Episode 153: The Truth about Maternal Instinct with Anya Dunham
/I have a new episode for you this week, and then all the way at the end I also have a few other things to share with you (I was the guest on a couple of podcasts and helped out with an article on postpartum anxiety- links below!)
When I first became a parent I was so staggered by the awesome responsibility of raising a child, and plagued by a lack of confidence and trust in myself. I frantically sought support in books and parenting groups on Facebook, convinced that the "truth" of what I needed to know to be a good, loving, safe parent to my daughter lay somewhere outside of me... That there was a "right" way to do this thing called parenting, and if I could just find it then we would be ok. There is nothing like being a parent in this modern world, especially for moms, to make you lose trust in yourself, and yet we hear all the time to "just trust our instincts". It seems like such a simple yet impossible thing to do, doesn't it?!
For me, a huge part of my mothering journey has been learning to quiet the fears and outside influences, and seek instead to truly learn with curiosity about my child and myself. The more I learned about the unique child I had been blessed with, the more I was able to see her true needs and trust myself to meet them. I kind of had to figure out how to do this on my own (although the RIE approach helped immensely) and I wished I'd had someone to tell me that I could trust myself and my child, and then tell me HOW to do it, someone like my guest on the today!
And to help me in this conversation, I have brought in Dr. Anya Dunham. She is a mom of three young children and a scientist studying how living things relate to one another and interact with their environment. She is the author of Baby Ecology, a book that examines child development research through the unique lens of ecology – and distills it down to building blocks of the nurturing environment that can be easily created in our homes to give babies the support and freedom to sleep well, explore happily, grow into adventurous eaters, and reach their full potential.
Here's an overview of our discussion
Caregiving drive: what it is and how there's no immediate set of skills and knowledge in taking care of a baby
Maternal instinct: Myth or Not? (How parents show a strong sense of knowing something is wrong)
How parents can balance expert advice and their intuition
To get more support and parenting advice, visit www.kidecology.com and follow her on Facebook (Anya Dunham - KidEcology)
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello, everybody! This is Dr. Laura Froyen and on this week's episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, we're going to be talking about the myth of maternal instinct. So many of you that I get the chance to talk to and work with have expressed to me, feeling as if you can't trust yourselves. You don't necessarily know what to do and you expected to have this sense of knowing what to do when it came to your child and then it doesn't come and how disconcerting and stressful that can be.
That's certainly something I experienced in my own parenting journey. And it's so comforting to know that we're not alone and that there's actually a reason behind those feelings. So to help me with this conversation, I want to introduce our guests for this week. And Anya, welcome to the show! Anya Dunham is going to be our guest when we're gonna be talking about the ecology of babies and maternal instinct myths. So, Anya, welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Anya: Thank you, Laura. Thank you for inviting me. So my name is Anya Dunham and I'm a mom of three young children. And in my day job, I am a scientist. I'm trained as a biologist and I study ecology, which is a discipline as it's a branch of biology that looks at how living things interact with each other and with their environment. I'm also the author of Baby Ecology, a book where I looked at child development research through the lens of my field, ecology to see what science can tell us about the needs of all human babies. And how we can use that knowledge to create environments in our homes that are best or optimal for our own unique babies, sleep feeding and care and play. Yeah. Thanks for having me today.
Laura: Absolutely. So when we were chatting before we hit record, we were talking about this idea of maternal instinct and how painful it can be when that doesn't magically appear once you have a baby. I'm kind of curious where, like, where do we get the idea that we're supposed to just magically know what to do with a kid?
Anya: Yeah, I think it's something that perhaps it's almost ingrained in us and then part of it is the society, the societal message and a lot of us grow up, especially women, sort of thinking about that one day we're gonna have our babies and we have a bit of our sort of rose colored glasses on. I think at least I certainly have. I always wanted to be a mom, growing up. And I, yeah, and I feel that as I was pregnant, which I was pregnant with my first baby almost 12 years ago.
And I, despite being a scientist and a planner and a reader, mostly I read about pregnancy, about healthy pregnancy and birth itself. And I thought, oh, you know, when the baby comes, I'm sure I will, I will know what to do. Like, it will just, it will just come because I've been dreaming about this moment basically my whole life. And then when my daughter arrived, suddenly I felt so overwhelmed. I think Laura and one of the past podcasts, I heard you use the term untethered or maybe it was on board. So I wonder if you can relate to that.
Laura: Absolutely. And I think that we're probably not alone. I think many of us focus on pregnancy and birth while we are, you know, I'm just stating our, our baby or for those of us who bring babies into our home in a different process, we focused on that process of bringing the baby into our family. And that makes sense. And then, I don't know, I had this experience of, even though I was getting my PhD at the time in human development and family relationships, I had this moment of like, oh, gosh, I have this child now and the birth was over.
I mean, mine was long, my first birth was three days long, but it was relatively short in comparison to the number of years I'm gonna be a parent, which is for the rest of my life and I have done nothing to prepare myself for it. You know, and it's, it's quite interesting that everything else that we do, everything else that we do in our life, that we want to be good at, that we want to be committed to, that we want to be intentional with. We think we have to study and learn and practice. Right? Why, why would we think parenting was any different? You know? But we do.
Anya: Yeah, I know. Absolutely. And I think at least some of that overwhelm of the early days and months has to do with this expectation that there would be this magical set of skills and knowledge that would suddenly appear and be available to us and then it doesn't. And now I know that science tells us that, know that there definitely isn't this sort of magical maternal instinct that just kicks in. And then I think what happens is we are there to parents essentially without a map, especially those of us who maybe didn't grow up in a large, with a large extended family or the village that would teach us sort of how to do things and we would just absorb it as we grow up. But for many of us that's no longer the case.
Laura: Yeah, I, I think about that a lot too that, you know, we think about animals having these, these instincts set that kick in. And the reality is, is that they are, they are growing up there in community there with each other, they're watching all the time. And we often, you know, the village that were promised as primate mothers we don't get, right? We're social learners that doesn't end in childhood. And we're meant to be with each other. Sharing care, learning our whole way. And we don't get that in a lot of places and it makes that transition so much harder.
Anya: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think maybe another part of it is that something does kick in when we first meet our babies and it's something that's called in the scientific literature, they call it the caregiving drive, the parental care motivation system, right? But it's something that doesn't, it's something that makes us really, really want to do our best in taking care of our babies. And it's, it's making us sort of very, more careful and more kind of turn tuned in to, to our babies. More may be risk averse and more caring and selfless.
And I know that studies have shown that it's a certain brain activation pattern that adults experience when they see babies or hear babies cry. And it comes up, it's absolutely subconscious. It comes up in as little as 100 milliseconds in all parents, mothers and fathers and biological parents and adoptive parents and all ages and even adults were not parents experience similar brain activation patterns. And so that tells us, I think that we are all made to care, but we don't, we have to figure out how. We have to figure that out on our own.
Laura: Yeah. Absolutely. I love this like differentiating the instinct to care versus the how, not necessarily being very clear. And that makes so much sense because all of our kids are so individual, they're so unique. Our families are so unique. The cultures that were embedded in are also unique. A kid who is growing up in the U.S. needs different skills and social, you know, social cueing. Then kids growing up in other countries and other parts of the world, it makes sense that the how wouldn't be exactly the same across the board. That makes so much sense.
So then my instincts then, for the have how, how to get the, how as a social scientist, my training tells me that if I want to learn like how something happens and I need to observe my training as a conscious and respectful parent tells me that it's actually my child who will teach me and show me the how the, like the what they need on a day to day level. And I'm kind of curious if you found that in your, in your research as you were writing this book too.
Anya: Yeah, absolutely. What I've done is once I've looked at many, many hundreds of studies on child development and I try to apply this lens of Ecologist. So I try to see, to answer the questions of what do all human babies need? Like if we look at, you know, across the board and resume out really, really far out and we try to see it, what is it that they need for, you know, sleep feeding and care and play. And I think science can tell us a lot about it. But the problem is that there's just so much opinion available to new parents that it's really hard to separate what's actually evidence based from what is just someone else's opinion and sometimes even studies.
But we read about a study or we hear about it on the news and it gives us this very small slice of something because studies are often looking at very specific questions that are set in a very very specific setting. And they're not really meant to be applied beyond that setting. Whereas I think what happens is, media sometimes amplifies that message and then it takes it out to parents and it says, oh, look and often it's a scary message or sort of anxiety inducing message, right? And so I think that's maybe another reason that new parents often feel stressed is because we want to have evidence based information, but it's very hard to find reliable sources that give you that big picture, right?
Not just this little tiny slice. And so I think it's very important to look for that evidence based information from trusted healthcare professionals, that finding the information that is truly evidence based. And that's not just someone's opinion or a very narrow view of an issue is quite challenging. Like, I, it makes me think of a recent example where a study was quite widely discussed in the news.
And I don't know if you, you might have caught some of that and it was about the scientists finding potential biomarkers for the sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS and which was a very important first step in screening babies or who are at high risk for SIDS. What happened is on social media, some people were saying, well, this is great news because now we know that it's not from putting babies to sleep on their bellies or from blankets or from overheating. But no, that's not the case and that's not unfortunately, the right way to look at this, right? Because safe sleep is still extremely important.
Laura: Yeah. Okay. So I think that this is something that my community runs into because we, lots of us here, lots of the listeners love to geek out about research. They love to know, understand child development, they love to understand the research that comes out of, you know, the kind of family systems theory and understanding relationships and communication and it helps them feel confident in what they're, how they're choosing to raise their kids.
But figuring out how to balance that information coming in, how to filter it through the lens of their family, their individual child and figuring out - Okay. So how am I gonna use this information in a way that makes sense for me is actually helpful as opposed to anxiety inducing or harmful. I think that's a real skill set. Right? So, for parents who are looking for that balance, what would you say? Like, what is the sum away that they can begin that process of figuring that out for themselves?
Anya: Yeah. And I think, exactly, I think that the word balance, which I know you say balance is not a state, it's not a state of being, it's a process. I think it's, it's a great way to look at it because what I found in looking at research and then raising my own kids is that it's really important to not only have that big picture that science gives us that evidence based knowledge, but also our intuitive knowledge of our own unique children and our own specific families.
And I think that is what gives us that balance in the moment is seeing both of these things. So seeing the big picture and then finding that unique spot within that, that our intuition helps us discover. And intuition from what I've read is actually a very real form of knowledge as well. So it's that subconscious knowledge that we draw from our memories, memories of something. And so our minds quickly and subconsciously brings it up at the right moment.
But the interesting thing is that, what is that, what are those memories? Are they the memories of our unique children that we've been carefully observing and learning from and alongside, which is hopefully the case. And then that's that sixth sense. It's that gut feeling that we often have about our kids that when something is wrong or something is right. But other times it could be other things. It could be some biases that are, you know, in grains, it could be some cultural messages which could be good, but sometimes they may be, they're not maybe aligned with our family, current values or our children's needs. And so it's in, I think the balance is in separating those things and in trying to bring out our true intuition about our own children.
Laura: Yeah, I think that that's so important. I have a post that talks exactly about that, about understanding that there's a difference between our intuition and our instinct as parents and our cultural conditioning like our conditioning as parents. And you know, the, like when I hear my mother's voice come out of my mouth and say stop that right now, like that's not my instinct, that's not my intuition, that's my conditioning. My intuition would have me say something entirely different, right? And I think I'm kind of curious about this and I don't know that I remember this being discussed in your book.
And so please feel free to kind of, you know, not go there with me if you don't want to. Something I've observed in my practice with parents is that, in amongst families where there's a mom and a dad raising children together, oftentimes the dad feels much more comfortable trusting his gut and intuition. And the woman feels much less confident in trusting their gut and intuition. And in my experience with the kind of the cultural gaslighting that women are subjected to, that girls are subjected to as they develop. I think it's hard for us sometimes. I think it's harder for us to trust our intuitions, to listen to us because we've been told so often not to. What do you think? I'm kind of, I'm just kind of curious on your take on that.
Anya: Yeah. No, it's, it's an interesting thought and I think, I agree and I wonder if at least in part it has to do with that idea that we're supposed to know, but deep down with that sort of, you know, mother instinct and things like that and then when we don't we go, like, oh, my gosh. I don't. I don't know, but I'm maybe I'm supposed to. Yeah, exactly. And then it's like, well, how can I find out? But then I think sometimes it's easy to kind of lose yourself in searching for information and sometimes that information is right in front of us, maybe in, if you, if we just, and we also so busy was so busy as moms. Right?
And it starts in the early days and then the business just changes from you know, just being so on with the baby to still being so on thinking about carrying all the mental load that comes with having children. And I think it's just often hard to pause and just observe our kids when they're young and, or take the time to really talk with, with them as opposed to them when they're older, which, which I think is what helps us sharpen that intuition and, and listen to our, give ourselves the space to listen to our intuitive knowledge and that voice in our heads that tells us what is right and what is wrong sort of thing and what is truly coming from, from a true intuitive knowledge as opposed to maybe some biases and also some fads.
I think there's examples where, you know, we as moms, I think we're so kind of tuned in like we, we look, you know, we, we see all these messages that are coming to us that what we should and shouldn't be doing with our babies. And then sometimes it's like, it's sort of like, well, is this me, is this my knowledge of my baby or is that something I saw on Instagram? And that's just coming right up for me. Like in one example I can think of is baby led weaning.
And I think I've a number of people, I know a number of people in my, in my social circle. They said, well no, no period, no mashed food like my baby will have none of that. And whether that's and is that because they know that their baby just doesn't do well with that period texture, which is very valid? Or is that because you know, we see these beautiful cut up lunches on Instagram and we go like, oh that's how it's gotta be done.
Laura: Yeah. It's fascinating to think about. Have a story from my early motherhood with my first child that I feel like is a good illustration of this. So when I became a mom, I feel attachment parenting, the, I don't know, attachment parenting, which is not based in very much actual science and kind of co-ops. The name of a beautiful theory that I adore without any actual evidence, linking any of their practices to actual attachment theory. It's a pet peeve of mine, but it was very popular at the time.
And part of that is baby wearing, which of course the practice of keeping your infant close. There's nothing wrong with that. But I was, I happened to have an infant who did not like baby wearing when I put her in a carrier, pushed and strained against me. And there was this moment of being I was at a league, a breastfeeding support group. And I was in this moment of like all these other moms were baby wearing and breastfeeding. And for me, breastfeeding went well after a rocky couple first weeks that it went well. And I was trying to have this baby in this carrier and she was pushing against me and I was feeling all this pressure to engage in this way of parenting that was very prescriptive and that there were all these other people doing.
And I slowed down and I remembered to myself, wait a second, like I'm studying actual attachment right now. And what I know about attachment is that it's about responsive attunement to your child, sensitive responsive attunement to the child in front of you. And this child in front of me is saying she does not want to be in a baby carrier. And so I just took her out and we never, we, we only did a baby carrier when she wanted to go in.
Otherwise she played freely on the floor and it was delightful and it was actually prompted my first foray into a different style of parenting, was much more supportive for me. But that moment of like recognizing, look, there's this social pressure right now to be doing something that's overriding my intuition and overriding the trust I have in my child. I mean, it was a very like big moment for me and trusting myself as a mom, you know?
Anya: Yeah, I think that's a great, beautiful example of that. And the other thing I learned is that our brains can combine intuitive knowledge and evidence based knowledge that we hear from trusted sources. And it can do so subconsciously. And I think that's a really great thing. So if we have the understanding of the general kind of body of research and knowledge about a topic, it actually helps us to listen to that inner voice of ours and to not conflate it with fads or biases or you know, past cultural experiences.
And that actually helps us trust it more and, and bring it out more. And I think your example is just a beautiful illustration of that because you knew that attachment theory and attachment parenting are not one and the same thing. And that allowed you to trust your child and to see, to see what they need. I think that's a lovely example of that.
Laura: Yeah, it was, it was definitely good, good for me and good for my child. My child happens to be someone who, oh, it's always showing me very loudly exactly what she needs. She definitely invites me every day to question my assumptions about child development parenting, which is so wonderful. I'm so delighted that she's my kid. So I think though that like that process of, of tuning out and tuning in, you know, to tuning out like and filtering. What do you think if someone is realizing that they need to do this?
That they, they're realizing now, like right now I've been feeling unmoored in my parenting, like, I don't know what I'm doing. I've been frantically listening to all the podcasts and reading all the books that I can and it's not necessarily making me feel more confident, like I know what to do. What is the next right step for that person? Because I guarantee there's, you know, I've definitely been in that position as a parent, there's probably folks who are listening right now and this is that moment where they're realizing that what would be the next like thing that you would have them?
Anya: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that moment of sort of not knowing what to do. I think it often comes when we first become new parents, but it can come later. It can come with older kids too. Right? Because our kids change and their needs change and we change as parents and every day is a new day and new challenges sort of pop up. And so I think that comes, it keeps coming back like that, that feeling. And so I think what I would say is what helps me is sort of think about what is it that I need in this moment?
Do I need to learn more from trusted sources? Like do I have more questions for our pediatrician or do I want to look at some, some studies, some review papers that summarize. Like, what is the general knowledge about this topic that we humans have? Or is it more that I need to observe my own child more like do I need to slow down and look at my baby and just watch them play without, you know, necessarily interfering or doing something or taking care of them in that moment? Do I just need to look at them and that is the best taking care of baby that I would be doing?
Maybe I need to talk to my older child or with just to, to have that conversation and learn more about their needs. And then I guess the third thing that's often the case is, do I need more support for myself? Just so that I have the bandwidth to do one or both of these other things to learn more or observe more. And so I think the first step would be to figure out which one of those things makes more sense for me in the moment or maybe it's all three and do that. And I would start with support.
Laura: I love that, this idea of just getting a little quiet with yourself and asking yourself these questions. I think, you know, and I, I think you talk about this too, that we have so much information and so much like support at our fingertips. When we have a question or a struggle, we can head to a Facebook group and ask a question like and get a thousand different answers really fast.
And so that directive to before we go Googling, before we go putting the question on, on a Facebook page of sitting with ourselves and saying, what do I actually need right now? I'm feeling overwhelmed and feeling lost. What is it that I need? Do I need information from a trusted place? Do I need more information from my wonderful child? And what do I need? You know? I like that. I really, really like that. I really, it's always my hope that parents will need me less and less and less. You know?
Anya: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that's, that's how I've been trying to approach things now that my youngest child has recently turned to. So we're out of the baby stage in our lives. But it's still very fresh in my memory in my mind how, when he was born, how so many new questions came in for me, even though, you know, I've done it twice already, but he was a different baby and he needed different things. And so that pausing and reflecting on what, what do we need, do we need to learn more or do we need to observe more? Was, was really helpful.
And even with my older children now, like, you know, now that the world has opened up more and we're doing more activities outside the home and it's sort of just, just something that's been on my mind lately is, are we doing too much? And so it's thinking about it again. It's like, do we need to think more about the benefits of you know, free unstructured time versus structured activities and kind of refresh, refresh the knowledge on that or do we just need to look at to our own children or to ourselves and think about like, okay, you know, we have no time at all as parents and is that, is that affecting this and things like that? So I think it's just helpful at any stage and on the parenting journey.
Laura: Yeah, I think that practice of self inquiry is so important. We're sitting with that kind of that curious question right now to that, we've got one kid who's really wants to be in a lot of activities and one kid who's adamant. No, she wants to come home and play after school every day and sitting, sitting with, are we allowing for overscheduling to happen? Sitting with anxiety about one kid not being involved and what that means? You know, because culture wants us, you know, they like at least in the U.S. overscheduling tends to happen a lot more, you know, where kids are in lots and lots of activities.
And there can be social pressure to also have your child and lots of activities. Yeah, I love, I love the idea of observing too. So every year in my community we do a 30 days of play challenge and the first 10 days of it are, the task is just to observe your child and play and their natural play. And I think observing is just the most, one of the most beneficial things you can do as a parent. I think that children blossom under that kind of mindful presence and attention. And so it's good for them and it's the best way to learn about your child, learn about who they are and what they need, what they're interested in what they, I mean, it's just, it's the best I love having.
Anya: Yeah, I, I so agree and I love the baby stage and I love watching babies. And I think just having read about child development and having that understanding of that, the bigger picture just really gave me appreciation of how tuned in and ready to connect and learn how babies are when they come into the world. And I think you can start from the very, very early days, which is hard as a new parent. It's hard to, to just be because you feel like you have to do so much, right? But I think if we start then, it really helps to continue in that way and to continue learning about our babies.
Laura: Yeah, I love, I loved that piece of, kind of how I approached early babyhood with kids. Once I found RIE parenting, it's called resources for infant educators or just RIE. And the person who started it, Magda Gerber, she has a quote. Do less, observe more, enjoy most. Oh my gosh. It's just, it's given me so much permission to just kind of sit back and do way less and see my kids for who they are. And I mean, it's kind of like it feels like to the rest of the world, it looks like lazy parenting, but it's absolutely not. It's so active and present. I love it and I love the baby stage with that type of, that approach too.
Anya: Yeah, I can definitely relate. And Magda Gerber is where I can write has been quite influential in my own parenting as well in that giving permission to just watch and have that once. Nothing time, I guess as they call it. And it's been, it's been a lovely, lovely skill to have.
Laura: Yeah, I was just teaching my infant playgroup parents about once nothing time yesterday and it was just so so lovely to have like, I could feel the parent, like I could see the parent's shoulders as we were talking about it just like, relax like, oh, you're giving me permission to absolutely do, absolutely nothing. It's not fixed, not solved to just trust and be, so good.
Anya: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's so much in that nothing. There's actually a lot, a lot in it.
Laura: Nothing. I feel like nothing is not nothing. You know, when it comes to that type of active presence, it's quite a lot and it's good for us.
Anya: Yeah. Sure.
Laura: And I think like, you know, so we started talking about maternal instinct. And I think that, like we kind of shifted into talking about intuition. And I love this idea that we can build our intuition, we can build trust in ourselves over time. If we, for whatever reasons, our intuition has been quieted by cultural conditioning and this, the lives that we lead out in the world. We can build kind of learn how to relearn how to listen to ourselves and then building a more nuanced intuition where we're incorporating what we're learning from research and science and then what we're learning from our child. I really like that. That feels very good.
Anya: Yeah, that's that, I agree. That's something that I'm trying to carry forward with my parenting and with my writing as well.
Laura: Yeah. Beautiful. So folks want to learn more from you or read your book, where can they go to, to find out more?
Anya: Yeah. So to connect with me or to learn more about my work, listeners can visit my website. It's called Kid ecology, kid ecology dot com or my Facebook page, which is Anya Dunham Kid Ecology. In my book, which is called Baby Ecology using Science and Intuition to Create the Best Nurturing Environment For Your Baby's Feeding Care and Play and it can be found Amazon and at a variety of ebook retailers and it can also be ordered in through, through any local bookstore as well if that's what listeners prefer.
Laura: Absolutely. And I always recommend listeners if you check your local library and you don't have it. Librarians are always so helpful in getting those books onto.
Anya: Yes, absolutely.
Laura: Yeah, librarians are wonderful.
Anya: They are.
Laura: Well, Anya, thank you so much for this conversation. I really appreciate what you're putting out into the world and from a human Ecologist, you know, to an Ecologist. I so appreciate the crossovers of our fields and interests. Thank you for sharing your time with us.
Anya: I do as well. Thank you for having me.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out um and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!