A Quick Self-Care Tip
A topic I have been addressing all year is self-care/taking time for myself. It isn’t something that comes easy for me. In fact, last year shortly after Mila was born I found myself knee deep in all things baby and “mom-life”. Which isn’t terrible, until it consumes you and becomes the only thing on your plate. I devoted my entire self to my baby and things like my marriage, my health, my friends and most importantly my mood all suffered greatly. Rest assured the baby was perfection, but I on the other hand was a hot mess. So, after Mila’s 1st birthday I decided to take a step in the direction of self-care. Doing this meant that I had to let go of the baby and trust she’d be OK in someone else's hands. Which for me (and maybe most other moms) is really hard to do. I don’t know, maybe I feel a little more over protective given the fact that I’ve lost my three old son and life just seems all to fragile now. Though I know, a mother’s heart is one fierce machine and for a mama bird it can be hard to leave the nest. Of course, leaving Mila with my husband was fine but the truth was, I didn’t want to leave. Anyways, long story short, in order to better myself and become a better mother I needed to start leaving and taking time for myself.
I started off slow and to be honest going out for ‘Girls Night’ or ‘Date Night’ with my husband are few and far between. Maybe once a month my girls and I can plan a get together. ‘Date Night’, well we need to be better at planning those more often. But I started to find other ways to take time for myself and also reconnect with my husband while staying at home. I think also I’ve learned, I am a total homebody. Over this past year I’ve learned how to recreate things I love all in the comfort of my own home which has been helpful. We’ve also sleep trained Mila and her bedtime is 7:30pm every night. Once she is asleep I take about 30-45 minutes to myself, which has helped me tremendously in the self-care department.
My husband knows as soon as Mila goes down for bed I retreat to our bathroom and wash my face, put a face mask on, read, eat some ice cream or write. I do whatever I want and it has become MY time to reflect on the day/week. No one is talking to me, asking me to do anything, clean anything. I look forward to this time of day now and it is like my tiny reward. A couple months ago Breyers reached out in hopes of working together to promote their newest ice cream Breyers Delights. I honestly couldn’t say “Yes” fast enough because during my evening self-care routine I’d almost always indulge in some ice cream. I thought it would be so fun to tie in Breyers Delights and create some fun content to share. I also am pretty passionate now about taking time for myself so adding in ice cream and sharing how I reward myself after a long day made sense. We’ve actually come to love Breyers Delights (the Cookies & Cream flavor is my favorite) and the fact that the pints have between 260-330 calories is a bonus! My husband also loves that the Breyers Delights has 20 grams of protein. We enjoy a serving in the evening either together on the couch or I’ll sneak mine in when wearing my face mask.
The most important thing here is that self-care starts with you making the decision to do good FOR you. So often we as moms are pulled in a million directions, doing things for others. Taking care of our children, making sure our partners have what they need. It comes easy to do good for others and for some reason it feels hard sometimes to do things for us. I get that mom-guilt heavy sometimes but I’ve learned to push it aside as hard as that is. I’ve also learned that taking time for your self doesn't have to be going out to the spa or regular ‘Girls Night Out’. Find a time during that day to do something indulgent at home. It could even be an afternoon coffee and a few chapters read from your book. It was skin-care and ice cream for me, that reinstalled my faith in myself as simple as that sounds! Start today and do something nice for yourself.
Thank you to Breyers Delights for sponsoring this blog post.
