

Isolation, loneliness, self-blame, shame, and guilt. These are all things that, unfortunately, a lot of women report feeling in the aftermath of a miscarriage and loss. One in four pregnancies will experience a miscarriage. There is nothing that anyone did to cause this. However, our culture needs to recognize that grief and loss are real, so women will not feel intimidated to share their feelings...

As a parent, we are stretched and transformed in ways that we never expected. Think about all the ways we are pushed beyond our capacity in ways that we never could have imagined. It’s important for us, as parents, to gain new skills to help us during this demanding time. If we learn the right skills, we can make changes to our life and change patterns of behavior that will impact our children als...

When we hear the word hormone, we tend to think of estrogen and progesterone. Actually, there are many other hormones that each have a unique role to play. Stress, medication, supplements, the food we eat, and how our body reacts all have an effect on our hormones. In this episode, Amanda and I talk about the role hormones play in our body, how hormones are affected postpartum, and some basic ways...

Your whole life you look forward to becoming a mom. You’re excited to start a family! But then unexpectedly, you struggle to get pregnant. You start to wonder why this is happening as the unknown starts to set in. Thoughts of worry, anxiety, and feeling behind as others are having babies start to creep in. Infertility is a roller coaster and more common than you might think. In today’s episode, Dr...

While pregnant, you read all the books in anticipation for the day your baby is born. Then you head home with your baby without a guide and you’re left wondering how do I navigate this fourth trimester? On top of figuring out the health of your baby, worry sets in. You start to wonder how am I qualified to take care of this baby? Are they eating enough? How is their sleep schedule? In this episode...

As a parent, you may feel overwhelmed with all of the decisions you need to make about your child, their care, and ultimately how you are going to handle parenting decisions. In the end, there are many ways to be a great parent. If we look to science, it has shown us that secure attachment is one decision that will aid in brain development and build a connection with your child. In this episode, D...

We can all agree that children need boundaries, but it’s HOW we go about setting the boundary that makes ALL the difference. We can learn to set boundaries in a gentle and mindful way, while also preserving our connection and relationship with our children. In this episode, Family Psychologist Ashleigh Warner and I discuss conscious discipline, the importance of boundaries, tangible ways to mainta...

During pregnancy, your body is changing so much! It goes through so much in the span of 9 months and grows an entire human being in the process! It is truly mind-blowing to think about! After our baby is born, we are met with so much pressure to snap back and look like we never gave birth. Our body is more than an ornament. It is an instrument that as moms, we need to embrace. It’s important for u...

Did you always daydream about the day you would hopefully become a Mom? Or envision yourself holding a new baby with all the magical feels? Then the day arrives and you have to shift into the reality of motherhood, an all consuming role we've had no training for. How do we make the shift into motherhood without losing who we are? How do we retain our pre-Mom identity? Motherhood has a way of shapi...