Having a baby absolutely and irreversibly changes your life. You go from being a carefree, young and vital person to being a parent. Still carefree. Still vital. You may not feel so young. But you are still a person. Before you became ‘mother’ you were you – in love with travel and seeing your friends and perhaps with a penchant for pink gin and lemonade. You were you, and then the baby came along.
A baby switches your focus. One day, you care about which trendy new restaurant you plan to try and the next, you just hope you can eat because you’ve been feeding the entire day and you haven’t even managed to get out of your nightclothes. It happens. Parenthood and the experience of a newborn is hard; which is why you have to fight tooth and nail at all times to ensure that once you become a parent, you know who you are. You need to be able to look in the mirror and see the you that you were before you became a walking milk machine. You need to know that despite the fact that you have bags under your eyes bigger than your last handbag purchase, you still know how to get up and go and have fun that is just for you. It is so easy to get lost in motherhood, so much so that many mothers forget who they were and who they could be.
Motherhood changes you – it this is not a bad thing. You’re a mother, which means that you have an extra string to your bow. It means that you can multitask in ways that you never thought possible. It means that while you once took the sip of a hot coffee for granted, you can now appreciate the delight in a new coffee in Starbucks and sitting by the window to drink it slowly when the baby is with your partner. Motherhood brings joy, unrelenting love and a new you that is born from the squalling life that came from you. However, it also brings sleep deprivation, the feeling of being overwhelmed and raging postpartum hormones. Baby blues aren’t a joke, ladies, and you need to be able to think rationally if you hope to feel like yourself again when your new baby comes into the world. Below, you’ll find five ways that you can shake up your mom life, so that motherhood can be a little easier to cope with and you can discover who you are now – you, just you with a baby!
Make Time For Self-Care
Self-care comes in many forms and you need to strip it back to basics for it to mean something. Care for yourself by choosing to have a long, luxurious shower instead of a quick scrub and a prayer that the baby doesn’t yell. Care for yourself by choosing to eat slowly and batch cook nutritious meals that you can just grab out of the freezer when it’s time to eat. Take the time to feel good about yourself in the pages of a brand new book. You need to carve out at least an hour for yourself each week so that you can feel good about yourself and know that you deserve it.
Go Back To School
You may have already completed a degree or your high school diploma, but being a parent can make you decide to change your career. It’s not that you don’t love what you do, but so many mothers who have a heavy career when they have their baby decide to go ahead and do something different to fit in with motherhood. Checking out no credit check student loans so that you can fund your desire for a new course is a smart idea. You could be anything that you want to be, and you know that your baby is your motivation to get you there.
Take Up A Hobby
Being a mom, you’re stuck in the house much of the time – particularly if your baby loves you so much that they just will.not.sleep. So, you need to get out of the house as much as possible, and by taking up a hobby, you can do this with ease. You could try getting out to the gym, going to a night class for cooking or sewing or you could even join an art club and learn to paint. Start a blog, or learn affiliate marketing! The world is your oyster.
Date Your Partner
You’ve done the dating thing, you may even be engaged or married. However, motherhood can make you lose the romance a little as you set into new routines that sees you as ships in the night. Take the time to date again. Go out and have dinner and leave the baby with grandma – even for an hour or two for a walk. Get out and do something together. You’ll never regret remembering why you fell in love.
Go To Work
With the best intentions, you could well have loved the idea of being at home with the baby and being a stay at home mom. Unfortunately, a lot of moms get a little more than overwhelmed at this. They prefer to add work into their lives, even one day a week, to keep them around other adults and feel like they’re doing something for themselves. And do you know what? It’s awesome. If you want to work, you should work, and do it for you!
Motherhood is quite possibly the best thing that you’ll ever do. However, it doesn’t mean that you can’t still be yourself along the way. Take some time to remember who you were before you became ‘mom’ and work hard to keep who you are as current as your status as a brand new mother. It’s an adventure that has ups and downs, and you should remember this as you embark on your new life. Your life is going to get busy and you can keep hold of who you are with some focus.
See you next time!
