Tag: postpartum burnout

Health & Wellness

#momlife Sucks Sometimes and I’m Not Afraid to Say It

Alasen Zarndt

Sometimes, #momlife sucks. I said what I said.

You get stuck in a rut. The groundhog day of never ending snack making, butt wiping, mess cleaning, tantrum bearing, fight stopping, UGH. 

You wake up before you feel rested. Usually by a toddler with so much energy they’re already bouncing off the walls and whining for breakfast. 

So you move like a zombie out of bed and throw on some clothes (nevermind the inner dialogue about nothing fitting your post baby bod and never looking cute). Down to the kitchen to make something for the kiddo. Hopefully you get a bite to eat too, or at least a sip or two of cold coffee?

Then it’s an attempt to wipe the kid’s faces and hands before they track jelly all over the living room. And a frantic 5 minutes of cleaning up the kitchen and putting away food before you’re called to take care of something else.

During the week, we’re packing lunches and backpacks and rushing off to daycare and work. We’ve already gone through a mental workout before we’re even in the car, making sure we didn’t forget one of the 100’s of things needed for school, daycare, or our own jobs. (Pump parts, check. Bottles, check. Bring a stuffed animal to school day, check.)

Then spend the day doing more at work in fewer hours than most. Trying to stay professional and not get mommy-tracked because we have to take pumping breaks. Missing our kids and vowing to be more patient when we get home. Wondering “what happened to the woman who was totally on top of her shit?”. Wondering if there is something really wrong with us, because we know our brain is just not firing on all cylinders like it used to.

By the time we’ve finished underperforming for the day, we rush home to cranky and overtired kids. Rush through the daycare and after school care pickups. Break the vow to be more patient by the fifth time you have to repeat yourself about doing homework or picking up toys. 

Too tired and brain dead to make a “good” dinner, so you throw things together and hope for the best. Kids complain. Great.

Then it’s the rush through the bedtime routine. Hopefully we aren’t too irritated with everyone to enjoy the 5 minutes of storytime and snuggles before the kids get in bed. Hopefully they stay in bed and it doesn’t take an hour+ to get the baby to sleep.

Maybe at this point we are so done we crash in bed ourselves. But more likely, we push through and get to cleaning up the dinner mess, pay some bills, or take care of some more work stuff.

Maybe we actually get a glass of wine and stay up too late scrolling through social media or watching a TV show.

Then we get in bed, full of regrets for how the days go, how we didn’t “enjoy” every moment with our kids, how we are not the mom we want to be and not the employee we want to be. Don’t even start on the friend and spouse we want to be…

Just to do it all over again when we’re woken up too early tomorrow. Groundhog Day, repeats.

Yeah, going through this definitely sucks. And admitting that doesn’t make you a “bad mom.” It doesn’t make you ungrateful. Wondering “is this it? Cause I don’t think I like this life” makes you human, not evil.

You know that things should be less stressful and more joyful than this. But you really can’t seem to get your head above water. You feel guilty for not being able to figure it out.

Here’s the deal. It’s always harder to find your way out when you’re in the thick of it. A mouse has a hard time finding its way out of the maze when the walls are taller than it is. 

But someone who is above the maze can clearly see the way out, and call out directions to the mouse to get it out faster.

I’m going to call out directions for you.

It starts with food.

Yup the food you’re eating. (Probably don’t like that answer, huh.) Your overall nutrition is the key to getting out of the overwhelm and getting control back in your life.

Food. Not pills or supplements.

When we’re in the rat race, stuck in the overwhelm, and always feeling a step behind, we’re in a constant state or reactionary stress. And that low grade, chronic stress does a number on our bodies. We deplete several essential nutrients faster when we are under a chronic stress load.

When you layer a less than nutritious diet on top of that, you end up with a recipe for some serious problems. Leaving your body without the nutrients it needs to function amplifies the exhaustion, the overwhelm, and the inability to think straight.

All of which feed into the overwhelm cycle, keeping you stuck.

So focusing on fruits and veggies may seem like a counterintuitive path out of the overwhelm maze. But it’s the fastest way to the finish. 

Start with food. Focus on as many whole veggies and fruits that you can. Focus on high quality protein sources and whole food carbohydrates. Cut back on the packaged, processed, and sugar foods.

You have to eat. It’s literally the one thing that you can’t not do. So why not make it work for you instead of against you? 

If the thought of changing your diet to something that is more nutrient rich is overwhelming, that’s ok! I have so many moms tell me they just have no idea where to start. 

If you want directions out of the maze, I’m here to call them out to you.

I’m here to help moms figure out how to make this a seamless and effortless part of their lives. Because it actually does take a village, and supporting other women in becoming the badass moms they know they can be is what lets us all live better lives.

I am more than willing to chat with you and get you on the right track. So feel free to contact me and I’ll give you 30 minutes to figure out the right first step for you.

We’re in this together. Let’s make things suck just a little less.

Health & Wellness

Burned Out as a New Mom? It’s a thing.

Alasen Zarndt

New Mom Burnout. 

It’s something that I went through, and it blows. But I wasn’t sure if it was just me.

So I recently asked my friends what they thought it was. 

“It’s when you’ve hit the maximum capacity as a human being caring for everyone but yourself.”

She’s lost herself in becoming a mom and she feels like she is constantly on the back burner. She feels like she doesn’t have time for herself/selfcare/hobbies, she can’t disconnect from her role as a mom or the mental load of carrying the family “admin” and all that comes with it. 

She’s also working full time on top of that. Usually a top performer at work, but has felt “off her game” since coming back from maternity leave and keeps wondering “What is wrong with me? My brain just isn’t working right anymore!!” 

She has so much mom guilt that even if she got a tiny bit of time to herself, she feels like she should be spending it with her kids because “they’re only little for so long” and “babies don’t keep” and “enjoy those times because they go so fast” or whatever other cliche she hears all the time. [It’s like paralysis to do anything she thinks would help make her feel better.]

 

And finally, she feels like a stranger in her own body. She’s exhausted, feeling flabby and bleh “like I’m not pregnant anymore, now I’m just fat.” Hormonal swings are awful and sometimes even scary (“Who WAS that person???”). She dreads having to look in the mirror, is terrified of having to spend a ton of money on a new wardrobe, and just wants a piece of pre pregnancy clothing to fit and look flattering again. 

Any of that sound familiar? I could see myself in all of it. So the good thing is that I wasn’t alone in my experience.

The sad thing is that this is the experience for so many of us. And we are all trying to claw our way out of it. We’re all being told that if we were just a little better at this self care thing, we’d be better everywhere else. 

But then comes the weird paralysis to do anything that we think would make us feel better, because of the time it takes away from everything else.

What if I told you that the ultimate form of self care actually doesn’t require an additional second spent? It doesn’t have to be something that is hard or extra.

I’ve talked about it before on many a podcast or interview: the ultimate form of self care is the food we put into our bodies.

Our biology requires a certain level of nutrition to function correctly. But we live in a society that is overfed and undernourished. So we go through life in a constant state of too many calories and too few nutrients, setting ourselves up for extra pounds, exhaustion, and overwhelm. 

When we take the care to make sure the food we are fueling our days with is packed full of nutrition, we are giving ourselves the ultimate form of self care. 

We already have to eat. Food preparation and eating is time that will always be spent. So let’s make sure we choose food that gives us more than it takes.

When we start to focus on nutritious foods, our bodies begin to replenish nutrients that were depleted in pregnancy, breastfeeding, and via the general stress of life. They begin to function better. And with the better function, we begin to be able to show up in the way we want to in life.

Bodies that are nourished can run around after crazy toddlers without feeling slow and winded. Bodies that are nourished can be infinitely more patient with our kids’ emotions, because keeping our own in check isn’t a struggle. Bodies that are nourished can begin to release extra fat stores, because the biological process to burn that off has the right elements to do so.

And none of this has to be hard. Like I said, we have to eat anyway. It’s a myth that nutritious food takes longer to make than pre-packaged crap. You can grab an apple, a cutie, or a banana in the same amount of time it takes to grab a sugary energy bar.

So if you’re there in the trenches of Post Baby Burnout, start with food. It is the fastest way out.

Want to learn exactly how to do it?

Contact me and I’ll show you.