Canadian Mental Health Association: Enjoy Your Baby
Photo by Reynardo Etenia Wongso
The Canadian Mental Health Association is offering a 5-session group-based course, accessible online or in-person, to provide skills and resources to support new parents navigating the postpartum stage.
Enjoy Your Baby is a group-based course grounded in principles of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Led by a certified facilitator, the interactive 5-session course takes place over 5 weeks (10 hours total). The course content and book are designed to be practical and useful in dealing with everyday life situations. The course is suitable for all parents/caregivers of a new baby.
As well as building connections with other new parents, the course learning addresses how to:
• Make positive changes
• Build your confidence as a parent
• Tackle your doubts
• Feel closer to your baby
• Ask for the support you need
• Find some ‘you time’
• Solve problems
The website offers an important note: “The course is not suitable for people having suicidal thoughts or having thoughts of harming themselves or others, or people experiencing symptoms of acute traumatic stress. The course is also not suitable those who are looking for a group-based therapy group or a support group.”
The 5 sessions include:
1. Understanding Your Feelings: New parents are helped to gain understanding of their feelings by learning how our thoughts, feelings, body and behaviours work together and impact us in everyday situations.
2. Building Closeness with Your Baby: Parents will learn strategies and perspectives on how to be kinder to themselves during this time and enjoy time together with baby. They will discuss ways of building a strong bond with their babies and identify and explore activities that create connection with their baby.
3. Doing Things that Make You Both Feel Better: Participants will learn ways of slowly getting back into doing things they enjoy, and how to build a new routine that works for them and their babies.
4. Playing Thought Detective: In this session, participants will learn how unhelpful or negative thinking can impact their feelings and behaviours. They will learn how to identify unhelpful thoughts and how to deal with them, and how to look at things differently (using the Amazing-Unhelpful-Thought-Busting Program strategy)
5. Living Life to the Full with Your Baby: In the final session, new parents will learn strategies for getting better sleep and will explore ways of asking for help when they need it. They will learn techniques for managing anger and frustration, as well as strategies for problem-solving when feeling overwhelmed.
The web page at https://livinglifetothefull.ca/enjoy-your-baby/ has a link to a list of locally-based course locations, and information for community-based organizations that are interested in offering the course in their community.