Welcome to the journey

Having a baby is a transition, at once incredibly ordinary and mind blowingly special. More than billions of babies have been born (or adopted!), but this in no way detracts from the enormity of this moment for each new parent. Becoming a parent is like being born or dying - the fact that gadzillions have done it before you just doesn't make it ordinary.

Often it seems difficult to hold on simultaneously to the wonder, joy and enormity of it, as well as the difficulty. I don't think the commercial machine with it's soft focus baby ad's and smiling moms selling washing powder make it any easier - far from. Maybe this blog is in some sense a protest against the colonisation of parenthood by commercial objectives.

BP (For South Africans that's "Before Parenthood" not "Before Polokwane") working as an educational psychologist in private practice and an NGO clinic I saw so many young families facing divorce, not to mention all the single moms, and odd single dads. I began to feel that the transition to parenthood was particularly stressful for couples. Prompted by this and the idea that we would be headed down this road soon, I began reading. Research dating as far back as the 50's, and oft repeated, showed that couples experience the transition to parenthood as a crisis time for the relationship. Strain is normal during the first two years after the birth, and the child rearing years are hardest on a relationship. Surely if people knew and expected this, they'd cope better. I read work that was being done with new parents in the states and UK and shared a lot of it with my long suffering life partner before this big event. When we had our own son I really felt prompted to share some of what we'd learnt from this and what had helped other parents I'd worked with.

I started Becoming Parents Staying Partners to offers talks, workshops and reading material to help new and expecting parents be more prepared for the impact of becoming a parent on them and their relationships.

Because couples often contacted me when they were already knee deep in the challenges of parenting small children, I put together What Happened to “Us”? - similar support for couples coping with parenting young children.

I hoped to do more preventative work through brief, but intensive experiential workshops. But the truth is I'm not a marketer. I like to do the work that comes to me. I've found that the format of short talks and more intensive sessions with those individual couples who wanted them, is what came. And this is where the programme has moved.

Post parenthood (PP), and (finally) moving from the keyhole view of dial up into the sunlight of broadband, I've realised (a little later than most) the wonders of the web. I've found that on line forums are really one of the most accessible ways of sharing ideas and getting support. The new village, that has the huge advantage of being accessible in that period of insomnia between getting up to a fevery child at 3am and dropping off for a quick hour of sleep at 3:30 before your melodious 4:3o morning wake up ("Mmmmmommy it's day time {prying open of parental eyelid} I NEEEEED my cereal!). So I got inspired to put the course material out on the web.

When I googled "becoming parents" I realised that material on the topic has burgeoned in the two or three years since starting the programme. I almost abandonned this blog! Still Becoming Parents was the product of a wish to share and grow a body of ideas, resources and strategies that prove useful on this journey and create spaces for thinking, resolving and growing. I hope it will grow to that, be a little link in the web.

As all the course content is not my own, I need to do some work on permissions from authors etc. but plan to post slowly as life allows, both the course content and new thoughts.

In the interim I have provided links to a lot of the original sources below as well as other on line parenting resources. Just page down to view these.