Motherhood can be so hard on a body. Beautiful and transcendent, sure–but it can also make you feel like someone beat you all over with a brick.
I mean, I knew pregnancy was going to be hard, what with that entire human growing inside of me…
And then birth and recovery, I expected that would hurt and it did, but I recovered quickly…
What I didn’t expect was how hard parenting itself was going to be on my body. How the wrung-out-feeling becomes so cumulative over time. Things that didn’t phase me at 3 months just hurt more at 23 months because I don’t have any reserves to draw on.
Lifting, carrying, breastfeeding, not sleeping….did I mention not sleeping? Two years without a full night of sleep. I’m not gonna lie, I feel like a worn out old husk. Like my body was a host for the new generation of the species and now it’s been discarded into a pile on the floor. It created a replica of itself and now its biological destiny is complete.
Okay, it’s not that bad. I might be exaggerating a little bit.
But I do feel creaky and tired and while I’m thankful that I’m eating well for the sake of my family, and running…I’m realizing lately that I’m not taking great care of myself in a lot of other really important ways.
What’s missing is a deep sense of ease and stretch and rest.
I feel stressed out, and even though I’m not drinking caffeine or alcohol any longer, I know my adrenal glands can’t be happy.
On a physical level, I need some yoga STAT.
On a mental level, I think it’s about giving myself a break. It’s about meeting my own needs as much as I meet my child’s. Honestly, it’s about making some different parenting choices. Ones I wasn’t ready for before, but that I feel clear and confident about now.
It’s time.
Time for some radical recovery from the first two years of motherhood.
Sleep and yoga are in the plan for the near future. An maybe some reiki or acupuncture or something. Who knows. All I know is it’s gotta be about making me feel healthy and whole again. Connecting with my body again.
What about the other mamas out there? How are you feeling? Have you recovered from the physical shock of motherhood yet? How did you do it?
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I look forward to hearing anyone tell how they did it. I completely agree that it’s about making time to take care of mama (something I’ve been terrible at.) Today, I started by getting a hair cut. Last week I cleared my closet of any clothes that I didn’t really love. (I didn’t need to keep the shirt around anymore just because I didn’t care if S smeared something on them…they have to go, right?) Next up is going to the dentist which I’ve not done in over a year (yet Sylvie has gone twice). I make lists every week of what I need to do for S, for the farm, for the blog, ect. I am now on that list, and I am going to see what needs to be done for me. Love this post! I’m even more inspired now.
Totally! The dentist is a perfect example…I haven’t been since Z was born either! Hello self-care! I also just did a closet purge…of course now I just have nothing to wear…oh well, I suppose that’s better than wearing stuff I hate!
I know!!!
after almost 9 years of parenting, with my baby being almost 4 years old, I still find that my body is not nearly as high on my priorities as I’d like it to be, and that as the kids grow and I develop my other labors of love: first PPD to Joy and now Mama’s Comfort Camp, it is so easy to let these babies take precedence over my body’s needs.
That’s one of the goals of Mama’s Comfort Camp, to have a community that supports us in taking care of ourselves, and I think it would need to start with this: reframing this word: Selfish.
I want to be selfish, the good kind, and I want you to be able to be too.
I hope this is making sense. I just love this post.
“I want to be selfish, the good kind, and I want you to be able to be too.”
Ahhh…Yael your words are always like a breath of fresh air, or a cleansing sigh, and always at exactly the right moment somehow! xxx ooo
I’m 7 1/2 years in, and honestly, to some degree at this point it’s all just the new normal. I’m never going to be the same person I was before I had my kids. It’s not good or bad, it just is.
However, having said that I have learned that I can’t cheat on the sleep. I’m still woken up at least once most nights, but that’s not so bad when I go to bed at a reasonable time in the first place. For the longest time (like, years) I stayed up way too late because it was the only quiet time I got. I don’t do that anymore, and it’s made a big difference. Even just 20 more minutes leaves me feeling less like a worn-out husk.
Awwww, yeah Amber I love sleep like I have never loved it before! It is amazing how important it is to my well-being. And that is a big part of what’s going on, we are doing some fairly intense night-weaning right now because it’s important to the whole family unit that mama gets more sleep. Took me a while to be ready, but here we are