Archives for posts with tag: motherhood

Even Serena Williams finds it hard…

December 19, 2017 //
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Serena Williams

 

It’s so hard when you feel completely out of your depth with a new baby. I made Babyhood because thats how i felt. And I couldn’t find the answers I was looking for anywhere. My mum had parented me in a completely different way and she couldn’t provide the answers. The books I looked around and found were full of strict schedules and making sure you let the baby know who was “boss”.

I heard babies crying in the street and felt compelled to answer their cries with agreement…”yes this world is not catering to the needs of babies!” We want to hush them down, placate them, silence their cries, but actually all they need is to be heard.

And Serena needs to be heard too, so desperate to be heard that she tweets her ten million followers and asks for help! The only problem is that each of the 10 million followers who want to offer advice have learned how to parent their small babies in a totally unique way, and no-one will be able to put Serena’s mind at rest.  Instead I want to help her realise that she has the answers deep inside, intuitively. Her baby has never known another mother, and how Serena is as a mother is perfect to her baby, just like her baby is perfect to Serena (even with all the crying). We learn to be mothers at the same time our babies learn to be mothered and it is a unique journey for each of us.

Babyhood looks at this world from the view of a baby and helps us to wake up to their needs, as well as rest into our own abilities to meet those needs. Let’s start to realise that babies aren’t foreign aliens who we never learn to understand but instead they are intelligent beings who communicate with us in a multitude of ways that we learn from them.

One thing we have been doing for a very long time is having babies so it is locked into our genome somewhere, and just needs to be heard…

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Categories Babyhood film

Helping New Mums…

February 6, 2013 //
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FTDYWB

It seems like this year has whizzed past. My second little one is now reaching his first birthday, and so it is exactly a year since i finished making Babyhood.

I can’t believe how much my life has changed, but also how much my film seems to have resonated with people throughout 2012, so much so that I am involved in a pilot scheme in my area which sets out to improve the life of children.  I am part of a government funded “co-design” group, and we have decided to create a series of drop-ins specifically focused on pregnant women, new mums and mums with little one’s under a year. We are also creating an alternative Bounty Pack, which will have a copy of my film in it.

As I live in Westminster in London, we are a very densely populated ward, and therefore we are trying to help all kind of women from different backgrounds. Some of them have great attitudes towards babies, some have forgotten how to listen to their instincts. It is a great challenge, but fascinating, as what is clear from every angle is that attachment theory is something that everyone needs to be better versed in. And that gives me great joy. We are at last starting to make a difference to the lives of our children and their lives as adults if we can help them at this vulnerable and so important stage of life.

🙂

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Categories Uncategorized