As a mother, you learn right away about sacrifice and putting others in front of you. From the moment you get a positive pregnancy your choices impact another person, and the impact on them becomes far more important than the impact on you. You change your diet, lifestyle choices, clothing and schedule your entire world around doctor's appointments and your due date.
Then the baby arrives and now ALL of your choices are about someone else. When you sleep, when you eat (if you're nursing, what you eat), when you go to the bathroom, when you sit down, when you stand up...all of this is first run by the baby, and he or she dictates the consequences you will face if you choose yourself. Don't feel like wearing your baby in a wrap while you pop a squat? That's fine, but you very well could hear a screaming child while you're in there, or worse yet, wake a sleeping child. And depending on how well your past 24 hours have gone (or even 24 minutes), you'd be surprised how often you will pick having your baby up in your grill while you reach for the toilet paper.
Now all of this obviously gets better as the baby grows and gains more independence. But even with young children our choices as parents have consequences. Altering the day so that your child misses a nap, or deciding to relax and take some time for yourself during nap time instead of preparing dinner. There is a give and take that never seems to end (at least for this mother of an almost 3 and 1 year old!).
So whenever I would hear people saying I had to take care of myself because my health is the most important thing for our household, I sort of shrugged my shoulders and said that was impossible. I do my best to eat well, but that's mostly because I take the same time to prepare my kids food and I think it's a cornerstone of my work as mother. But exercise? Stretching? A massage?!?!?! Yeah, right. When was I to fit that into my schedule? Was I going to take the fifteen minutes in the morning to do a couple of yoga sequences or use that time to get breakfast ready so that I wasn't trying to do that when the kids were up and the Peanut was hanging on my leg and the Music Man was screaming from the breakfast table for his porridge. Am I going to do some stretching and ab work during nap, instead of preparing dinner, doing laundry or just sitting on the couch relishing in the quiet and staring at a wall?
These choices seemed simple to me for quite some time. But in my sleep deprivation and overwhelmed state, I had forgotten something that happened to me two years ago. I threw my back out when the Music Man was about 9 months old. I've always had lower back problems. My lower vertebrate are close together, my right hip is slightly higher than my left, my pelvis is slightly tilted, I have a natural sway back and the entire region from my hamstrings to my shoulders is so tight that anytime someone has tried to give me a massage they just touch me and say, "Whoa, stressed much?" So add a pregnancy and a 20 pound baby that I lug around 24/7 and you've got a mother collapsed on the floor unable to move. And I was laid up for a solid week, and couldn't do much for an addition week or two. I swore that when that happened I would take better care of myself, and I did for a bit. But then I got pregnant again and my choices went right back to being the baby's choices.
Until this past Saturday. The Peanut was crawling up the stairs and I leaned over to pick her up and BAM, back in major spasm again. Luckily the Hubs was home and could come retrieve my precious cargo. It took me about 5 minutes to make my way down the four steps, another 10 to get myself on my back and I spent the next hour on my back on the floor below my steps. Just horrible.
So the lesson here is that even though I didn't think I had 20 minutes a day to devote to myself, I have to find them. Because it's either 20 minutes a day helping my body, or it's days not being able to do anything for anyone. I've got to find some time to carve out for myself and let some other things slide. But not good food! Maybe we'll just all have to wear our clothes twice (shouldn't be an issue during the Charlotte summers that average about 90 degrees a day) or stop vacuuming the dog's hairs off the carpet, or stop watching so much Bravo. Hmmm....I feel like one of these is the obvious choice but I'm having a hard time seeing it.
My back is nowhere as bad as it was last time, thank goodness. But I've brought in some extra help today and tomorrow to let me rest. And I'm also in the midst or planning the kids' birthday party for this weekend. I'm cooking a Paleo-inspired brunch. I'll post the recipes throughout the week and let you know how it goes!
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