Dr. Becky On Why Becoming A Mom Isn't Actually About Your Baby
Tell Me I'm a Good Mom with Lo Bosworth NataleShow Notes
I cried in the back of an Uber after my first dinner out post-baby. I'd had one and a half martinis (a mistake), I'd left my husband at home with the baby (he was thrilled for me to go), and I felt so guilty I genuinely couldn't stop sobbing. Mom guilt, right? That's what we'd call it. Except according to Dr. Becky Kennedy, clinical psychologist, founder of Good Inside, and probably the most followed parenting expert on the planet, what I was feeling probably wasn't actually guilt at all. It was something else, and almost nobody talks about it.
This week she sat down with me to talk about the weeks of motherhood nobody warns you about. Why your thoughts the first weeks postpartum are mostly about you, not your baby (and why that's normal, not a character flaw). Why intrusive thoughts about your baby are a sign of how much you love them, not a sign you're dangerous. Why the doer identity you bring into motherhood is going to crash, and what to do when it does. Plus the reframe she dropped at the end of our conversation that I haven't stopped thinking about since: the sentence that starts with "I'm a good mom who..." and how it changes everything.
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