I was chatting with a client a couple weeks ago. We were chuckling while reminiscing back to when we were pregnant.
Both of us had the same thoughts…
When anticipating life with our first baby we both thought that life would be the same…just with a baby!
The baby would just be kind of like an accessory to our current life.
And wow. I couldn’t have been more wrong with that idea.
After my baby was born it felt like a bomb went off in my life - nothing felt the same.
One of the hardest things for me was figuring out HOW to take care of myself WHILE ALSO caring for the immense needs of this other tiny human.
And believe me, it’s taken years to figure that out.
Do you relate to that?
Many of the clients that I work with also struggle with this too. Caring for their own needs.
Why is this so hard?
Here are three reasons why caring for yourself in the season of life with young kids is so hard and challenging:
Taking care of a baby and/or young kids is all consuming. Parenting is a 24/7 job. There are no breaks. Young kids are very demanding on your time, physical and mental energy. Parenting is exhausting. Many of us are caught off guard by this as that’s not what we see in the media or on social media. If you find parenting hard - it’s not because you’re doing anything wrong, it’s because IT IS REALLY HARD.
The workload is staggering. Not that many generations ago (and for most of human history), we have lived as human beings in villages. The workload of raising children, cooking, cleaning, tasks of daily life would have been shared amongst a group of people. Now, we are expected to do the work of an entire village. And it’s crushing us.
Your OWN needs are very high in this season of life. After birth, most of the attention shifts to the child - making sure they are eating, sleeping, growing, learning, etc. But a mother’s needs are very high in postpartum (the months and years after birth), yet she’s often overlooked and forgotten. Here’s the thing. Healing cannot be bi-passed or ignored after birth. If this healing doesn’t take place in the first months, your body will remain unbalanced, dysregulated and depleted for months, years and even decades.
This isn’t a simple or easy season of life.
It’s complex, nuanced and challenging.
Give yourself a lot of compassion and grace today if you are struggling. You aren’t alone.
Warmly,
Amy
Your dietitian doula
P.S. - Would you like to chat further about how I can help you learn to support the healing your body needs to do after birth?
If so email me at amy@amymarshall.ca or you can book a free Postpartum Depletion Call with me <<Book a call here>>