Elizabeth Adams-Cairns describes the early years of parenthood as the hardest of her life, as she juggled a toddler, work and an interstate move, followed by a new baby. During this period, a few drinks with other mums wasn’t so much a fix for her anxiety as it was a way of feeling like her old self again – a person who had more freedom.
One in six Australian mothers report drinking alcohol at risky levels in the first year of their baby’s life – a fact that won’t surprise anyone who’s ever wrangled the demands of early motherhood.
“The first three years of motherhood are a complex time,” says Dr Katrina Prior, senior research fellow at the University of Sydney’s Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Abuse, which did the research into drinking in early motherhood.
“You can be in a relationship yet still feel isolated, and as much as you might love being a new mum you can also be having an identity crisis, learning to adapt to a different life with less freedom. It’s easy to open the cupboard and pour a drink as a way to cope,” Prior says.
This was the case for Adams-Cairns.
“I’d been a party girl, and when you go out, you get a glimpse of your former self,” says the 39-year-old Sydney accounts manager. “I did feel like my old self, but I’d be hungover the next day and began to realise it wasn’t worth it. I felt so guilty after a few drinks and I didn’t want to feel the shame.”
But while Adams-Cairns’ drinking wasn’t sustainable, it was socially acceptable.
‘Wine mum’ culture
“There have been so many jokes and memes about mums and wine on social media that it’s normalised using alcohol as a way to cope with the pressure, like a reward for surviving a difficult day,” says Prior.
“There’s a lot of talk about how hard it is in the trenches of early motherhood, but not about ways of managing it. Yet research shows that many women have significant anxiety and depression, as well as risky alcohol use during this period.”
The Matilda Centre, which develops programs to prevent and treat problems with mental health and substance use, has launched a clinical trial of an online program, Healthy Mum, Healthy Bub, to help women in the early stages of parenthood manage issues with anxiety and alcohol. It’s been created alongside women with their own experiences of alcohol and early parenting.
One of them is Victoria Vanstone, whose award-winning Sober Awkward podcast features conversations about drinking too much and how to change it. Vanstone, a mother of three, also hosts a podcast series called MAMA – short for Motherhood, Alcohol, Mental Health and Anxiety – that acts as a companion to the program’s modules, and provides tools for making changes to drinking habits and managing stress.
Vanstone is honest about her own battles with alcohol as a new mother in the past, and the anxiety generated by the shame she felt about drinking.
It’s not always about going sober
Change doesn’t have to be about quitting drinking completely. The Healthy Mum, Healthy Bub program, which is currently recruiting participants, is more about helping women rethink their relationship with alcohol, Vanstone says.
“A lot of new mums feel anxious and overwhelmed, and we’re an easy target for the alcohol industry with all those pink drinks. But if we can talk about our alcohol use, then we can start looking outside it for something else that can help.”
Among her top tips for controlling alcohol use is learning to sit with a craving, or “urge surfing”, the knack of riding out the wave of needing a drink. In these moments, a healthy distraction like calling a friend or putting the kettle on can help retrain the brain, Vanstone says.
When you’re irritable and hungover, it’s hard to be consistent and responsive with young children, says Prior, adding that the program’s focus on mothers with young children is based on research showing that the first 1000 days of life – from birth to around age three – are critical for children’s physical, psychological and neurological development.
“It’s a time when mental health issues including social, emotional and behavioural problems can first emerge.”
For Adams-Cairns, finding balance with her drinking means she still goes out with friends, but she puts certain rules in place before she does, like making sure she stays sober enough to drive home.
“I can have one and then stop, which means I can have fun and still get up at 5am and feel OK,” she says. “I don’t need to be lubricated to have deep chats with friends either – we can have coffee and go straight to, ‘How are you feeling?’”
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