It is very important for a woman who has just given birth to have another woman nearby — someone who will care not so much for the newborn as for the mother herself. Someone who will place a pillow under her arm to make breastfeeding easier, make her tea with lemon, rock the baby so the new mother can sleep and rest, and so on.

Most importantly, this woman becomes a kind of mother figure — one who understands the new mother even when she does not understand herself and cannot find the words to express what she feels because her thoughts are tangled and words seem to hide.

Every single day, the same conversations can happen again and again, something like this:
— He cried before falling asleep.
— Maybe his tummy hurts? Did he poop today?
— Not yet, but he passed a lot of gas. The baby’s struggling with it.
— Poor thing, suffering again. When will it stop? Soon, I hope.
— It will pass soon.

Sisters, friends, aunts, grandmothers — they don’t just make life more comfortable for the new mother and help with household tasks. They provide psychological support, take on the flow of emotions, soothe her, and give her a chance to recover and catch her breath.

Such women, I think, create something very close to what Winnicott called “holding” — a soft, predictable environment in which the mother-and-infant pair (since, as we know, there is no such thing as an infant apart from the relationship with the mother) can experience separation and the gradual formation of new identities.

Their quiet, wordless presence and simple actions help transform raw, “wild” emotions into something that can be received, thought about, and spoken. Then comes the turning point: what was once a chaotic feeling in the body becomes an experience that can be processed and understood.

As a result, the so-called mother-infant system becomes more stable; the baby’s responses to stress are less chaotic; sleeps more deeply; breastfeeding is calmer; and so on. The mother, in turn, begins to feel effective, balanced, and confident — all critically important during the first months after birth, when the risk of emotional exhaustion is enormous.

This kind of “shared care,” when one woman looks after the baby while another manages the house, and then they switch, creates rhythm and predictability. Rhythm, in turn, structures experience: it reduces chaos, gives emotions boundaries, and restores order to the inner world.

It also supports the capacity for mentalization — the ability to recognize the baby’s needs and emotions through his behavior and to put unspoken fears into words. In family-systems terms, this is a form of “allo-care,” where caregiving is delegated and distributed without damaging relationships — on the contrary, it creates a network of support.

There is also an important element of identification. By observing another mother, the young woman receives a living model of possible motherhood: how to hold the baby, how to rock him, how to respond to his crying, how to recover. These observations are integrated not just as practical instructions but through bodily imitation and emotional resonance — the same mechanisms that shape early attachment. One clear example works better than a dozen pieces of advice.

Finally, this kind of relationship also has a symbolic function. The presence of “another mother” seems to say: You are not alone; your joy and your sorrow are witnessed. This reduces the feeling of isolation, weakens the fear of being a “bad mother,” and eases the anxiety that drives the need to control everything.

From a psychoanalytic point of view, such support is one of the most effective ways to prevent emotional burnout in a young mother and to avoid attachment disturbances in the child.