If you are a new mom, you will know just how exhausting and stressful it can be. Of course, it is also one of the best experiences of your life, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t have a negative side too.
Having a new baby, whether you’ve done it before or not, is a tough time and you, as a mom, need to make sure that you are looking after yourself as well as looking after your newborn. Sometimes we as mothers forget that we need to put our oxygen masks on first before we help someone else.
If you don’t look after yourself adequately, it will be very easy for you to slip into bad habits and get into a rut while having a newborn. A lack of self-care and self-maintenance will make it harder for you to keep up the consistent care needed to look after your baby too.
Long story short, you need to look after yourself as a new mom.
Here are my tips on how to do it.
Eat as regularly as possible, and eat well
It’s very easy to fall into a bad routine of eating junk food and snacks when you have a newborn baby in the house and you are as busy as you could be. It is also very easy to get into a routine of sporadic eating where you leave long breaks between eating.
This is not great for your mood or your energy levels.
To stop yourself from getting overwhelmed or unwell, try and keep up a balanced diet that you eat regularly throughout the day. Get some healthy snacks in the house and meal prep as much as possible to make this happen.
Keep talking to other adults
When you have a newborn, you might feel relatively housebound. You will spend most of your time with a baby who can’t speak, reading baby books, and watching baby shows. In order to keep yourself happy and mentally well, remember to keep talking to and connecting with other adults. This could be over a cup of tea or over FaceTime, it doesn’t matter, as long as you are getting adult-adult interaction regularly.
Exercise
Your hormone levels will be irregular after giving birth and one of the best ways to deal with this is to exercise regularly. Exercise helps you maintain a healthier hormone level and it will help you regulate your mood and energy levels too.
It might be the absolute last thing on your mind right now while you are having sleepless nights, but fitting in even some light exercise routines during your days will really help you out.
Remember that looking after yourself doesn’t always feel like the easiest thing in the world to do, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t the right thing to do.
A little bit of self-care every day will lead to long-term higher levels of mood, energy, concentration, and general mental wellness.
And, at the end of the day, aren’t those things that we all want?
