Why Moms Need Self-Care
Self-Care : a big buzzword going around these days, and for a good reason! What’s the saying?? Oh yea, – you can’t pour from an empty cup.
And what do mom’s do? We pour and pour and pour out some more, until we are empty, not one drop left for ourselves. We have to be able to renew and recharge so we are able to keep on giving.
Self-care looks different for everyone. It might be a day at the spa, getting nails and hair done. Or maybe it’s a night out with friends to talk and laugh. It might even just be an evening at home reading a good book. But, the reasons why us moms need self care all look very much alike!
Reasons All Moms Need Self-Care
We have NO personal space.
We don’t get to go anywhere alone! Not the bathroom, not the store, not the shower. We love our littles, but they are always there, even in the bedroom while we are changing. And they aren’t just present, but they are clinging to us, asking us questions, crying on us, and commenting the first thing that pops into their head. We begin wonder if there is in invisible umbilical cord still connecting us together.
There are no breaks, no timeouts, and no halftimes.
This is more than a sport. It’s life. After a long day, our feet hurt and our head is whirling. We try to sit in a chair for 5 minutes and suddenly there are little bodies crawling all over us, jabbing us with tiny knees and elbows. (See above paragraph.)
We are tired. Exhausted.
Finally, the day ends and the kids go to bed (after a 30 minute negotiation), but we fight the desire to sleep or to get those 5 minutes to ourselves that we wanted earlier. However, we all know those 5 minutes roll into 10, 20, and 60. We end up going to bed way too late, someone wakes up sick in the middle of the night, and we are starting the day on 5 hours of sleep or less.
Sick days. Are they even a thing anymore?
Mom’s don’t have them. If we are sick we are still making lunches, changing diapers and breaking up arguments. For once, us working moms might have the better deal here. At least if we are the only ones sick, we can still send the kids to daycare and have a few hours of relief.
We have to deal with all the yuck!
Blow out diapers, projectile vomiting, every bodily fluid you could imagine, we have to deal with it. We have to clean it out of the car, the carpet, the bathroom, and off ourselves. And once we think its all clean, we have to start all back over.
The job itself is stressful!
As parents we have about 100 choices a day to make in regards to our children and we go back and forth, stressing over them, hoping we make the right one. Did we give our kids a good start to life? Will they be successful? Well liked? Healthy? The decisions we make could impact their lives for years to come . . . right?
We are constantly told we are doing it wrong.
After we made that overly stressful decision and feel successful, someone (probably another mom) has to comment to us on how we just messed up our kids’ lives. We hold them too much, feed them formula, show our breasts, don’t discipline, are too harsh, give them processed foods, etc., etc. The joke of it is, we couldn’t have picked the “correct” decision no matter which path we chose!
This isn’t to complain.
While this list gets pretty extensive (I know I’ve missed a few!), the point of it isn’t to complain. We know we all LOVE our kids and we all love being a mom. Rather, it’s to stop and appreciate. Appreciate all that we do as moms so that we can stop feeling the mom guilt when we do take the time for self-care. We deserve it! Go out for the spa day. Close the bathroom door and let them scream a bit. We deserve some me time without feeling bad about it.
Also, to remind ourselves, yes, we do all of this stuff day in and day out, and so do other moms. They are just as burnt out and exhausted as we are and they need a friend to support and lift them up. Let’s give each other a hand and help one another out. We don’t know the battles each other are fighting and we never know when jm we might just help lighten someone’s load.
Have any other reason you or a mom you know deserves to take time for herself?! Leave a comment below. Let’s show all moms that we know how much work they do and how appreciated they are! Also check out this post full of easy self-care ideas by a fellow mom blogger! She is great!
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