Awake at 3 a.m.: Yoga Therapy for Anxiety and Depression in Pregnancy and Early Motherhood

233 Pages·2018·3.52 MB·English

by  Suzannah Neufeld MFT

“Awake at 3 a.m. is a necessary treatise for mothers with helpful insight and
practical tools that offer the potential to soothe, ease, and nourish (something
often directed at the newborn and not the mother herself). I wish this book
existed during my pregnancy and my early experiences of motherhood.
Suzannah Neufeld has truly offered us all a gift with her words of wisdom and
expertise.”
—Melanie Klein, Co-founder of the Yoga and Body Image Coalition and co-
editor of Yoga and Body Image
“Suzannah Neufeld’s experience as a psychotherapist and yoga therapist
qualifies her to guide women through the sometimes rocky waters of pregnancy
and new motherhood. But it is her personal honesty, her compassion, and her
commitment to offer a light in dark waters that really makes this book stand out.
Awake at 3 a.m. is a must have guide for all mamas.”
—Jane Austin, Founder/Director Mama Tree Prenatal Yoga School and Director
of Prenatal and Postnatal Program at Yoga Tree
“If you are pregnant or a new mom who is struggling, Awake at 3 a.m. is a map
for the road to recovery. Neufeld’s training, experience, and compassion oozes
out of every page, leaving the reader feeling understood and supported. Her
ability to bust through myths and debunk stereotypes, in particular about the
practice of yoga, is incredibly powerful and effective. This book will change
your life.”
—Pec Indman, Chairperson of the Education and Training Committee,
Postpartum Support International
“Suzannah Neufeld acknowledges and digs into all the feelings around
parenting, no matter how messy they may be. In doing so, she shows us how
yoga therapy can support new mothers and how motherhood can be embraced as
a yogic practice.”
—Roseanne Harvey, It’s All Yoga, Baby

Parallax Press
P.O. Box 7355
Berkeley, California 94707
www.parallax.org
Parallax Press is the publishing division of Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism, Inc.
Copyright © 2018 by Suzannah Neufeld All rights reserved
Medical Disclaimer: The information in this book is not intended or implied to be a substitute for
professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
All content, including text, graphics, images, and information contained in this book is for general
information purposes only.
Cover and text design by Debbie Berne Cover illustration © Alexandra Bowman Interior illustrations ©
Sara Christian Author photo © Emily Gutman Ebook ISBN 9781941529935
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
v5.3.1
a
To my husband, David, for being my 3 a.m. partner
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
part one
the foundations
Difficult Experiences in Pregnancy and New Motherhood
Yoga Therapy: A Compassionate Mind-Body Response
part two
the practices
Section One
Make a Plan for Practice and for Support
Where do I begin?
You don’t need a reason and it’s not your fault
No, you won’t “just be fine”
I’m not good at meditation
All you have to do is breathe
Affirmations are annoying
I never feel good anymore
I don’t have time for yoga!
I’m having trouble bonding with my baby
Constant change is hard
I need help
Section Two
Welcome and Move with Your Thoughts and Feelings
I just want to feel better
Sadness
Anxiety, fear, and panic
I can’t stop worrying!
Preoccupations
What if I can’t stand this physical discomfort?
Rage
Sometimes I wonder if this was all a mistake
I should be grateful
Uncertainty
The darkest thoughts of depression
My baby won’t stop crying
My baby has been up for hours and I can’t sit down
Grief
Section Three
Cultivate Self-Compassion and Let Go of Comparisons
This is hard
How will I get through the rest of the day?
Compare and despair
Automatic negative thoughts
I’m not a good mom
I can’t take any more advice!
The all-natural mandate
Body image blues
I need to make sure my baby is happy and healthy
What do they think of me?
I should…
Section Four
Develop Responsiveness and Flexibility
But I don’t have any time to take care of myself!
Why didn’t anyone tell me?
My body hurts
I’m hunched over all day
I’m so tired
I can’t relax
No rest for the weary
A moment alone
Food struggles
Breastfeeding
Exercise
I can’t handle this
Trauma
When maternal instincts don’t kick in
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Introduction Awake at 3 a.m.
My images of myself in pregnancy and motherhood mostly take place in the
light of the moon. I’m awake at 3 a.m., throwing up. I’m awake feeling the baby
kick. I’m awake anxiously researching facts about baby health. I’m feeding my
baby. I’m waking up to feed the baby again.
Night was always the hardest for me. In the day, with the sun shining, my
demons vanished, love for my baby blossomed, work was meaningful, seeing
friends brightened my mood. In the night, the unbearable sense that no one was
coming to save me was overwhelming. I would think, All I want to do is sleep. I
am so desperate for sleep. I have never been this tired before. I can’t do this. I
want to be here for my baby. Why am I not a good enough mother to just do
this?
Becoming a parent is a blessing. Pregnancy is a miracle. My children are my
favorite humans, teachers, and beloveds, and, in retrospect, they make those
early nights of suffering infinitely worthwhile. I mean it with my whole heart
(and only the slightest bit of irony) when I tell my daughters, “I love you to the
moon and back.”
But this is also true: being pregnant and having a baby are hard. Really hard.
Even for the happiest mom on earth, it’s certainly one of the greatest physical
and endurance challenges that most of us have ever faced. It’s a marathon of
constant change and new, profound responsibility that you can’t delegate
elsewhere (though my greatest pregnant fantasy was making my husband carry
the baby in his belly for me, even for just one trip around the grocery store). You
are on the clock twenty-four hours a day. Add to that modern pressures to do it
“perfectly”—wearing your baby all day, making your own baby food, taking
adorable monthly photos and posting them online, and, of course, “bouncing
back” to your pre-pregnancy body in just a few months.
For most moms, this combination of change in hormones and identity and the
relentlessness of the physical demands of mothering bring difficult emotions and
thoughts to the forefront. Sadness, rage, guilt, and anxiety may come to visit.
You face the unknown, filling every day with fantasies and hopes—and worries,
fears, and perhaps even terrors. For some moms, these feelings stay mild or
manageable. Other moms, though, experience more intense emotional
challenges, and develop depression or anxiety disorders.
Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are the number one1
“complication” of birth, affecting up to one in five new mothers. They can be
serious, debilitating, and life-threatening. They affect not just moms who suffer,
but also whole families that care about and rely on those moms. More than twice
as many moms suffer from PMADs than gestational diabetes2. Yet while every
mom is tested for diabetes, and robust support and treatment options exist for
diabetes, moms who suffer emotionally are rarely acknowledged. Instead of
receiving help, they are handed platitudes like “sleep when the baby sleeps,” “let
go of stress because it’s bad for the baby,” “just enjoy every minute because it
goes by so fast,” or “this too shall pass.” This can be a lonely and confusing
place to be—suffering profound fear, overwhelm, or sadness at a time when your
friends and family expect you to be happy, radiant, and beatifically calm.
If this is you, you’ve picked up the right book. Above all, this book is meant
to hold with compassion the challenge and exhaustion of this messy and
transformative period in life. My intention is to help you make space for the
darkness that can be so painful or scary to acknowledge.
These dark feelings can pose real, tangible difficulties for you and your
family, so you likely picked up this book offering yoga therapy because you are
looking for a solution. Many books or articles on yoga for moms have words like
calm or bliss in the title and feature smiling, glowing, slim pregnant women on
the cover. Yoga and mindfulness (and pregnancy in general!) in America are
usually marketed as a path to fix all our woes, to make us happy, healthy,
beautiful, loved, eternally youthful, sexy, peaceful, more productive, fully
present. These promises sell well, because they prey on our attachments and
reinforce our insecurities—again and again. But yoga doesn’t actually work that
way.
Yoga does offer effective coping skills for depression and anxiety, and this
book will share these abundantly. Yoga doesn’t, however, make us eternally
calm or peaceful. It doesn’t make us good mothers or turn our children into
magical unicorns devoid of suffering. We are still exhausted. We still need sleep,
food, care from our community or from professionals. Yoga doesn’t fix us, but
that’s okay—even better than okay—because we’re not broken. Yoga connects
us to our whole self: mind, body, and heart. It connects us to our humanity and