Willow is on a mission to make your world better and in doing that, we’re partnering with experts like Canopie so that you have access to the information, education and resources to make your life easier—from pumping to breastfeeding to supporting your mental health—moms deserve a better world.

As part of our ongoing commitment to supporting moms in their postpartum journey, we tapped Lauren Mollica, the Clinical Care and Support Coordinator at Canopie for her insights on everyone’s favorite topic du jour: keeping a watchful eye on your mental health. At Canopie, their program integrates clinically validated techniques like Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Interpersonal Therapy (IT) and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) to give new parents the treatment best for them.

We asked Lauren what she felt were the key things that new parents needed to break up with postpartum, and sheesh, these hit close to home.

If you’re pregnant now, it’s important to know that the postpartum period is a lot—emotionally, mentally and physically. We spend so much time worrying about our pregnancy and taking care of our bodies and minds at that point, but there is a lot that happens postpartum as well. A huge piece of advice I have is to take the time during your pregnancy to look ahead, prepare for your mental health through education and resources, and get familiar with the tools you might need so that you can come back to them. If it feels hard to know how you could be feeling in those postpartum days, try to talk to moms who have been there and what they could’ve used more support with. It’s also important that you loop in loved ones and partners so they know what to expect, too!

Getting help doesn’t have to be a big commitment. Support can be accessible and easy to use. At Canopie, we created a 12-day program with really bite-sized experiences segmented into 3-5 minute blocks of time. We know how time-strapped new moms are and this was specifically designed to support the mom with zero childcare.

It might not be realistic to say “I will look at zero Instagram,” but setting a goal to not go on instagram in the middle of night when you’re tired and stressed and subjecting yourself to aspirational mom influencers is achievable. Make some boundaries for yourself and be precious with your boundaries.

Be aware that these exist. There is a lot of pressure out there for new moms to be a mom that does this and doesn’t do that. And before becoming a new mom you might have your own preconceived ideas of what a mom should/shouldn’t be. Remember that this is where your boundaries come in and it’s important to recognize these as intrusive thoughts before they bleed into mom guilt.

Something that Canopie does is break down emotion regulation and explain how the brain and nervous system works in an understandable way. As a new parent, you can use that with your child, mirroring good emotional regulation skills. For example, we show you how to recognize when your threat system is activated and what that looks like, feels like, and means for you. We then give you tools like slow, soothing breathing to help send signals to the brain that you are safe and okay. When you can demonstrate to your kiddo how to overcome hard moments rather than pretend they don’t exist, both of you will benefit in the long run.

Canopie believes that every mom should have access to effective mental health care and every mom deserves to have the tools to help manage the inevitable ups and downs of this transition. Their app and resources focus on the challenges that all moms and parents face as they transition from the prenatal to postnatal period. Download our Willow Go app for access to our integrated pumping and resource experience.