What happens to your brain as a mother or father?

Written on 01/26/2024
She Births®

‘Intuition is the parental brain working’ with Neuroscientist Rocio Zunini🎙️

Neuroscientist Rocio Zunini Podcast image

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Welcome, dear listeners, to 2024. I am so happy that this season of the podcast has decided to be about intuition. It is one of my favourite topics, and I believe it is also one of our superpowers as mums.

This season I will be exploring intuition and of course other topics with professionals and parents around the world.

Today’s podcast is with Rocio Zunini, a neuroscientist with a Phd from the University of Ottawa and mother of two.

She is the founder of Newborn Parents, which was born out of a fusion of her two passions: the brain and the relationship between parents and their infants.

She educates parents and professionals about parental brain science so that they can take advantage of the profound brain changes that accompany matrescence and patrescence.

She is also an advocate for nurturing infant sleep.

She firmly believes that when parents and professionals learn about the power of the parental brain, they can create a path for a lifelong nurturing relationship within families and their babies.

I couldn’t agree more! And birth is the big bang beginning of this relationship.

Today with Rocio we explore the parental brain and the amazing changes that occur across pregnancy, birth and postpartum…And I mean in my experience, when does matrescence ever end? Our children, if we maintain a relationship with them and want to have quality connection then we have to continue adapting and growing. They continue to keep us on our toes.

I’m hoping I might even convince Leroy to come on this season, even though as a philosopher, he doesn’t actually believe in intuition I think it would be fabulous to hear about quarter-life and his 21st birthday experience. Let me know if you would like to hear about that. For me I was so emotional I could hardly give the speech.

Anyhoo! Today we discuss

  • How the parental brain is highly dependent upon experience and environment
  • How parents and infants synchronise, and children borrow our nervous systems
  • How we can nurture, embrace and help this process of brain development
  • Why it is so important to take care of the Information we are putting in, not just food
  • Why we often feel anxious as new mums, and how to manage this
  • Did you know that because the brain is more malleable, you can actually benefit more from yoga and mindfulness
  • We also describe the brain networks that change during matrescence, which are: reward, protector, emotional and empathy systems
  • The importance of joy and mutual delight!

I love how brain science reiterates so much of what we practice in our Soul Mama Circles, which start up again in February. 100% of mums say that they loved the process and found it priceless btw.

Also the wisdom and importance of She Births to utilise both bottom up and top down approaches in education.

So I hope that there will be joy in your new year, whenever or wherever you are listening to this podcast.

I love hearing from you. Leave us a review, send us an email and let us know what you think and feel please.

We have so many exciting things to share this year. My new one day Masterclass is a hybrid learning program with the online course. It is a one day live program plus zoom workshops for Q&A and allows me to include some of my new teachings about intuition, embodiment and matrescence.

Our new She Births® Guide and Educator training is launching again. We have a vision to reach so many more families but we need your help. If you are passionate about helping restore the sacredness of birth in your community and helping others have beautiful births then reach out.

Links

www.newbornparents.net

Weekend course dates https://shebirths.com/weekend-birthing-classes/events/

Soul Mama Circle https://shebirths.com/mothers-groups/