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Welcome to Finding Sanctuary, our shared conversations into how we think and feel and how we find peace and comfort in daily life. We get together with experts to chat about all things mental health, getting insights and understanding on the struggles of life. My name is Debbie Draybi and I'm a psychologist and a proud Maronite woman and a mother of three children.
And I'm passionate about bringing people together to share their stories, to support each other through life and all this beauty and all this pain. I look forward to hearing from you in this podcast series as we engage in conversations. around our shared experiences as a community. We love to hear what you think of the podcast, so please subscribe, share, like, and comment wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, welcome to another episode of Finding Sanctuary. I'm really excited to be joined by our resident psychologist. It's Natalie Moujalli and our counsellor, Eddie Reaiche it's always great when the three of us come together and conversations always go in incredible directions. And today we're going to be talking about parenting and we're going to start with the theme around in the earlier years, exploring, experiences.
We've talked quite a bit in our preparation around parenting by fear and some of the challenges in those early years, but then also as the kids get older, you know, often then we have this saying of. small kids, small problems, big kids, big problems, thinking about some of those challenges in those pre teens and then the midst of the teenage years and even early adulthood.
So we're gonna go on a journey across the lifespan and start with those early years and Eddie, if you want to start, I know that you have this incredible skill mix as firstly as a father and a grandfather, but also I know you've got your experiences in midwifery and then more recently your counselling.
So I think this, you have this incredible mix of life experience. But you've worked across different disciplines. And I'm just really curious around some of your experiences around parenting in those early years, whether it's infancy and early childhood and what some of the challenges that you've worked with with families.
Thanks Deb. You know, the major challenge that I have is going toe to toe with Google. Because a lot of people are getting their information now off the internet. One of the biggest problems is Google and textbooks and magazines do not know you and do not know your child. So when they give you advice, generally it's the worst advice for the worst scenario.
And it makes people think, I've got to do this or I've got to do this in this way. And they've literally put you into a box and said, this is how it works. But a lot of people get really bogged down in that and get so stressed because they're saying by one month your child has to have done this, by two months, all these milestones have to be reached.
And when they don't reach a milestone, I'm seeing a lot of mums who start feeling a little bit ashamed there's something wrong with my child and they don't want to tell everybody because it becomes a competition. And so it's really hard to tell people it doesn't matter. Because some kids will just develop differently.
And your child is one of eight billion human beings on the planet. It doesn't mean it has to be the same as anybody else. And I think the more unique a child is, the more special that child is. And that's the sort of message that I like bringing home to a lot of
mums. Yeah, so it's really, you know, that key message around trusting your instincts and whilst it's useful to be guided by some of the literature and things, not be so rigid and caught up in it because you can lose yourself in that and start to question and doubt yourself.
Deb, that's a really interesting point, because, believe it or not, a lot of mums are great mums. They just don't know how to let themselves go. They don't have enough confidence or faith in themselves. But they're the only ones who are spending 24 hours with their child. Nobody else is spending that much time.
So they know. All the quirks of that child, they're starting to learn more about that child than anybody else. Your mother in law, no offense to mother in laws, don't know better than you do. They may have raised their kids their way and said everything worked perfect for them, but everyone remembers the good stuff, not the bad stuff.
But let me tell you, mums who look after their own babies spend more time, they are the experts of their babies. Nobody else is. I'm not. Um. No one else is. If they start to learn their own judgement and have faith in their own judgement, I think it will take them a lot further and have that relationship with their child so much better.
And it'll be a happy child, more than what they're going through at the moment.
So what I'm hearing is the importance of trusting yourself, because sometimes, particularly when you're a first time mum, you can be consumed by fear and doubt and you. question yourself because it's a new experience and you become reliant on the opinion of others.
That's around trusting yourself, but also trusting the relationship that you have, which is unique, that mother child relationship. And as you said, you're the expert on that relationship. No one knows it as well as you do. That's right. Yeah. Thanks Eddie. I think there's some really strong points there around building trust and connection with yourself, but also with your baby.
Natalie, I know you've got a young family yourself, so you've got, definitely got that recency of practice, but also as a professional psychologist, I know you've worked with families as well. I'm wondering, you know, what sort of ideas as you're hearing this conversation, what's some of the things that you're thinking about that you want to share with the group?
Thanks, Deb. I'm so glad to be here today talking to you guys about this. I think it's something that we don't discuss enough. Uh, when I heard you speaking, Eddie, I like to talk about the term of Google itis, which is what I used to talk to my clients about, where we just get so obsessed and we drown in the research and it becomes really unhealthy for us.
I think we look to Google for comfort and it ends up terrifying us. So it's like counterproductive to what we're trying to achieve. Often we look for the labels. We look for the boxes because they help us to explain what we're feeling like, OK, I've got all these symptoms. This makes sense. This is what's wrong with me or this is what's wrong with my baby.
It feels safe. It can feel safe. but is it healthy? It's not healthy because we're now boxed ourselves into something that doesn't really reflect reality. It reflects our fears and our anxieties. So when you speak of that, it really refreshed that for me because I fell into that myself as a mother. You were saying that, you know, no one knows your child better than you do.
You're their mother, but also our children are different. You know, if we're blessed to have one, or two, or three, or four, or five children, you would know that they're all different. They have a different nature. My first child was textbook. Easy. Slept 12 hours a day. Had, you know, his two two hour naps and a 45 minute nap in the afternoon.
Exactly the way the book. had spelt him out to be. So I was super confident with him. It was easy. Then I had my daughter and she would sleep maybe 10 minutes to 20 minutes at a time and scream the house down. And I thought, what am I doing wrong? What's the difference here? Like I'm the same mother. And they're my children, so it should go the same, right?
But it didn't, so I really started to doubt myself. I was looking for safety in these boxes and these labels. I was Googling, like, why isn't this child sleeping? I cracked one day. I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take the lack of sleep. I called a sleep consultant. And I said, you know, this is my second time around.
I don't know, I don't understand what's happening. Why isn't this child sleeping? What am I doing wrong? She said, are you doing all the same things you did with your first? I said, Yeah, I am. She goes, well, you know, it's a different baby, right? And I said, yeah, I do. She goes, but you're the same mother. And I was like, yes.
She said, so have confidence in who you are as a mother and your baby will follow you. She may not follow you the same way your son did, but eventually she will. And you have to have the patience and the confidence to see it through. And I thought, you know what? That's so true. We doubt ourselves so quickly, quickly.
What am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? Go to Google, go to the label. Where does this not fit? But really, it's just our anxiety to, to try to get to the other end of this because it's so uncomfortable to sit in the unknown.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I mentioned earlier that there is this fear of the unknown, being a first time mum.
But there is also this fear and uncertainty emerges when you have. other children and, and it's different. It's a different experience because we expect that we have more experience. It should be easier. But I mean, you've just highlighted that. No, it doesn't work that way. It really doesn't. And each child is different.
And whilst you're the same, you're dealing with a different human. And also you think you're the same. Yeah. But, but you change. You do change. You grow. You grow.
Absolutely. You're a different person every time. Every time. Every pregnancy's different. Every child's different. Every scenario's different.
That's right. And you're different. But, always the better. But it's just the confidence part that drags you down. Yeah. Because you know what you're doing. You did a great job the first time, you're gonna do a great job the second, third, fourth, depending on how big your family's gonna be. But you just have to get that confidence back to say that what I'm doing is right.
Absolutely. Because you're the one who's looking after that child, and that child is looking for you to help look after
it. So sometimes, you know, our expectations on ourselves grow. The more kids we have that we should know, we should be more expert. And if they don't respond in the same way, then we're thrown off, aren't we?
Probably a bit harsh on ourself and then we start to lose that confidence. Natalie already shared with us from FOMO to JOMO and now we've got another catchphrase that she's kindly shared, Google itis. Google itis. Come up with the best. I know.
These are great. We're going to have our own dictionary I think. These catchphrases. I'm going to create a Natalie dictionary. I like to stay young and hip. Yes, you do. You've got to keep up with the kids, right? I try my best. So thinking about that, Googlitus, and we have Google, it's a good resource. But then we have access to an incredible amount of information overload.
Which I think, you know, you've highlighted, does create anxiety and uncertainty because sometimes the more we know, the less confidence we have because we're just overloaded with this information. And both of you have tapped into that around almost losing ourself in that information and losing our confidence.
Eddie, did you want to just explore that a bit more around some of the examples you've seen in your practice?
Now I'm going to throw in a bit of a spanner here because everyone talks about Google but let's talk about the next step. What's coming up? What's after Google? And you know it's going to be AI.
So we're going to directly put a question in there and AI is going to tell us what to do. Again. A. I. does not know our child, our A. I. does not know who we are, A. I. doesn't even know what culture we're from, and what our own expectations are. So it's really important, I see this with pregnant women as well, before they have the child, and the phone calls that I get, it's always Uncle Eddie.
Is this normal? Uncle Eddie, what does this mean? Um, can I not eat fish anymore? They told me not to eat fish. There was a study done about people who were eating fish from a certain region. I said it's not that bad. And so a lot of the times I'm dispelling the myths that are around. My whole time during the perinatal period, from when they get pregnant to when they have the child, is dispelling the myths because it causes fear.
So imagine going through all those fears and not coping with that and having a child and then you have a whole new set of fear Where am I doing the right thing? Am I not doing the right thing? I keep trying to come back to empower the mother that they already are but don't realize because seriously You guys are mums, I'm not a mum, so it feels weird me telling you how to do this, but as mums you guys are the most powerful force on earth for this child that you look after and I think that's really important and if I could just get you to believe that, I think your experience would be so much better.
So, a mother who believes in herself and her ability to respond to and to recognise the needs of her child. What does that look like?
Okay. First and foremost, and I don't know if you're going to have to edit this, but it's really hard to kill a baby. You have to understand, I can't imagine a mother who has the ultimate aim of nurturing that child would do anything or could do anything to kill a child.
No baby has ever died crying. So if a baby cries, it's crying. Why does it cry? How many reasons are there? Is it reflux? We'd love the reflux. We'd love the oil rubbing on their stomachs, the gripe water or the insulin that they have or whatever we give them. Or, do they just want to be nurtured? And when you hold a baby, the first thing that your mother in law will say or someone else, and I'm gonna say this so wrong because it's in Arabic, la al duh
So in other words, you're going to get him used to carrying him. I
don't know whose mother in law you're talking about, but my mother in law's
perfect. Okay. Just
putting it out there. She's obviously listening.
Just in case you're listening. Someone's got some brownie points.
The point I want to make, babies don't 100 percent id.
They're just instinctive. They don't know different. All they know is hunger, poo, pee, and security. That's all they know. They don't know anything else. They don't know about, I'm gonna get used to getting held. They don't know that I'm gonna torment my mum by keeping her awake. They don't know any of this stuff.
They just...
So it sounds like Eddie, you're saying that we need to just feel and not think, you know, you said that earlier about like, we've lost the connection between the feeling and now we're overthinking.
And so if you feel, if you go back to your instincts.
I still feel weird about telling you how to be a mum. But if you go back to your own instincts on what you think is right, because remember, and I'll keep saying this over and over again, you're there with that child 24 hours a day, and when you had your daughter, who was always waking up every 20 minutes or whatever, and It wasn't until you reset yourself and said, I have a new child that your approach would have changed.
But just resetting yourself, you didn't need a whole bunch of knowledge to do that. When you work that out and go natural on how I do it, things would change because the babies can feel what you
feel. Yeah. Well, actually, when I forgot the textbook, because With my eldest, yeah, the textbook was perfect. It worked.
He fit. So that made me feel good. But with the second, she did not fit. So it made me feel horrible and it made me feel like I was failing. So I think we need to have an open approach to the resources that are out there are excellent a lot of the times, but we have to be flexible with. what fits and what doesn't and what's beneficial for us.
That's a really important point that I want to talk about because it's one of these things that you start to feel like you may be a failure. I did some work on perinatal depression in Middle Eastern women. And what I found was the empowerment. The women empowerment was almost non-existent because when something is going wrong, the first thing they feel is, I'm a failure as a mother.
And a lot of times they feel I'm a failure as a wife. Mm, yeah. This failure that they feel is, is not right. It doesn't, it's not worthy of being mentioned because you're not a failure as a mother as long as you love. How can you be a failure?
Absolutely. And it sounds like such a contrast because here we are applauding the men, right?
The men's groups and the men who are sharing and being vulnerable and self reflective and we're going, that's amazing. Share your feelings. But then when we're feeling vulnerable and soft. We feel like we're failing. Does that make sense?
Makes a lot of sense, yeah. It's highlighted as such an issue. It's really sad when I hear it. It really is sad. Working with women for a lot of my life, because of nursing and all that stuff, I kind of, and empathy towards women and the plight that they have and where they literally suffer in silence. And suffering in silence is what you do between 9 o'clock at night and 6 in the morning. Because you feel you're the only one awake, you're the only one with that child.
There's no one everyone else is asleep. How alone do you feel? You
feel alone and you feel so taxed, so drained, so tapped out. You, you can lose yourself, you will lose yourself in whatever it is you're watching, in your phone, in food, in anything that is going to distract you from the extreme amount of exhaustion you're feeling.
And then, but will you go to sleep? No, you will not, because this is the only time you have that it's quiet and that nobody needs anything from you. So what our body and our soul needs is sleep. But because we are so kind of starved from just that, that downtime, that quiet time, we do the exact opposite of what we need.
But that makes us feel good and placates us at the time.
Really what I'm hearing is that disconnect from self. being so overwhelmed with that burden of responsibility and personalizing, you know, if the baby's not settling, it's our fault, it's something we're doing, just taking that huge responsibility and not seeing it as it could be the situation or it could be something totally unrelated to what we're doing.
And that's out of our control, but just being able to. Separate from that and to normalize that, yeah, that's what babies do. They are unsettled and it's not something that we're doing or not doing. It's just something that they're getting used to. It's about building that confidence and that familiarity and getting rid of that self blame and self shame.
What makes it worse, too, that I've noticed is I'm, if I'm at someone's house and the baby's crying and the mother's all flustered and they don't know what to do, and then they give me the baby because I've got a lot of confidence and I'm holding that baby and that baby settles. I've done nothing but made the mum feel worse.
Um. Because she feels more of a failure. How can a complete stranger, so to speak, I must be the problem. And so the rest of the conversation is take a breath, settle down, and just try and ground yourself and let's start again. When you feel good, don't pretend that you feel good, but when you feel better.
Let me give you the child back, and you'll see that the child will be okay. And you see that happen a lot with a lot of mums. Again, the biggest job is to help them not believe that they're a failure. Because I never see mums as a failure. The ones who leave their babies out in a crate in front of someone else's house is a failure.
I've never met a mum once who doesn't love their child.
Even then, Eddie, you're dealing with a, with a Concoction of mental health, physical health issues that that person is probably not even able to recognize what they're doing at the time. You know what I mean? Like motherhood can send you a little mad, you know, on top of all the other life stresses that you're facing, it can send you over the edge.
It's the hardest and most beautiful thing you'll ever do in your life. But
it's going to test you. But I tell you what, I'd love to see any man do what a woman does. I wouldn't be able to do it. And how you guys managed to do it, day and night. It's okay to do it during the day, but then, night time? When a man feels like he has to sleep for you, it's your turn to sleep. Clocking off then. Sorry to the men out there. I'm a man too.
You know, it's just being able to build what I'm hearing, the importance of building that self confidence and that. Self reassurance that you've got this, you work it out together with your baby and just being able to reconnect, um, with yourself, but then also build that relationship and that connection with the baby.
You know, the baby picked up on your calmness. It wasn't anything different that you were doing other than that you were calm and had a confidence about you and that they're the two key factors that the baby picks up on, doesn't it, in terms of feeling comfort that mum knows. She's on top of this.
Because remember, babies don't think, they just feel. Feeling that level of calmness and being able to reconnect with our own feelings as mothers. Yeah, so I'm, I'm just thinking, you know, who needs Google when you have Uncle Eddie? Absolutely. Haha. I think that's, that's my summary of this conversation. Um, you know, the incredible support that you've given to family, to your family and your community, not just your immediate family, but the extended community using your skills, but also, I think your beautiful, humble, you know, admiration of women.
I think that's really beautiful and Ian, I think it's a strong message for other men to be able to, you know, if your wife is struggling, the, the mother of your children is. It's, you know, going through this turmoil, just being able to recognise that and, and have an understanding. But also what I'm hearing is you recognising your limitation as a man that you don't completely get it.
Mm. With all your training and your experience, you just have this incredible insight, definitely, but there's a limit to how much you've experienced. And I appreciate that limit. Yeah. But I also think what I have is a blessing. Mm. It's not something just comes from me. I think it's something that comes from above.
And I think it's a gift that I was given and so it's something that I want to share with other women, with relatives, because I feel strongly about making women feel empowered and good because I just need them to see their true self and what they're capable of.
And I think you've really demonstrated that, the power of a partner, a husband, to be able to help his wife reconnect with herself by giving her that compassion and that understanding and reminding her of the intimate and beautiful relationship that she has with the baby.
Because sometimes we can get lost and forget that because we're so caught up in the stress and the turmoil.
You know, a lot of the problems that we have, we don't realise is sometimes we don't have the support from our partner as well. Yeah. Yeah. And that just amplifies the problems that they go through.
Yeah. Financial hardships is another issue because there's all these other challenges that we go through. Yeah. And the burdens that they have to deal with and I don't know how but somehow the mums keep it together. Yeah. Yet they're doing everything. So, how could you not take your head off to mums?
Yeah, I understand, like, even in terms of that financial hardship, you know, women often have worked and then become mums, and they lose that financial independence as well.
So again, that dynamic changes too, and it creates more pressure. more feelings of inadequacy and not contributing in the same way. And it is a perpetuating cycle sometimes when we have children and the dynamic shift. And then we have the incredible mothers who work and raise children and, and study and study in your spare time, you know, in your spare time and how they balance that and those feelings of inadequacy.
It's like you, they would feel like they were always kind of, you know, dropping the ball somewhere. Yeah. And that's hard to deal with as well.
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, that's something I've grappled with quite a bit. I still think, you know, you feel ripped off either way. You're not spending enough time at home with the kids, but also you know, even at work when you're having to sneak out at three o'clock or whatever to do things, there is not that there's judgment, but you feeling like you're not contributing in the same way or to the same level, um, in both spaces, whether it's at home or in the workplace.
So it is, it's hard. It's a juggling act, it is. It's funny though, that sometimes I grapple with this with some, when I have couple therapy. And the husband says, I work as hard, I work like a dog. Their words, not mine. Work like a dog. When I get home, she wants me to do this, she wants me to do that. And I said, your work starts at seven, finishes at four?
He says, yeah, but it's hard work. And I said, her work starts at 12 midnight and finishes 12 midnight. So that's 24 hours. And that means no sleep. None of this, none of that, not doing anything she wants to do, but catering for the child. And it's unpaid. And it's unpaid. And where's the recognition? There is none.
Eddie, I think you've just created a fan following.
So I think it's really good to keep it all in perspective. Absolutely.
So thank you, Eddie and Nat, for this inspiring conversation about the challenges in those early years and thinking about reconnecting with ourselves as mothers and being able to build that confidence, which sometimes can get lost when there is significant fears and uncertainty and lots of turmoil and no sleep.
So not a good combination, but yeah, thank you. Thank you both. For sharing your lived experiences, both as professionals, but also as parents. And I think it's just been a really powerful conversation. Thanks, Debbie. Thanks, Debbie.
I hope this episode has helped you find sanctuary in this exciting journey of life. All of the resources we've mentioned in this episode are found in the podcast notes. If you need some assistance with any of the topics discussed in today's episode, then please visit our website hshl. org. au. You and your mental health matters to us, and we hope you get one step closer in finding sanctuary.
Bye for now.