Self-care can be difficult when you’re a new mum, but it’s also necessary. Your self-care requirements are considerable, and you’re preoccupied with newborn and significant life changes. Ironically, it’s most difficult to practise self-care when you need it the most!
Here’s why self-care is crucial for new mums, what it entails, and how to acquire it.
What Exactly Is Self-Care?
It’s a common misperception that self-care consists solely of lavish bubble baths, 90-minute massages, and high-end manicures and pedicures. While self-care can include spa services, it is not the focus of regular self-care.
Making sure your physical, emotional, and social needs are addressed is what self-care is all about. It’s about looking for your entire self and making time to maintain your health.
When it comes to self-care, you want to make sure that you:
- Consume healthful and pleasurable foods.
- Exercise is a terrific way to feel good in your body and release endorphins.
- Finally, get the rest you require.
- Allow yourself time to contemplate and enjoy a peaceful moment.
- Hydrate!
- See your primary care physician, therapist, or dentist—whoever you need to see to maintain your mental and physical wellness.
- Set aside time to concentrate on a hobby, passion, or vocation to keep a sense of purpose and meaning.
- Shower, shave, clean your clothes, and replace your bedsheets.
- Socialize with friends or family in person as well as online.
This appears to be a simple task… until you have a newborn baby and finding time to shower becomes the most challenging task of the day!
The Importance of Self-Care
Making time for oneself is a challenge for many people, but it’s especially challenging for new mums. Caregivers (of all kinds) prioritize the needs of others over their own. However, someone must look after the caretaker. (You are that someone!)Self-care is vital for your personal health and your child’s physical and mental well-being.
Maintaining your sense of self-worth is made more accessible with self-care.
New mums frequently remark that they have “forgotten who they are” and have become absorbed in their new role as new mums. You, on the other hand, are much more than “simply a mum.” Self-care can assist you in remembering that you, too, are a person.
Self-care provides a positive example for your children.
If you want your children to sleep well, eat properly, take care of themselves, and thrive, you must model these behaviours for them.
Burnout as a new mum can make you physically ill.
“A state of physical, emotional, and mental fatigue,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. For example, burnout as a caregiver can make you sick more frequently. Being a mother is difficult enough, but being a mother with a cold or the flu is even more difficult.
Your nutritional requirements are critical.
Nursing new mums need to drink plenty of water and consume a healthy diet. Your body will put your baby’s requirements ahead of your own, depleting your nourishment reserves in the process. You’ll be more likely to get sick if your body is exhausted. Burnout as a new mum can make you emotionally ill. Burnout might put you at risk for depression and anxiety.
Depression and anxiety in parents might hurt their children’s development.
When a parent is depressed, it has an impact on their children.
According to studies, parental depression can disrupt the healthy connection, raise the chance of childhood behaviour problems, and increase the likelihood of struggling academically when they start school.
Children with depressed parents are at a higher risk of getting depression or anxiety themselves. Self-care isn’t an extravagance. It’s a must for both your and your baby’s health.
Self-Care Obstacles
As a result, you recognize the need to set aside time for self-care. However, this does not change the reality that it is difficult. When others give you advice like, “Just make time for yourself,” or “You need to sleep when your kid sleeps!” It’s aggravating.
We’re not arguing that self-care is easy to achieve. We understand how difficult it is. Here are some suggestions for dealing with common new-mum self-care issues. There are no magic potions or Harry Potter-style spells listed below, but some of these suggestions may give you a few ideas.
More Restful Sleep
Sleep. Oh, my goodness, you’re in desperate need of rest. The majority of babies do not sleep through the night. They are in tears. They consume food. They defecate. They also pee throughout the entire night.
As a new mum, sleep is one of the most critical and complex self-care needs to meet. Maintain perfect sleeping hygiene.
Food that is good for you
Your body is healing after pregnancy and birth, and it requires protein, carbohydrates, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals.
Exercise
While it’s crucial to keep your body moving, who has time to go to the gym when they can’t even go to the bathroom on their own? Exercise is just moving your body in a way that raises your heart rate. With that in mind, consider the following suggestions:
When cleaning, put on some lively music. Cleaning the house usually isn’t enough to get your heart rate up. It can, however, become a workout if you put on some fantastic music and set a timer for 15 minutes of moving, moving, moving as quickly as you can.
Socialize
Speaking with people who “use their words” (adult socialization time!) You, on the other hand, never leave the house. When you become a new mother, you still need friends. However, you can’t rely on your baby (or children) for all your human contacts. Here are some suggestions…
Look for activities and classes for mothers and children that are free or low-cost.
Make contact with your pals who were there before the birth of your child. They may not text or call because they believe you are unavailable. On the other hand, you may be busy, yet you still require theircompany. So make contact: every two weeks, schedule one playdate or coffee date with a pal.
Conclusion
As a new mother, you must look after your child and yourself. It’s not always that we can’t find time for self-care; it’s more often than we don’t believe it’s necessary. But, on the other hand, self-care is critical for both your health and that of your child. We at Nurturey help you manage your health and your child’s health better through our intelligent and intuitive tools.
For more information visit www.nurturey.com