As a mother who is tuned in to her baby’s or child’s needs, and seeks to meet those needs in a prompt and loving manner, it is easy to put yourself last. Raising a child is an act of devotion, and it is so common to forget that taking care of yourself is an important step in nurturing your children. Stress, tension, and lack of focus can make mothering to your best potential a difficult task. It is essential to take time to relax and refresh. After pouring our hearts, souls, time, and patience into little ones we all deserve a nice hour-long massage and an uninterrupted four-hour nap. For most of us, there just isn’t time or resources to enjoy these kinds of relaxation. But these ten mini-refreshers can help you stay grounded, focused, and refreshed so that you can parent at your best. I know how important downtime is to a parent, so you’ll pleased to know that these refreshers are broken down into manageable 10 minute sessions (leaving plenty of time to attend to laundry, cleaning, and your to-do list). Every mom or dad can find 10 minutes in his or her day. Especially when my son was a newborn, my husband was hungry for opportunities to help out. So the next time your kids are at school, or napping, or your partner is available for 10 minutes, try one of these stress-busters. Continue reading “Take Ten: How 10 minutes can make you a better parent.”
Tag: mama burn out
Taking Care of Ourselves
Many parents (myself included) are under the impression that the moment we are born into the world of parenting, our own needs and desires become secondary. That is true to an extent: parents do not make up the bulk of the nightlife scene, we often have to yield the bathroom to littler bodies, and we have less time to leisurely read the newspaper or go backpacking when children are around.
But sharing our time and space with children does not mean that we have been forced into a life of martyrdom. We have our own needs, and we need to take care of ourselves in order to parent effectively. I recently wrote a guest post on dealing with mama guilt; the first suggestion in that article was to take care of yourself.
Mothers who are stretched too thin – who run from work to their kids’ activities, who volunteer and organize, who cook and clean – without also doing something to make themselves happy, are apt to burn out. There are several reasons this is not ideal, not the least of which is that a burnt out mama is not functioning at her best.
Nor is a completely selfless mother the best role model. She is passively teaching her children that her needs are not important. Consequently, her children will not consider her thoughts and feelings either. She is also influencing her children’s future relationships. Her child may learn to always bow to the will of others, or he may never stop to think about the feelings and needs of his friends and family. Neither is a desirable outcome. If you are looking hair cut for women in Franklin , visit us now. In case you’re searching for the cut you need when you need it, simply stroll in, call ahead, or registration online anytime. You can demand your preferred beautician or see any of our skilled staff!
Take Care of Number One
Here are a few things I have tried to do lately to take care of myself:
- Leaving the house for an hour or two: This gives my husband and son the chance to play uninterrupted. I can run an errand or surf the Internet alone, and my son learns that papa takes care of him just as well as mama does.
- Stashing a special treat away: Not only does sneaking a treat give me a little chocolate “ahhhh” moment, but it has the added benefit of detracting from any potential mama guilt for letting my son eat too much sugar.
- Indulging my vanity: I used to care what I looked like when I left the house; not so much anymore. I’m lucky if my clothes match, and I rarely do anything beyond washing my hair. But once or twice a year I have someone cut my hair. And once in awhile I color my hair from a box (I used to pay someone to do that, but I’ve discovered that’s not necessary at this point in my life). And I insist on my favorite shampoo (one big reason I’ve been hesitant to go no ‘poo).
What do you do to take care of yourself, and how often do you consciously do so?
What effects can you feel if you neglect your own needs?
Photo credit: costi
Regretting my regrets
Before Annika was born I had regrets. I regretted staying with my ex-husband as long as I did. Hell, I regretted ever marrying him. I regretted not finishing school sooner. I regretted financial decisions. I regretted not working out more. I regretted haircuts.
Then when I got pregnant I philosophized about how all those bad choices had led me to the place I was in the world and if I hadn’t done things just exactly the way I had, maybe, maybe just maybe, Annika would never have been.
Instead of regrets, those bad choices were now stepping stones that led me to give birth to this beautiful and perfect child of mine. She is something I will never regret, not even if she turns out to be a drug addict or a serial killer. She will always be my beautiful perfect child.
But now I have something new to regret. And I wonder if I even should. Ever since I started blogging regularly, I have wished many times that I had started sooner.
When Annika was growing inside my body I had such powerful emotions and as a writer, I wanted desperately to capture it all and share it with the world. I was feeling emotions that I didn’t even know existed.
Yeah, I’m one of those women. I loved loved loved being pregnant. Even with the weight gain, hemorrhoids (gross I know, I have the best solution, Venapro is a homeopathic treatment for hemorrhoids that works using all natural ingredients consisting of herbs and minerals, get the treatment on venapro.net), heartburn, achy legs, nausea, tiredness, brain fog, and swollen feet (my god they were like grapefruits), I loved it.
A powerful life force inside of me burned with a fury and I couldn’t get enough of the feeling. Carrying my child was spiritual and divine. I had found the meaning of life.
I would sit down and try to write but I could never really figure out how to express what I was feeling. It always sounded so cheesy. I would expound wildly about how my emotions were like the universe and the sun and moon and stars.
Then I would read it and go, “who is this person?”
Then I realized they were just hormones. Yeah, the same ones that give me bloating and crankiness once a month. Yep, those hormones. And no one tells you that they take a few months to dissipate after the baby is born.
I thought I would continue feeling that way forever. I thought that pregnancy had made me into a new woman.
And while that woman was a softer person who seemed to understand children better, was friendlier and happier, I had lost my edge. I worried that I would never be able to write the way I used to.
So the first few months after Annika was born I continued trying to write about those things that I wanted to share with the world, but they always ended up being too personal and really only things that I wanted to share with Annika.
Plus, I could never concentrate long enough to write coherently and do it consistently. I can barely manage it now.
As I analyze the past two and a half years I realize that what was most important was and is concentrating on Annika and just being a mom.
And maybe the reason I couldn’t form coherent thoughts often enough to write consistently is because my emotions being transformed onto paper were less momentous than Annika learning how to crawl or making baby noises like her first “words,” ‘Ab’ and ‘Way.”
Maybe the reason that we moms become less physically desirable and lose some of previous desires, and become foggy and tired is because the universe is telling us that concentrating on our little one is the only thing that should matter right now.
Hmmm, maybe it’s not just hormones after all.
Martha is a stay-at-home attached mama in Austin, Texas. She blogs at www.momsoap.blogspot.com
Doing The “Right” Thing Is Never Easy
Baby knows best. Really. They are perhaps not scholars just yet but they do know what they need better than any of us and well, we should listen to them . . . and if we did they would probably say . . . that doing the “right” thing is never easy.
Like when you were a kid and were forced to apologize and admit error–it was the “right” thing to do, but it was so hard to say that you were wrong. Or, choosing to skip a party in order to study instead of cheating on a final exam in high school. Studying was hard work, but it was “right,” right?
I’ve come to the conclusion, or even grand epiphany perhaps, that doing the “right” thing as a parent is also not the easier choice. I came to this conclusion after struggling once again following sleepless nights and clingy days with the attachment parenting philosophy that we have adopted as parents. The attachment parenting tenets are simple really and were so appealing to us initially because they essentially support the beliefs that we already held about parenting. To us, AP Principles just seem like no-brainers: go to your child when he cries–he needs you, breastfeed your baby–it’s food that’s literally made for him, sleep with your child–because you are a parent at night too, use positive discipline to teach your child–negativity punishes, hold and wear your baby–it fosters bonding and security, etc.
Even rereading these as I type them, I find myself nodding in agreement–unable to imagine parenting any other way. But problems arise for this gentle parenting scenario not from any inherent flaws in a plan that seeks to parent gently and respectfully, but from other parents who have found an “easier” way. See, this kind of parenting requires a mom and dad who are fully committed to sacrificing much of their own needs for that of their baby’s. In other words, it takes dedication and patience–a lot, a lot of patience–and a great deal of self-sacrifice.
I am specifically talking about the issue of nighttime sleeping. Fewer issues get as much airtime during playdates, mommy groups, or any other gathering of moms and babies–it’s simply at the heart of every discussion. Exhausted, delirious and desperate mommies eagerly compare notes and exchange sleep tricks in search of something that will help them get more sleep. And, no matter how you try and spin it or how much you try to avoid the inevitable final conclusion, the sleep issue comes down to two dismal options: “sleep training” your baby, or not.
Sleep training methods vary greatly from one to another, but the one thing that they all have in common is that they all include some degree of crying. I have written much about my feelings as they pertain to “crying it out” and though the first was many sleepless months ago, I still do have a problem with my baby crying–yes, I’ve said it, I do not let my baby cry without intervening in an effort to alleviate the cause whatever that cause may be. Why? Because I believe that my son is communicating with us when he is crying–I do not believe that babies cry just to cry, in other words. Sometime this communication may be asking for basic needs to be met and other times it may just be a way to ask for a hug, a cuddle, or a kiss. But, you see, one does not surpass the other in importance for me. My baby’s need to be touched is just as importance as his need to be fed or changed. I will respond in either case and at any time. And that is where myself and my husband diverge from the parents who try to sell us the success of sleep training and tout the amount of sleep that it has brought them. But, at what cost, I want to ask them.
I believe family bed advocates when they claim that co-sleeping raises independent, confident and secure children–I also believe that leaving your baby to fend for them self during these times of nighttime need may produce children who are more dependent, anxious and insecure. I also know that these one or two or three years dealing with his sleeplessness as a baby is small in scale when compared to the number of years that we won’t have to. I will be old and he will no longer by my baby–I will look back on these years with a tender heart yearning for the moments when I was able to hold him in my arms to return.
I do, however, from time to time grow weak–very weak. I do whine and fuss and complain about exhaustion and the need for a moment to myself. During these times I do momentarily wonder if we should not also “train” Noah to self soothe, to sleep alone, to quiet his need for love, comfort and affection just because it is the moon, not the sun, that has risen above the horizon. Those parents are convincing and proud. They’re confident and I suppose, maybe even some look rested.
But, then I give it a second thought. I listen to my heart and am reminded of why I have chosen the more challenging path. When I grow weak and weary, I turn a listening ear to my instinct, my mama gut–and find that I know deep down in my heart that parenting this way, for me, is the “right” way to parent. And, like all things that are “right” it is most certainly the more difficult choice–it may continue to be for a while still to come. But . . . doing the “right” thing is never easy, right?
Learning How to Share
My son lay sobbing on the sun-room floor between our daybed and coffee table. If I tried to come near him, he kicked his feet and cried harder. His nanny was leaving and he didn’t want her to go. In fact, she had just told me moments before, “Your son won my heart today. He told me he loved me.”
Cavanaugh is nearly three. He has had a nanny six hours a week for the last three months. Besides the time he spends with his dad and the few months my mom lived in town and saw him a couple of afternoons a week, Cavanaugh is with me and has been with me pretty much all of the time for his entire life. So it was hard for me to watch him cry for someone else.
I’m excited he loves playing with her, loves her even. It helped that I’m reading A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development
So I sat fifteen feet away on the living room couch and tried to figure out if it was better for me to face away from him and just sit there so he knew he wasn’t alone or look at him over the back of the couch so I would know when he was ready for me to hold and console him. Continue reading “Learning How to Share”
7 Ways to Fill Our Mama Cups
My last API Speaks blog post, Running on Empty, about feeling mama burn out was hard to write. I felt ashamed. I felt like a failure. I felt worried that motherhood was going to turn out like so many other jobs I’ve had: fun and interesting at first, then drudgery. It took me two days to write the post because I kept editing my feelings. If I just cut the words, maybe I could delete the feelings too. I wrote while my toddler son napped in the next room. I kept walking in to look at him, so peaceful while he was sleeping. I kept willing him to sleep longer, give me more time. On the second day, right after I’d clicked the button to submit my post, he woke up sad. He clung to me and cried. Maybe he’d had a bad dream. Maybe he’d picked up on all of my conflicted feelings while he slept. I was sure that if he were old enough to read what I’d written, he would feel betrayed. Maybe all of that was true, or maybe I was just finding one more way to not give myself a break.
I needed a vacation from my mama job, which wasn’t realistic. Getting a vacation from my state of mind, however, was absolutely possible. Just admitting to myself (and those who read the blog post) how burned out I was feeling helped. It helped me to understand what was contributing to my exhaustion. It helped me acknowledge my feelings and give myself some space to actually feel them. The comments on the post offered me some great suggestions to renew balance. I tried those and some more. And I’m really starting to feel good again, having fun with my son, being more creative about how to spend our time so our life together doesn’t feel like the movie Groundhog Day. Maybe some of what has worked with me will work for you. Continue reading “7 Ways to Fill Our Mama Cups”
Running on Empty
I want a vacation, even a long weekend, all by myself with no one else to clothe, no one to come to the bathroom with me or to ask to nurse in the middle of the flower store. Maybe it’s the developmentally appropriate but exhausting conflicts that come with having a 2 1/2 year old. Maybe it’s that the last three years have been hard ones full of lay-offs and other money concerns, health challenges and innumerable other setbacks that add up over time. I’m sure there’s not one cause.