We talk a lot about building and maintaining your community of care here at Brood. But what exactly do we mean when we say that? Your community of care is a group of people in your life, who may be biological or chosen family members, friends new and old, or your neighbours. A community of care enhances mental health and wellbeing by implementing community-level preventive measures. These might include fostering social connections, improving the built environment, and increasing access to economic opportunities. This could look like someone organising a meal train for you, picking up and dropping off groceries, collecting hand-me-down clothing for your little one, or simply by offering a hand. We know that asking for help can be difficult, but having a strong community of care can set you up to have a supported and joyful pregnancy, birth, postpartum and parenting experience.
Deciding who you want in your community can be a long process for some, while others already know who they’d like by their side. Take your time, notice who it feels good to receive from, who you enjoy having to show up to care for you, and who knows how to care for you in ways that feel good. Build up from there, and remember to check in often with yourself and your family unit, to see if you feel good about the folks in your community.
Asking for help is the basis of creating, harnessing and leaning into your community to help you navigate parenthood. For some, it may be a skill to develop or hone in throughout your childbearing and postpartum journeys. Your ability to form your ask(s) will fluctuate based on how resourced you feel in the moment. This can change day by day, but will become easier as time passes. To start, consider the following questions:
- How did you ask for help before pregnancy?
- How has it shifted throughout your postpartum journey?
- How can you anticipate it changing, and how do you need it to change?
Delegate your tasks based on your needs. For example:
Need support around eating nourishing foods?
- Get someone to order a grocery delivery to your house.
- Get someone to drop off some extra meals, your favourite snack, or some hydration.
Want some available joy?
- Ask for a treat, flowers, new song, or an uplifting message.
Do you feel like you can’t even decipher what you need?
- If you feel comfortable leaving your baby with someone, ask that person to take your baby for a walk. Then take care of your basic needs (have a bite to eat, go for a walk outside and then see if you can nap).
Once you have your basics sorted, is there anything else you’d like to ask other community members?
Receiving help can be very hard for folks, especially as we typically aren’t taught and conditioned to ask for and accept help without condition. This requires you to stay attuned to your needs, and know who in your community can support you. As important as meeting your needs are (particularly in the first year), know that your community can find incredible fulfilment in providing care to you.
As part of this, be mindful of which folks are best suited for which needs. Keep in mind their abilities, responsibilities, and any structures that may impede them from being able to care for you. These include time, finances, availability, careers, and any other caregiving they are doing.
As you begin to reach out for care, remind yourself that engaging with your parenthood community is built over time and will hopefully carry you for years to come. Parenting is not short lived, and neither is your care in it. It’s common of specific time periods to hold certain needs. For example:
- The groundhog day sensations of the first three months can lead new parents to feel extreme exhaustion, joy, and learning curves.
- The three to four month slump can be attributed to exhaustion from the first three months, and the developmental leaps of the fourth month.
- At six months, there is another developmental jump and most parents usually begin to sleep train.
- Eight to nine months usually hold a new version of a longer-term exhaustion and slump, as well as a more subdued groundhog day feeling. This is due to your baby levelling out developmentally, and your days acquiring a more predictable rhythm. This is also usually the last push before parental leave ends and first-year celebrations come around.
As you open yourself up to receiving support from folks, being aware of the different kinds of care can allow you to understand what you may need.
- Affirmations – witnessing, sharing and words of encouragement
- Relational – which can be shared in the form of loving care, nurturing, partnership upkeep
- Logistics — this can look like weekly groceries or support organising other care
- Material needs – in the form of meals, cleaning or home upkeep
- Baby care
- Informational – this can encompass research support, resource seeking and appointment booking
Maintaining Community
Engaging with community and its rings of support is a life-changing gift and can be one of the most nurturing acts of mutual aid. It requires a knowledge of self, a willingness to lean on your close circle, and a future built collaboratively – to continue to nurture and be accessed by all.
Your community of care, in your first year of parenting and beyond, will evolve from its pregnancy and early-postpartum mode. That may have been the time when you crafted and learned to lean on your community. Now you may begin to engage more deeply, and grow your community.
Continue honing your skills of knowing and asking for help getting your needs met, while also working to understand your people more deeply. How do your people ask for help? In tandem with this key question, take stock of how (and when) you can provide support, while respecting your own limitations. What does actively engaging in community look like to you?
As much as community is prioritized and used in gratitude during moments of hardship, don’t forget to share your moments of joy, ease and daily life. Your circle of care is here for it all. Part of this longer term, mutual type of community care requires you to communicate – in whatever way you feel comfortable – to help attune your people with your state, while sharing those daily moments and the rides of your life.
For some, community care in this way is a conscious and mindful network of relationships that they have chosen to help bolster them through all that life brings. Others may have gratefully stepped into this way of being, which helped them get through the vulnerable, clunky, and transformative experience of childbearing and rearing. Regardless, continuing to engage in community is a radical act, especially in a world where individualism and efficiency are highly regarded.
In parenthood, especially in the first year, you can feel like you require and necessitate receiving large and constant amounts of care. As you reenter your life, world and community in a more active sense, usually after the one-year mark. You may begin to feel resourced to mark this occasion, and lean into how it feels: the joy and completion of this part of your life. As you have crossed this threshold into parenthood, how would you like to honor this time, and ground into your community and its care?
A more formal celebration can have a similar effect as a baby shower, with the sharing of wisdom, loving care, and an element of grounding reset. It can have elements of witnessing for the postpartum parent(s), celebratory foods, praise of the new family, beautiful and sacred items, and a dedicated time and place to share your stories of your pregnancy, birth and postpartum.
For some, nurturing their physical appearance can help reset and honor themselves in a daily way. You can begin this by doing a wardrobe review: seeing what fits, what you don’t feel works for you anymore, and what you’d like to hang on to and keep exploring. Most folks cap this off with a thoughtfully-chosen haircut, and some new beauty processes.
Moving into the next stage of parenthood that is more cemented in the outer world and has you (hopefully) feeling more resourced will allow you to begin caring for your relationships in a more active manner. Friendships will have to morph to adapt to this new chapter in your life. How can you actively nurture them in this process? Dedicated times and mindful containers are helpful in allowing you to find spaciousness when that is not an easily accessible thing. Be mindful to have space for shared quality time, specific conversations, and also just life’s moments. For some, therapy with their friends has been a large help in allowing them to have a supported space to work through new dynamics, and address any new and long standing issues.
As you move into a new type of engagement with your people, remember that you do not owe them for any direct support during your postpartum period. That was given freely for many, and reciprocity was not one of them.
