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I don’t think I have met one mom that hasn’t experienced or is currently totally exhausted
It is part of the job description
But you may know that there are different kinds of tired
Figuring out which one you are can help you fight the constant exhaustion and feel better more than you feel terrible
There are 11 reasons you may be exhausted that I came up with and experienced as a twin mom:
- The mental load is exhausting
- Hormones make a huge impact
- You do a lot of work!
- You aren’t getting enough good sleep
- Eating enough nutrients is hard
- We tend to put our needs last
- We lose all sense of who we are
- You are always hyper-vigilant
- We feel guilty for doing fun things for ourselves
- Humans aren’t meant to multi-task, but we have to
- Moms expect perfection from themselves
You may be experiencing one or more of these, but they all have something in common
They all take away energy and contribute to your exhaustion
The mental load is exhausting
Mental load
Decision fatigue
Having to remember everything
These are things that are often put on the mom of the family
I experience this one a lot
My husband tries, but he has a terrible memory
My mental load is extremely heavy and it takes a lot of energy
Even if I am not doing anything, my brain is working a million miles an hour
Everything that we do as humans either gives us energy or takes it
The mental load definitely takes it
One of the only things I have found that helps this is to write down everything
To-do lists, calendar events, meal plans, ideas for the kids, etc
By writing it down either on paper or digitally, I can let it go in my mind
I find that my mind repeats things over and over again which only makes things more exhausting and overwhelming
The only time I get mental peace is when I have removed everything from my mind and put them on paper
This includes journaling thoughts or mental meltdowns
If it is overwhelming my brain, it goes on paper
Hormones make a huge impact
I didn’t realize how much hormones affected me until I went off birth control
I turned into a completely different person!!!
Instead of always feeling terrible, drained, and emotionally depleted…
I felt energized and more prepared to take on the day
This feeling only increased when I worked on our diets and took the right supplements
Hormones do more than we realize
If you are on medicine that involves hormones at all, that may be a big reason that you are always tired
You do a lot of work!
I know it doesn’t always feel like it
There are times I clean my home multiple times a day and it still looks destroyed in 5 minutes
But it is true!
You do a lot!
Take a few minutes and write down everything you do like you are instructing someone else
For example, don’t say “clean the house”
You have to list it out:
- Pick up the toys in the living room
- Dust the tables
- Vacuum
- Dust the fans
- Clean the windows
- Start the laundry
- Etc
When you list everything that you do like that, you will quickly see that you do a lot
One thing that I encourage you to do is to look at that daily list and see what you can make every other day instead
Then make time for you so you can recharge
The to-do list can wait if your health is on the line
You can’t do anything when you are too burnt out or sick from doing it all
And remember to appreciate yourself
You do a lot
You aren’t getting enough good sleep
Sleep is something that most moms struggle with
You either don’t get enough sleep or you don’t get good enough sleep
There are different sleep cycles that you need to feel rested
You need stage 3 sleep to heal your body
And you need REM sleep to heal your mind
The problem is that your mind knows that waking up during those cycles is very hard
And you go into them less knowing that your babies may need you at any moment
This leads to surface level sleep that doesn’t actually give you any rest
Meditation and a nightly plan are my ways of helping this
My husband is great and takes the night shift, but not everyone gets that
Pay attention to what your kids need at night and have it ready before you go to bed
The less you are worried about not being awake enough if they need you, the better you will sleep
Eating enough nutrients is hard
Moms are busy and often end up eating the easiest things they can find because of the exhaustion
Sadly, that only makes the exhaustion worse
Your body needs a healthy mix of fuel to function right
So taking the times to give your body what it needs is important to keep your energy up
I like to prep ahead
I spend a little time every week to make easy meals that I can grab throughout my day
We tend to put our needs last
Every mom that I have met, including me, has struggled with the idea that everything needs to be done first before they do anything for themselves
The problem is that there is never a time when everything is done!
So what we do is we give and give until we have nothing left
Then we feel guilty that we can give as much as we used to
It isn’t possible to give so much without filling for long
The expectations that we give ourselves sets us up for failure
One of the things I do to help is imagine my kids doing what I am doing
Would I be proud?
Or would I be worried?
If I don’t think it is healthy for my kids, then I need to reevaluate why I am doing it to myself
We lose all sense of who we are
I hear it over and over again
And I experienced it myself
Being a mom tends to take over every part of your life
If you can’t pee by yourself, how are you supposed to do things that you enjoy?
The less you do things that feed your soul, the more you lose who you are
Then the day comes when you don’t know who you are outside of being a mom
I was there
I didn’t know who I was and felt so tired and burnt out
The only things waiting for me were work and more exhaustion
Of course i loved my kids, but I had nothing left in me
I felt broken and lost
Good news is that your are not broken and lost
You just need to set your soul on fire again
Whie it isn’t easy, doing little things for you throughout the day works
But that looks different for everyone
I want you to start a notebook
Every time you try something new or do things you regularly do, write down the action and how you felt after
You are looking for actions that give you a skip in your step and fill your heart with joy
For me, creating things with my hands and making food that my family loves fills my heart with joy
So I make time at least every other day to do those things
Even if I only do it for a few minutes
Find the things that make you feel like you again and do those things more often
And don’t be surprised if those things change throughout your life
You are always hyper-vigilant
I have special needs twins
I am on constant high alert
But I think all default parents understand this
You are constantly listening for things out of the ordinary, paying attention to threats, looking for things that they need, and more
Even when you are sleeping you are on high alert because your kids may wake up and need you
Or you are on top of your phone when your kids are at the babysitter just in case
This state of hyper-vigilance is exhausting
I don’t have a lot of solutions for this except learning to trust others
If kids are with the babysitter, keep your phone near but learn to stop constantly worry
Talk to your partner about taking shifts on who is taking a break and who is the person in charge (if you have a partner willing to do that)
The key is that you have to learn because hyper-viligance is a habit
And habits take time and effort to change and adjust
We feel guilty for doing fun things for ourselves
Most moms know al too much about mom guilt
We have convinced ourselves that time used on us is somehow taking away from our children
This is just not true
Your kids need time to do fun things, and so do you
You didn’t stop being human when you became a mom
I have the same suggestion that I had before
If your kids talked to themselves and treated themselves the way you are, would you be worried or proud?
Humans aren’t meant to multi-task, but we have to
As someone who was once very proud of being able to always multi-task…
It isn’t good for us
The truth is that our brains can’t multi-task
We are just switching between tasks at very fast rates
But our brains use a lot of energy every time we switch tasks
We can do more with less energy if we do one thing at a time and switch tasks as little as possible
But that isn’t the reality of a mom
We have to do several things at the same time or nothing would get done
Just realizing that multi-tasking takes a lot of energy may be enough to have an AHA moment
Instead of trying to do 5 things at the same time, do as few tasks at the same time as you can
You will find that you get more done because you don’t have so much time and energy burnt from switching tasks all the time
Moms expect perfection from themselves
We teach our kids that mistake happen and that it doesn’t define them, but then we beat ourselves up over every little thing we do
Even if we do something well, we beat ourselves up because we could have done it better
This does two things to your energy levels
It is exhausting to have such high expectations all the time
And it takes away the energy recovery when we take the good and make it bad
That means that we are taking away twice the energy for every task than they should be taking
No wonder moms are exhausted!
Working on self-talk is a huge part of changing this
You are not perfect and your kids don’t need you to be
There is no good from a perfect parent
Kids learn to handle mistakes from watching their parents handle mistakes
If you pretend that you have no faults, they will feel less about themselves because they can’t reach your level of perfection
Even if that perfection isn’t real
Be real about your mistakes and be an example of how to work through those mistakes in a healthy way
What can we do about it?
Knowing why you are exhausted is a perfect first step to breaking the cycle
I believe that there will always be a level of exhaustion as a parent, but it doesn’t have to be so chronically terrible
Learn your reason or reasons for being exhausted and take small steps towards change
Don’t try to change all at once because you are more likely to fail
Smal steps are more successful and they add up fast
You got this!