Motherhood is Hard, But It Isn’t Hard Forever

Motherhood is Hard, But It Isn’t Hard Forever

Motherhood is Hard, But It Isn’t Hard Forever

I have just had my fourth baby so I know a thing or two about the seasons of motherhood and I would be lying if I said that motherhood is easy. But I have learned something important: motherhood is hard, but it isn’t hard forever. Eventually babies grow, children become more independent and, dare I say, helpful! It is possible to be at peace even in the hard seasons just by recognizing that being a mom is hard but it isn’t hard all the time.

I went to the post office today without my older three. I just strapped the baby in and told them I was headed out and went. Then I came home and put the baby in his seat and he watched his brothers play Lego while I folded a bit of laundry.

Freedom.

Due to small children, health problems, pregnancies, newborns, work,  you name it, mothers don’t often get to do what we want, when we want. So I’m sure you’ll understand when I say this 10 minute trip to town was a breath of fresh air.

And then I see moms in the thick of it with young ones, pregnancies, health issues… I feel your struggle. Technically I’m still there, with a needy 5 month old and chronic back pain. And, as low maintenance as older kids can be, I am still overseeing and nurturing 4 children.

How can I still (mostly) feel at peace? Because I know it won’t last.

Some seasons of mothering are so frustrating. Actually, most of my days are still spent either nursing or bouncing or holding a sleepy baby while doling out motherly wisdom from the couch. Dirty floor, dishes everywhere, and piles of laundry is just where I’m at right now. It is a hard season of motherhood when I feel like I’m busy doing important things all day and yet feel like I have acocmplished almost nothing by the time my head (finally!) hits the pillow at night. 

Can you relate?

So how can I still (mostly) feel at peace?

Because I know it won’t last. Pregnancy isn’t always easy (in fact, sometimes this amazing and miraculous blessing can really suck!) but no one has been pregnant forever. Depression sucks but there is hope and treatment (if this is where you’re at, check out my depression self care series). Newborns get older, babies eventually sleep, and Mama starts to feel more like her old self.

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    Soon it will get easier. Hard right now is not hard forever. Whether it gets easier due to children moving through ages and stages, or miracles of healing, or maybe because you find a way to give yourself enough grace to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, this too shall pass.

     

    We are not designed to stay stuck. We are designed to grow, heal, and survive. So, until you are done with this hard stage in your life, just keep plodding along. You’ve made it so far and you’ll make it out of the tunnel eventually.
    How To Do It All As A Mom

    How To Do It All As A Mom

    How To Do It All As A Mom

    I chatted with a mom of 8 recently and told her she must be a bit crazy to have that many kids. She laughed and pointed out that I have 5 children. Yep. That sounds a little crazy too! Some people think that moms of large families must be super human to be able to keep up with everyone but one of the most popular questions I research is how to do it all as a mom without getting burnt out? 

    I was reading some journal entries I wrote 3 years ago. Many of them are about how I was trying to juggle writing (which I never did get off the ground at that time), mothering, homeschooling, farming, and being a wife. I wanted to serve God but I was distractible. Exhausted. Unfocused. I felt like I was fighting an uphill battle. Some of my entries even stop mid-sentence, a sign that I had to tend to a child and never sat back down to finish.

    Since then, I’ve added on another baby, more necessary self care and health habits, being chair of the worship committee at church, visiting friends more regularly, and blogging. Because every mom needs more stuff to do, right?

    While researching the answer to how a mom can do it all, I’ve realized that, right now, my home is relatively kept up and I live a pretty peaceful life. So I guess that kind of means I’ve been doing pretty good in that department lately.

    What would I say if someone asked me how to do it all as a mom and not live in a state of overwhelm?

    Overwhelm is, most often, a mindset. If you think about all the things you have to do, you’ll be face down on the floor. It really helps to break it down into smaller pieces.

    – Jen Sincero

    Well, the truth is this: Imperfectly.

    I do get burnt out sometimes. I do suffer from “overwhelmed mom syndrome” from time to time. And I do drop the balls I’m so carefully trying to juggle. I see other moms who do it all so much more gracefully than I do. Or at least, that’s what it looks like. But I know that they have their hard days and hard seasons, just like I do.

    I want to share with you some of the reasons why I believe I’m way more able to find more balance as a mom than I did a few years ago.

    I will add the caveat that 3 years ago I began suffering from post traumatic stress disorder which led to panic attacks and anxiety. (If you would like to read more about that, you can read here about How I Deal with Anxiety) I have also battled depression since I was a teenager. So the added quirks of those disorders definitely play into how I quickly I have the potential to reach that state of burnout or overwhelm and also how careful I have to be to find systems that work to avoid the worst of those situations.

    Avoid Overwhelm With Routines

    I have a written plan and routines that I’ve slowly built up over time. I have talked before about how I’ve tried to work at our High 5 morning routine for many years. It still isn’t perfect but we are still working on it. The kids know what is expected so they may resist regularly but they know the routine backwards and forwards at this point. And the older boys are truly enjoying taking the toddler under their wings to teach him how to do High 5s. They’re excited for him to get his very own sticker chart in a few months.

    I also have a pretty regular personal morning routine. It is interrupted regularly but I give myself a couple hours to do about 20 minutes of Bible reading and my Praise and Prayer journal. I also still use a lot of tips from Mystie Winkler at Simply Convivial and the book Getting Things Done when it comes to my task lists. I go through my habit tracker and habit workbook and reevaluate regularly to make sure I’m prioritizing the right habits.

    We may not be perfect in execution of all of our routines but at least we know what needs to be done.

    Prioritize Self Care

    I continue to prioritize self care. If you are interested in more particulars, you can read my self care series about the routines and habits I use to keep depression at bay. Having a baby and then hitting winter does a number on my fatigue and hormone levels, as well as my ability to get out of the house to socialize. (Going out in -40° with a baby is often not worth the hassle.) It basically leaves me very vulnerable to sinking into depression. So that’s when I go back to the beginning of my self care routine of Bible reading and my Praise & Prayer journal.

    And sleep. Besides making sure I’m plugging into God’s word regularly, sleep is the biggest factor of self care. I stick to my bedtime like a champ (I have an alarm on my phone to remind me) to make sure I spend enough time laying in bed that I’m not always exhausted, even though I have been waking up multiple times a night with little ones since my eldest was born 12 years ago.

    Friendships

    I am so very blessed with friends who are willing to drive out to see me. Before we moved to this community 7 years ago, we lived in the country near a more metropolitan area. Many people there thought coming to my place in the country was too far so I had to continually load up and go into town. (I did have a couple friends who recognized that the road was the same distance both ways and they are still big parts of my heart, in spite of moving away.) My natural inclination is to hibernate during winter months because I don’t do well in the cold (I can never manage to warm up) and, after a severe back injury years ago that I still deal with, I’m terrified of slipping on the ice. But my friends come visit me and drag me out invite me over for visits. Even as an introvert, regular socialization is a necessity.

    Focused Time For Each Role

    I read somewhere a while back (wish I could remember the source!) that maybe life isn’t about finding balancing and keeping all the balls in the air. Maybe it is about knowing where the balls you dropped land so you can pick them up again.

    There are times that I dedicate to my kids and completely ignore the online world. There are times when I ignore my housework to focus on pushing some things forward on my blog. Or I pause anything remotely homeschooling or kid interaction focused so I can get my laundry folded and floors mopped. (Sidenote: usually the kids help with this but sometimes Mama just wants to burn through some of it so I send them out of the room.)

    Recognize and Accept That I Can’t Do It Alone

    This was a massive gamechanger. I have always been an advocate of “it takes a village to raise a child” but always put that idea toward the fact that our children need other adult role models. So when my father wants to teach one of the boys how a cow’s digestive system work or take a couple boys to town to pick up parts then I’m all for it.

    I also know the importance of us fellow moms supporting and encouraging each other. So much so that I have a whole blog dedicated to that very purpose!

    But I am forever grateful that God led me to release the guilt I have about thinking I need to run my entire household and business by myself.

    It’s okay to ask someone to watch your children while you nap or go out. It’s okay to ask for help with cleaning and organizing. It’s okay to not cook every meal from scratch. It’s okay to have someone else teach your child a skill. There are so many affordable and out of the box ways to get help. You just need to release the guilt of thinking that, just because you chose to have your kids or because you stay at home with them or because you homeschool them that you are the only one responsible for every single thing.

     

    If you are like me and wondering how a mom can do it all, take some time to evaluate the stress points in your life and make a plan to start easing out of those ruts. Get really persistent about your routines, prioritize self care, form enriching friendships, be present in whatever role you are filling in the moment, and find ways to ask for help. 

    If you want some guidance, be sure to check out my free habit tracker work book by dropping your email address in the box below. It can walk you through how to choose productive habits as well as help you stay motivated and track them.

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    3 Steps to Live Better

    3 Steps to Live Better

    3 Steps to Live Better

    Have you ever heard of how to eat an elephant? You eat it one bite at a time. It’s a pretty similar process when you want to live better. 

    This is the continuation of my previous post. In that post I gave you a partial list of my lifestyle improvement goals and asked you to make your own list. I hope that you now have your own list made and I hope that you went nuts on it and made a great word picture of how you want your life to look. If you haven’t done the assignment there yet, first head on over to read about taking steps to live a better life and then you’ll be ready to come back here to learn about using these 3 steps to live better. 
    Do you want to improve your life? It sounds like such a ginormous feat! But you eat an elephant one bite at a time and you also improve your life one step at a time.

    1st Step to Live Better:

    Choose an area or two that you feel the most overwhelmed with or that you feel are the most important areas to move forward. I chose housework and Jesus. (Remember when the answer to every question asked in Sunday School was “Jesus?” He’s the answer here too.)

     

    2nd Step to Live Better

    Choose one sub-topic in that area.
    • Housework: My “sub topic” was my dining table. It was piled like a meter high with junk and it was a nuisance when trying to eat dinner at the table and it was an eyesore and it made me feel like my entire life was piled a meter high with junk. I can’t tell you how good it is to walk into the room and my table is clear and clean (even if it is just for a few minutes a day). For some people they get this feeling by shining their sink, another mom I know got that feeling from cleaning off her kitchen island, another for keeping the entryway clear.
    • Jesus: I wanted to find a way to get to know Him better to make him a larger part of my life.

    If something feels impossible, focus on doing just one small thing at a time.

    3rd Step to Live Better

     

    Make a simple plan and jump in:
    • Housework: I made it my goal to clear off the table (done over a few weeks of 10-15 min per day spurts) and keep it clear. I don’t do it every single day (sometimes we’re out the door before I have time to do it) but I don’t beat myself up over it. Slowly my table expanded to doing my dishes every day. And with no dishes piled up everywhere I was/am able to wipe my countertops every day. When I get behind and I look at my kitchen and get overwhelmed I simply go back to square one: clear and clean the table.
    • Jesus: Everywhere that I looked and everything that I read and all the convictions in my heart told me that the best way to improve my relationship with the Lord is to read His Word. Sounds simple enough but I’m going to have to be perfectly honest with you: outside of church and the ladies Bible study that I attended, I pretty much never picked up my Bible. I made a goal to increase my Scripture intake. I figured that I dedicate more than 15 minutes per day to social media alone, not including the articles I read on it and, more recently, Pinterest. The least I could do was give 15 minutes a day to get to know the One who gave His life for me. Ouch. What a reality check that was for me! I tried last year shortly after I had the baby but he was….. hard and I didn’t keep up with my reading. So I started all over this year. Who cares if I “failed” my attempt at this last year? I’m doing way better this year! Currently on day 162 of a 365 day plan. Woot! Last year’s failures don’t need to dictate this year’s success.

    So let’s recap:

    First you will need to choose a major area or two of importance.

    Second you will need to find your bite sized piece.

    Third is to take a bite. And then another. But just start with one bite.

    You may not have conquered the world but you are one bite closer than you were 10 minutes ago!

    What is the bite-sized improvement that you working on right now? A really great way to work through a life improvement brainstorm and then track your results is with my custom Habit Tracker and Workbook. Enter your email to get the free printable and get started with your personalized steps to live better. 

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    Last week I gave you some Ideas for New Years Resolutions and this week I would like to share some methods for how to keep your New Years resolutions. Because what good is it to set resolutions if you aren’t able to keep them?

     As a kid, I loved the first day of school. The new pens and notebooks and binders and paper. New schedule, new classes, new learning possibilities, new goals.

    Now that I’m not a student anymore, that’s how I feel about New Years. New calendar. New tax year and savings year. New life possibilities.

    I can’t remember the first time I heard about the idea of New Years’ resolutions but I think there is an innate part of me that has always made them and appreciated the process. I’ve been making resolutions as long as I remember.

    Here’s the shocking part: I have actually managed to keep my resolutions! Well, most of them anyway.

    I’m pretty sure that we have all heard that 80% of people fail at their resolutions by February so what’s the magic formula to be one of the few who can consistently keep new years resolutions?

    Having a plan, reviewing it regularly, and taking action.

    Resolution: the act of resolving or determining upon an action, course of action, method, procedure, etc.

    Resolutions are not meant to be pie-in-the-sky wishes that someday, maybe, hopefully, they will come true. They are meant to take that wish and apply the “how.” You need to figure out what you can do to accomplish that goal or make that dream or hope a reality. Then you resolve to take action toward that goal.

    Something like 90% of what we do is done out of habit. So if we want to achieve certain goals or resolutions, the easiest way would be to make the steps towards them into habits.

    The simplest method to make your plan is to download my Habit Tracker Workbook. It will walk you through a quick brainstorming session for goal setting in different areas of your life, and then help you figure out how to accomplish that and where to begin.

    The workbook also includes a specially designed habit tracker that you can hang up to help you regularly review and allows you to get that satisfaction of checking off that little box each time you take that step forward in action as you begin to succeed at your resolutions. (Bit of neuroscience for you: That little dopamine rush at checking off a box makes you more likely to want to follow through!)

    A few simple yet powerful ways to create new habits to help you keep your New Year’s Resolutions:

     

    1. Visual reminders: Write out the habits that you want to create that will get you closer to your goal. Hang them up around your house in areas where you’ll see them and be regularly reminded of what you want to accomplish. Some high traffic places are above the kitchen sink, on the bathroom mirror, on the fridge, near your computer. You could hang up just the paper or even get frames to put them in. My favorite solution is a simple page protector because I can easily switch them out to work on a new habit each month. It also protects the paper from my little people’s hands and from splatter of dishwater.

    2. Audio reminders: Most people have a cell phone and nearly all cell phones have an alarm capability. Set an alarm to remind you to about your habit.

    3. Physical anchors: Evaluate your day and recognize the things that you do by habit and tie another habit to it. For example, I already drink a coffee each day but want to increase my water intake. So I drink my water before I allow myself a coffee. In an effort to reduce/eliminate pain from a back injury a few years ago, I want to strengthen my core. I’m going to tie core exercises to my husband’s lunch hour (so he can hold the baby).

    If you’ve been looking for ideas for new years resolutions, you can check out last weeks post for inspiration and then enter your email to get my free printable habit tracker and workbook. Keep in mind the information you’ve learned in this article (visual reminders, audio reminders, and physical anchors) and you’ll finally be one of the people who can keep your new years resolutions and begin finding peace and success in the New Year.

    Once you’ve worked through the habit tracker and workbook, send me an email or leave a comment with the resolution or habit that you think will have the biggest impact. 
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    12 New Years Resolution Ideas to Increase Health, Peace and Happiness

    What if you could actually improve your life through your new years resolutions?

    What if today you could be changing your life for the better?

    What if today you were beautiful, fit, and healthy?

    What if today you had more peace in your home and family?

    What if today you were happier and had more love and friendship in your life?

    Don’t join a gym only to never go. Don’t resolve to lose weight only to get discouraged when it doesn’t go according to plan. Instead, make some life altering new years resolutions that you can actually follow through on. Below I’ve shared some ideas for new years resolutions that will bring your more peace, health, and happiness:

    1. Go to bed on time, and not so you can get up earlier. Just give up some of your evening so you can be more rested.

    2. Eat more green stuff.

    3. Read to your kids more. Not just listening to an audiobook but actually sitting with them and reading a paperback book. If you want some suggestions, my Book List for Boys is a good starting place. (Don’t be fooled by the title as many of the books are loved by girls as well.)

    4. Spend at least 20 min outside each day. Yes, even on cold days. (Speaking to myself here as I tend to avoid the cold like the plague.)

      Until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.

      –Napoleon Hill

      5. Drink more water or milk and less coffee, juice, soda, or whatever your poison is. Just try drinking a cup of water or milk before your next cup of coffee.

      6. Cook more often. Eating premade meals gets expensive and is often not as healthy. For an easy dinner to add to your meal rotation, feel free to read how my easy meal plan helps spaghetti saves my sanity.

      7. Compliment someone daily. You will learn to look for the good in people which will improve your day and many people go for years without recieving a genuine compliment so you can change their life too.

      8. Put less unnatural products on or in your body. You don’t actually need all the hair products, face goop, or lotions. You don’t need all the treats or takeout. Trust me, you’ll be fine without them. Plus you’ll save money!

      9. Say no more often. Practice in front of the mirror. Practice different methods of saying no (ex. I would love to help but I just can’t make it fit in my schedule at this time.). Start by saying no to small things. Like your children… really. They don’t need to have or do all the things. Nothing bad will happen if they don’t experience everything as a child.

      10. Declutter. Less stuff means less stress which leads to better health. Plus it will be less to clean up. Ideas to declutter: CDs or DVDs (almost everything is digital these days), clothing that doesn’t fit or you dont even like anymore, extra or unused kitchen utensils and gadgets, old cell phones and chargers.

      11. Make a family photo album. How many of your photos are sitting on a smart phone or computer harddrive? Start by putting them all in one place. Then pick some to print out and put them in an album. It doesn’t need to be a fancy scrapbook. Just slide them into the photo sleeves so the kids can flip through their history. (Talking to myself again here: no fancy scrapbook needed, digital or otherwise!)

      12. Beautify your home. It does not necessarily have to be Pinterest worthy, but personalize it. Make it your own. I am a minimalist when it comes to decor and much of what I have is things people thought I would like that I put up to appease them and never took down. But I have two pieces I really love: my calla lillies and my clock. So they hang in living room where I see and appreciate them every day. Find one or two things that speak to your heart.

      I can’t guarantee any dramatic life changes for the next year if you follow these resolution ideas. But I can guarantee that your New Year will have more peace, health, and happiness. You don’t need to do all. Focus on one a month, or just pick your top three for the year.
      Drop your email below to get access to my Habit Workbook which you can use to figure out exactly which resolutions you should make for your life to have the biggest impact. You should also read my my article on how to succeed at your for New Years resolutions with some easy to follow steps to help make these second nature.
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