Restart, recalibrate.
Sleep is directly correlated to stress. Stress is directly correlated to frustration. And being short-fused with spirited kids, husbands can be collateral damage.
So I subscribe to something called Creative Morning, powered by Adobe. It’s great! It serves as a constant reminder of the various different ways that I can refuel my creative mind, and also offers themes on mindfulness, which we always need prompting for in our highly engaging and stressful landscape, called workplace.
Don't get me wrong, I love my work. I’ve always been a self-admitted workaholic, as my mind runs marathons around what my physical body can just barely cope with. Of course I’ve been known to pride myself on achieving the “impossible tasks” which I set for myself, but in recent times, I realize that this is no longer a badge of honour.
As the days flash by, I’m starting to learn from my children the precious lessons of living in the moment. Being ever present in the moment is a very hard task for a FTWM. The juggling act of keeping more than a few things running and up in the air is basically the new norm.
But in keeping with the metaphor of juggling, when is it finally ok to set things down? I remember the first few months of being a first-time Mum with a mixed bag of emotions. Of course I was elated every time I held my miracle in my arms, nursing him to sleep, smelling his sweet smell while running my fingers through his tuft of hair. The quiet moments just before he nodded off on my breast, as his tiny eyes gazed lovingly back at me, you can feel this immense feeling of unconditional love pouring out, lulling me to believe that everything that I’ve been working for, every life experience, every bit hardship or anxiety was all well worth it, evident in my arms that very minute. Then there was the hard reality of nursing every 2-3 hours, 24 hours, knowing that this life in your arms depended on you for his very survival in the first few months of his existence.
So you work, and you nurse, and you worry and you nurse. Day in and day out. Of course this is going to take a toll on you. At the time I didn’t know it, but I was also going through post-natal blues. Without much to reference from, my hubby just thought that I was grumpy and put it down to exhaustion from lack of sleep. He bought me a smart xiaomi mi band, asked me to wear it for 24 hours and told me it was going measure my heart rate and sleep patterns. So, hoping to find solace from the extreme emotions I was going through, I obliged, and wore it for a day. The next day he went into the app and read that in the last 24 hours, I had managed to clock the collective of one hour of deep sleep. It was depressing. I knew I wasn’t getting much rest but actually putting a number to tit, didn’t help my racing mind, it only made me feel worse. So deciding that I’d rather not know, I whisked it off and told him to go f himself. I’m joking of course, for I knew he was coming from a place of concern, but I just wasn’t feeling the benefit of knowing how much sleep I was missing.
Fast forward three years and two babies, I’ve come to realized that being a mother and having gone through those trying first few months of a nursing a newborn, has given me the confidence to take on any impossible tasks. I’d say confidently to myself, “hey, I made it through that, I can handle anything, and that's a fact!”
But when you’ve taken on too much for too long a period of time, it’s safe to say that we all will have our burn out moments. I’ve also come to realize that being able to admit it, is also an act of bravery. It doesn't mean that you’ve admitted defeat, it just means that it’s time to recalibrate your priorities, expectations and end goals yet again.
I haven’t come to this easily mind you, I’ll be the first to admit, I must have tried to grab life a little harder than I was able to cope yet again. You see not too long ago, my sweet hubby whipped that mi band out again, suggesting that it might be a good idea to start measuring my sleep again. At first, I thought out loud, nonsense! I can handle anything, and I think I’m doing fine. Obviously in a state of denial, I rejected his suggestion thinking he was overthinking my state and I was managing just fine. Then one fine day it happened. I went for a wedding and for the first time in ages, I felt like I had the freedom to let my hair down again. Nanny was in place for the weekend, I felt on fire, and confident, running at 100% back at work, 100% on the home front and 100% that night with my mini reunion with my old friends and I felt restored like my old self, from a time before the onslaught of having kids. Or so I thought. Disillusioned that I able to also party like my old self, I let myself go. Bad mistake. I drank too much, and the way my husband described it, it was as if someone spilled a glass of red wine on my motherboard and short-circuited the entire computer. My id was firing off in every which way direction and by the end of the night, I became emotional, incoherent and destroyed. In fact I was still broken and hadn’t acknowledged it.
So I knew, something needed to be done. I woke up the next day and said to myself, I needed to fix this. So I did. I slapped on the mi band and over the next few day I reconciled with the fact that I was averaging 45mins of deep sleep every night. Worse off than I was when I was in the first month of nursing my son. I accepted that I was burning out, and started looking for ways to rectify this problem. My husband decided that maybe it was time to grab a little time away sans kids. At first I was hesitant, but in the spirit of fixing myself, I complied.
We took a short trip, two day one night to Subang. Wined, dined, shopped and I even managed time to thread my eyebrows. It was great. That night, I slept for 8 hours and clocked 3 hours of deep sleep. Waking up refreshed, I was chirpy, relaxed and finally truly felt like I was back to my old self again. The conversations we had were different, cheeky and light. The familiar tone of best mates having a laugh at the slightest things.
I realize I’m lucky! Lucky that my soul-mate is level headed enough to recognize that I was burning out before I was even ready to admit it. It’s so easy to fall prey to the emotional roller-coaster and be tipped into those draining emotions. I recently read Kristen Mucci-Mosier’s , “ I’m Grumpy, you’re Grumpy: Coincidence or not?,” - where she explains that grumpiness is contagious. She says, “… our moods are driven in part by a shared underlying biological rhythm that transcends culture and environment”.
While recognizing how easily it can be to unconsciously get swept away in the riptides and not realize how deep you’re in, it’s just as important to make the changes to set into motion steps to fish us out onto higher grounds. No one else can do this by you really.
I’m lucky that I have the support in my life to whom I trust to keep my children safe while I take some time to break away and collect myself. Realizing that not every one of us have this opportunity to step away to recollect ourselves, maybe just baby steps is enough to get us by. In the month of November, I’d like to start a theme for mothers to take sometime for themselves, even if you don't think you need to. And baby step no 1, sleep in for just 1 day. Trust me, 8 hours will do wonders. When you’ve had the chance to regroup after a good sleep, you’ll able to properly recalibrate. Hashtag that morning rested face, beaming at ease with #mummemonth! Maybe take it one step further and grab that 15mins of deep hair wash, or face mask you’ve been missing for so long. Do something for you this month, then try to make it a happen, just for one day every month, every week maybe. Getting into a mindset of loving yourself does not happen over night. It is a process, just like how life is a journey, not a destination. Start small by scheduling it in, and enabling it by ensuring all your “what ifs” are insured.
Always remembering that it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
Once well rested and beauty (inside and out) restored, maybe you’ll be able to see the truth in the saying, happy mum, happy family.
Sincerely Leopard Mum