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A Mother Is Born
by Gina Hassan, Ph.D.

The human infant is born less developed than any other infant in the mammalian kingdom. In fact, the human baby is entirely dependent on its mother for its very survival. When a fetus is in its mother’s womb there is a complex system of support wherein the mother’s body provides the environment, the nutrition, and the hormones that move the baby’s growth forward. Once the infant has arrived in the world, however, the concept of unity and separateness evolves.

When a mother is pregnant, we are sometimes uncertain whether to think about mother and baby as two separate people or one complex organism. But once the baby is born, how do we think about baby and mother during this early phase when fetus and mother go from sharing a body to inhabiting two clearly separate bodies?  Over the past several years the concept of the fourth trimester has emerged as a useful way of thinking about the continuum of dependency of the human baby on its mother and the complex nature of what unfolds during the early postpartum period.

Our culture does not tend to acknowledge this transition.

> Read full article


Don't Know Mind: A Path for Parenting
by Gina Hassan, Ph.D.

Don’t-Know-Mind, or Beginners Mind, is a Buddhist principle that helps remind us that clinging to certainty is a natural human tendency that can cause us suffering, and in         parenting can interfere with our children’s innate ability to learn from experience.

There aren’t many jobs we sign up for in life where the stakes are as high as they are in parenting, a job where we are suddenly required to be on call 24/7 without prior training, schooling, or mentoring. We enter this job pretty ignorant of what it entails no matter how many books we have read, or how much time we have spent around babies and young children. Living outside of parenting and observing it is unfathomably different than living inside of it.

In our culture we like to “know” what we are doing. We read books, we do research on the internet, we seek control over our lives in a myriad of ways. Good parenting, however, requires “don’t know mind.” a kind of letting go of preconceived ideas and a letting go of the notion that we have control over how things are.

While we might want to enter parenting with our answers in place, how can we know the answers before we have been “in” the experience. Parenting is a moment-to-moment dynamic relationship that does not only involve environmental and situational variables, but the ideas, thoughts, sensations and feelings of the child and parent.

> Read full article


Working with Disappointment: When Things Don't Go as Planned
by Gina Hassan, Ph.D.

Unlike other creatures, human beings are prone to a particular “habit of mind.”  We expect!  We look forward to, we consider, we think.  We have ideas of how things are supposed to be, and, therefore, how we want them to be.  But life does not always unfold as planned and disappointments can be hard to weather, particularly in a culture that teaches us that if we work hard we can make things happen according to our wishes.  While practice, discipline, and intention certainly influence what happens, the idea that we should be able to control how things unfold is a mistaken belief that can lead to great suffering.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting are not subject to our control.  When we get pregnant, how our baby arrives in the world, whether breastfeeding goes smoothly or not, and exactly who our child is – these are things that we can influence, but not dictate.  Yet we often come to these experiences with elaborate fantasies about how things are supposed to be – and, when our expectations diverge from our lived experience pain, suffering, and, in particular, disappointment can result.

So how can we work with the emotion of disappointment?

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Helping Your Partnership Flourish after Bringing Baby Home
by Gina Hassan, Ph.D.

One of the most common complaints following the arrival of a new baby is, “I had no idea how much having a baby would impact my relationship.” Even couples with a solid relationship can experience mounting conflict, along with a sense of drifting apart, following the arrival of a new baby. In fact, Drs. John and Julie Gottman, renowned for their research on couples relationships, report in their 2007 book And Baby Makes Three: The Six Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives, a 65% decline in marital/partner satisfaction after the birth of a new baby. Why should this be so, and what can partners do to strengthen their bond during this joyful and yet challenging time?

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Mindful Beginnings: The Benefits of Mindfulness in Early Parenting
by Gina Hassan, Ph.D.

When my first daughter was born, nearly 10 years ago, I remember a level of anxiety that I carried with me wherever I was, and whatever I was doing. Was I doing things right? Would my decisions as a parent serve her well? Would she grow up to be a well-adjusted person, at ease and self-confident? Being in the field of mental health, these things were of primary importance to me. I would often ask myself whether I was stimulating her enough, was I providing her with an optimal amount of external stimuli, or was I stimulating her too much, interfering with her ability to soothe herself? The answers from developmental and parenting experts were contradictory and confusing; from, never put your baby in a crib as this is the equivalent to being “put behind bars” to, if you do not teach your baby to soothe herself by the time she is several months of age, she will have difficulty developing a sense of independence and self-reliance.

I was, as many new mothers are, vulnerable to the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” that were expressed all around me, both from experts and from other new mothers. Our culture is one which places a lot of pressure on new mothers to parent their infants in a way that both provides a more advanced and fine-tuned form of stimulation than we were parented with, (from Baby Einstein to readings of Ulysses in utero,) while at the same time criticizing them for raising children who are “too needy” and “self- absorbed.” 

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Emotional Challenges of the Reproductive Years:
Part 1 - Infertility & Pregnancy Loss

Gina Hassan, PH.D., Donna Rothert, PH.D. & Lee F, MFT
of Perinatal Psychotherapy Services

Daria is a 42 year-old woman who, along with her partner, has been trying to begin a family for the past 18 months. She has had two pregnancy losses and multiple medical interventions in an attempt to increase her chances of conceiving and carrying a healthy baby to term. Daria has a high stress career and she is tired and depleted as a result of the many months of hope and disappointment. She feels angry and isolated because all of her friends have had children without difficulty. She also feels ashamed of and frustrated with her body for failing her. Deeply pained by the multiple losses she has suffered, Daria is becoming increasingly isolated and feels that her friends and family are insensitive to her pain. 

This vignette illustrates some of the complex issues that individuals experiencing infertility and pregnancy loss may face.  With increasing numbers of professional women delaying childbearing, a factor that significantly raises the risk of both infertility and miscarriage, many of us are seeing women in our practices who are struggling with reproductive crises.  The following is a brief overview of relevant issues and treatment options for those experiencing infertility and pregnancy loss.

> Read full article



Emotional Challenges of the Reproductive Years:
Part II - Pregnancy & Postpartum Spectrum Disorders

Gina Hassan, PH.D., Donna Rothert, PH.D. & Lee F, MFT
of Perinatal Psychotherapy Services

Denise became pregnant with her first child at age 37. While she had a difficult first trimester with severe morning sickness, increasing anxiety, and sleeplessness, she was thrilled to be expecting a child. Her son was born 4 weeks premature following an emergency c-section.  Six weeks postpartum, Denise was proud of how well things were going, despite a great deal of sleep deprivation and slow physical recovery. However, Denise began to have difficulty sleeping even when her baby was resting. She worried about not getting enough sleep and often felt preoccupied.  She started checking on her baby frequently when he was asleep “to make sure he was still breathing.”  She was horrified by images of him being attacked by dogs and felt frightened and overwhelmed at the thought of taking him out in his stroller. The other new moms she knew appeared at ease, or even elated with their babies, but Denise felt frightened by her morbid thoughts and feelings and too ashamed to share them with family and friends. She felt increasingly isolated and depressed and was worried that she had made a terrible mistake and was not fit to be a mother. 

This vignette illustrates some of the confusing and overwhelming experiences that can be a part of a woman’s pregnancy and postpartum world. Given cultural expectations that having a baby is the happiest time in a woman’s life, it is often hard for a woman to recognize perinatal mental health issues and to seek needed support and information. Although mothers and pregnant women who are experiencing distressing symptoms during or after pregnancy often feel alone in their experience, women are more at risk of experiencing emotional difficulties  following the birth of a baby than at any other time in their lives. Furthermore, these difficulties often begin during pregnancy. (Moses-Kolko, & Roth, 2004)

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