Life With Baby: Balance
Tips for New Mothers, Avoiding Parent Burn Out and More
Striving for Balance involves ensuring that everyone's needs -- not just the child's -- are recognized, validated, and met to the greatest extent possible. In an ideal world, every family member's needs are met all the time, everyone is happy and healthy, and the family is perfectly in balance. In the real world, nobody's family life is perfectly balanced all the time. It is not unusual for parents to feel out of balance at times. Parents who practice AP continuously look for creative ways to find balance in their personal and family life. For more information, read the API resources listed below.
Tips for Supporting New Mothers
A new mother can become so involved in the care of her infant that she doesn't recognize her own needs until she is in emotional or physical trouble.
- Be patient and sensitive
- Say something appreciative about each other every day
- Be grateful
- Be an empathetic listener
For more information on balancing life with a baby, read the following API resources
- Strive for Balance in Your Personal and Family Life - One of API's Eight Principles of Parenting
- Read Parents Need Boundaries, Too by Carrie Kerr
- Read Simplify Your Morning Routine by Sharon Chinn-Heritch
- Read When the Going Gets Tough...A Little Self-Care Goes A Long Way by Karen Walant, Ph.D.
- Read more articles on Family Life: Balance
- Read Be Selfish: Finding Balance in Your Life on API Speaks (blog)
- Read A Balancing Act on API Speaks
- Read Caring for Myself on the API Forums
- Discuss how you maintain balance on the API Strive for Balance in Your Personal and Family Life forum
Member Resources
One of the many benefits of API Membership is access to the members-only site, The Attached Family. The following articles on Adoption and Foster Care can be found in the password-protected section of The Attached Family website. Login instructions are available on the online magazine's homepage.
- Striving for Balance in Family Life
- Chaos Theory: The Search for Personal Balance Admist Parenthood
- Dear New Moms
- Length of Postpartum Depression Determines Mother-Baby Attachment Difficulties
- You Are What You Eat: A Nutritional Guide to Preventing and Treating Postpartum Depresssion
