7 Secrets to Joyful Mommyhood
It is 2 AM and your baby cries. You thought you just breastfed him for 40 minutes at 12.30 and yet he is up again. Tears start rolling when you see your husband peacefully snoring and lying next to you. Guilt starts to fill your heart when you know you should feel lucky for being blessed with such a beautiful healthy baby. But you are stressed and feel nobody around you understands you. Your husband feels he helps you when he says you don’t need to cook dinner. Your boss is being helpful when he says you can work from home one day a week. However, nothing seems to make you happy. Your heart aches when you go to work leaving your baby at daycare and pumping during all your breaks. You cant afford to not work as your bank balance is close to $50 at the end of a paycycle. You are not happy being at home either the entire day with your baby, reducing spending and cutting coupons. What do you do? You feel stuck.
Now imagine taking a stroll in the park on a lazy summer afternoon with your baby and then lying on the soft grass. Your baby lies on his tummy on top of you, grabs you and gives you a kiss. You feel total serenity and calm and feel refreshed after a nice nap you had in the afternoon. You then walk to the nearest coffee shop where your husband meets you after his work day. You feel a great connection and immense love for him. You know even if you didn’t work for 2 months, your financials are under control. You can take a break. You are a happy family.
My name is Saranya, a new mommy who figures out shortcuts to make mommyhood pleasant, guiltfree and joyful.
Here are 7 steps which will lead you to a path of sanity, joy and guilt free motherhood. J Try it and let me know.
1) Write your priorities – Just sitting down for 5 minutes and making this decision will help you focus on the right thing every day instead of being on autopilot.
For example – I determined very early that making great memories with my baby was a big priority. I started writing journal of some of the precious moments. I took photographs and videos and made albums and framed some of them.
2) Determine how much you are willing to do for your career.
The way I did it was to see what would my perfect life be in 5 years. I definitely did not want to be in a place where I spend tremendous amount of time at a job while my boy missed me for hours together.
I wanted a flexible career which did not limit my growth in any way and also wanted more control over my life and time. This helped me redirect my efforts towards a new online business as supposed to going to a traditional job.
3) Don’t ever compare yourself with other moms. This is easier said than done.
As a mom we often feel guilty and that we do not do enough for our baby. It does take a lot of practice.
When I went for lunch at work, I saw moms hanging out with their babies in coffee shop and felt jealous. Then I saw women who went back to work as if nothing changed and felt jealous as well.
I finally decided I am not willing to be away from my baby and that I will work on my own schedule and challenge myself.
4) Focus on your financials. This step is more about focusing on the priorities in life and letting go of all the unnecessary things. Once I became a mom, my motivations were different. I wanted to give my son all that he could possibly want. I cut down unnecessary spending, activities that were not adding any value. I started getting rid of all the clutter I had accumulated as I saw it did not add to my happiness but took a lot of my time to manage it.
I counted ten shirts, ten dresses and so on and sold the rest of them in Poshmark, ThredUp. I looked for furniture that I was not using and posted on Craig’s list and got rid of ones we weren’t using.
I stopped saving coupons as it just cluttered my home and didn’t give as much value as the time I spent collecting them.
5) Invest in improving yourself. As moms we want to raise happy, productive children. Children learn most of the things by imitation. So if we want to teach children to be happy, productive without being preachy, we need to take steps to become happy and productive ourselves.
I tried to start eating healthy, get exercise and meditate and write as much as I could. These contributed to my sense of happiness which helped me enjoy my time with the baby even more.
6) Improve relationship with your husband. After a baby, your relationship with your husband totally changes. On top of it there is so much pressure of leaning in and equal parenting. It is easy to blame our problems on our husband. But understand they are new to this as well and they face other kinds of challenges
There are so many unfair things in the society. Just doing some small actions like feeding babies once in a while and taking care of them a couple of hours when we shop makes our husbands great dads. However, getting a great mom label is really hard. Forget about the outside world and focus on your experiences and how you feel on a day to day basis. Having a baby is a great opportunity to re-focus on what is important in our lives.
When I am angry at my husband instead of venting it on him directly, I journal it. When the thoughts are out of my mind, I felt free and anger free.
7) Try to make time for things that make you happy.
I combined my interest with something that will help me grow. I made a goal to read one new book every month. I ended up reading more than 1 every month and felt happier and more productive because of that.
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