EP 189: Nurtured Parenting, Co-Regulation, and Infant Sleep with Greer Kirshenbaum

In this episode, Kimberly and Greer discuss her upcoming book “The Nurture Revolution: Grow Your Baby’s Brain and Transform Their Mental Health Through the Art of Nurtured Parenting.” Greer discusses combining her work as a doula, neuroscientist, and sleep specialist after completing research on infant sleep. She proposes “nurtured parenting” as a revolution that tends to the complex emotions and stressors of both parents and infants. With tending to these needs and co-regulation, parents can help babies develop better stress responses in their brains.

Bio

Greer Kirshenbaum PhD is an Author, Neuroscientist, Doula, Infant and Family Sleep Specialist and Mother. She trained at the University of Toronto, Columbia University, New York University and Yale University. Greer has combined her academic training with her experience as a doula and mother to lead The Nurture Revolution. A movement to nurture our babies’ brains to revolutionize mental health and impact larger systems in our world. Greer wants families and perinatal practitioners to understand how early caregiving experience can boost mental wellness and diminish depression, anxiety, and addiction in adulthood by shaping babies’ brains through simple intuitive enriching experiences in pregnancy, birth and infancy. Her book is called The Nurture Revolution: Grow Your Baby’s Brain and Transform Their Mental Health Through the Art of Nurtured Parenting. See the link to her website below.

What She Shares:

–Connecting doula work, parenting, and neuroscience

–Nurtured parenting tending to infant and parental emotions

–Developing brain growth in babies

–Demystifying infant sleep and high needs’ babies

–Emotional co-regulation during infancy

What You’ll Hear:

–How infanthood led her to doula and neuroscience

–Fascinated by early life experience and neuroscience

–Wanting to take research into the public

–Attachment parenting as good foundation for nurtured parenting

–Nurtured parenting tuning to both parent and infant emotional needs

–Nurtured presence and empathy for parent and baby

–Emotional co-regulation at center of parenting practices

–Uniqueness of infant brain

–Baby borrows parent’s brain in places their brain hasn’t developed

–Stress responses and systems in parent brain

–Baby detects parent responses through their senses

–Increasing oxytocin and lowering stress response in baby’s brain

–Co-regulation in first 3 years builds areas of brain to handle stress

–Major life moments and stress responses

–Becoming parent changes brain chemistry similar to infancy

–Brain areas become tuned to be more aware and empathetic of babies

–Brain shifts during perimenopause

–Being near babies also changes brain areas

–Cultural changes causing less experience with babies pre-parenting

–Issues with attachment parenting

–Demystifying infant sleep

–Understanding what is biologically normal for babies

–Cultural expectations are off for infant sleep needs

–Babies develop sleep on their own and can be supported

–Infant sleep like a river and physiological process

–Night-waking, sleeping nearby, closeness

–Circadian rhythm, sleep pressure, stress, daily movement

–Babies don’t need sleep training or sleeping alone

–Sleep in same bed or room for 6 mo to 1 year

–Babies need to sense safety of parents

–Optimal circadian input

–Opportunities for light, movement, and sensory input

–Time in nature and green space helpful for sleep

–Normal features of infant sleep

–Stress reactivity and sensitivity is genetic and experiential

–”High needs” infant sleep

–Intergenerational experiences and epigenetics

–Experiences in ancestry, pregnancy, and birth contribute to temperament

–Identifying needs for intense crying

–Emotional contagion and mirroring

–Addressing parental burnout 

–Infant emotions and physiological responses

–Anticipating infant stressors and verbalization

–Parenting with empathy and compassion to grow brain

Resources

Website:  www.nurture-neuroscience.com

IG: @nurture_neuroscience_parenting