My Top Self-Care Tips for Busy Mamas

If you are like me, you had a full life, a successful career, and were really good at the art of self-care…and then…you had a baby or two or three…and self-care went out the window! Sound familiar? I mean, motherhood can rock the best of us. I’m from Los Angeles and had my first baby in my late 30s. To say motherhood was like an earthquake for me is pretty accurate. I’m nearly 5 years into the gig of motherhood and still feeling the aftershocks. Haha! I use the analogy in the best way possible.  Motherhood is the greatest joy and honor and a true privilege but if we’re not careful we can completely lose ourselves. Read on for a few of my hard-earned tips and tricks.

1. Prioritize Sleep.

This is not a joke. I know it really can seem next to impossible to get enough sleep. Plus, you may always feel tired because as a mother you’re hypervigilant, which taxes your nervous system. If you have young kids, and I’m talking under 5, my biggest piece of advice is: go to bed when your kids go to bed! (Or, go to bed as soon as you can after they go to bed.) I know this might ruffle some feathers, but hear me out.  I believe sleep is the key. The trick is to let go of something else (watching TV, scrolling social media, etc.) In service to getting some rest.  Sleep is the best way to be at our best. Without it, in my experience, everything can fall apart and go downhill quickly.   Now, my kids go to bed around 8pm. So even if I stay up for an hour or two after they’re in bed, that has me in bed around 9 or 10pm. I can deal with a 2am wakeup and a 5am wakeup and a 6:30am start to my day, if I go to bed at 9 or 10pm. If I stay up late and then have to deal with the wakeups and early mornings, I have no reserves, to begin with, no patience, and can’t deal. The bottom line is: Mama needs to sleep. Figure out what works for you and go to bed! What is good for Mama is usually good for the whole family!

2. Connect Back to You – the You you were before you had kids. 

Becoming a mother can feel like walking through a portal into another existence.  Everything changes seemingly overnight. We can very easily lose ourselves. After having a baby we don’t feel like ourselves, look like ourselves, many of us don’t ever fit back into our same clothes, and even if we do, they don’t “feel like us” anymore, many of us don’t return to the same career, don’t have time for friends or change who we hang out with because it’s more about playdates, etc.  (This could be, and probably will be its own blog post at some point.) What can you do to feel like YOU? It took me quite a while to figure this one out. This can be as simple as listening to music in the car that is not geared toward the kids. It can be taking some extra time to do your makeup and hair on a Saturday morning when your partner can watch the kids for a bit.  It can be as simple as finding a couple of pictures of yourself at times during your life when you felt really happy and fulfilled and posting them somewhere you’ll see them frequently.  The point of this one is to find a way to first anchor and then reconnect (however briefly) to YOU. You may not know who that even is anymore.  Start with you before the kids and work from there. Then visit her daily! Even for 5 mins.

3. Fit it into small bits.

Fit in self-care everywhere you can rather than waiting for larger blocks of time to magically appear. Gone are the days of sleeping in, taking a bath, and then a long power walk followed by drinks with friends and dinner out. Before kids, I was the Queen of self-care. Taking long walks, lots of exercise, blending my organic smoothies, getting 8-9 hours of sleep, long baths, frequent mani-pedis, and taking an hour to get ready in the morning. It all makes me just giggle thinking back. The reality is until my kids are out of the house I’m probably not going to be able to be that same self-care Queen. But as mothers we can still engage in self-care (and we must), we just need to be a little more strategic. First, create your list of the things that you miss doing. Next, pick one and do it. If you have a little bit of time, use it. What can you squeeze into the time you have? Do that. If you have 5 extra mins, pop on that face mask, for example. You’ll be amazed at how far a small self-care step can go toward making you feel a bit better.  Baby steps.

4. Self-care is as much about what we do as it is about what we choose to let go of. 

Step back and assess where you’re spending your time.  Are you mindlessly scrolling on social media? Does that give you anything? For me, I often feel worse after looking at social media. Or are you watching the news? Spending time around people that drain your energy? Whatever it may be, pay attention to what you’re doing, chances are you do have more free time than you realize and are just needing to re-direct your energy and focus into activities that restore you, rather than deplete you further, or are a low return on investment. 

5. Set things up to work for you.

Many days I don’t have time to do my makeup. I’m not someone who feels good without at least a bit of it on. So, I have put together duplicates of my bare necessities that I keep in my handbag.  I also keep a couple of things in my downstairs powder room…for the days when I’m with the kids and it’s hard to step away to do any makeup. Honestly, most mornings I’m not able to sit at my vanity and end up doing my makeup in the car sitting in the driveway, as my husband is buckling the kids into their car seats. The point here is, to set yourself up for success by realizing that this is life right now, it’s a season, and as they say in the Marines, adapt and overcome. Help yourself adapt by setting yourself up for reality rather than waiting for it to be the way it once was.

6. Plan time for yourself in larger chunks of time.

This one can be tricky because it depends a lot on your personal situation. Do you live near family? Have a trusted babysitter? In my case, we recently moved to another country so I really don’t have support yet, and I am very much in the process of building a village. However, I do have small windows of time when both of my kids are at school. Those few hours a week are precious and can easily get booked up with work. I must force myself to use that time, as it was always intended, for self-care.  The idea here is two-fold. The act of self-care like taking a nap, getting a pedicure, or reading a book! The second part is the anticipation and knowledge that you have something for you, on the horizon. That mental “looking forward” to self-care can be just as powerful as the act itself.

I hope what I have shared here inspires you, in some small way. What ways are you winning with self-care? Share to inspire a fellow Mama! If you’d like to explore further, check out my upcoming workshop on Self-care.