mummy loves ...

Welcome to the May 2013 Authentic Parenting Blog Carnival: Self Love This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Authentic Parenting Blog Carnival hosted by Authentic Parenting and Living Peacefully with Children. This month our participants have written about their thoughts concerning self-love. We hope you enjoy this month's posts and consider joining us next month when we share about Babywearing. 

 ***

There could have been no more appropriate topic for my return to blogging than this month’s carnival theme ~ self-love.

If you saw my last post (and no, I can’t believe it’s been quite that long since I posted) you’ll know that times were difficult.  Often, things still are difficult. But I think – tentatively – that we might be heading towards easier days. (Of course, now I am cursing myself for that ill-advised public declaration, because we all know how the law of positive parenting statements goes: ‘yeah, s/he’s sleeping great these days’ = no more sleep again. Ever.)

Truth be told, I ‘lost’ myself for a long time. I struggled to juggle two children, each at different stages of dependency, with bringing in a freelance income (a necessity, rather than a personal preference) while trying to remain a connected and constant presence for my family. I’m not too proud to admit that recently, I have failed at this. I’ve not being doing my career justice, and I’ve not been doing my family justice.  My temper has been worryingly short, my recourse to yelling frighteningly frequent. Between deadlines, co-sleeping, tandem feeding, etc, there was no part of my day, my mind, my body that was my own. I was burning out, personally and professionally.    

And then, a week or two ago, a switch flicked. Something shifted in me.

• I started writing again, for pleasure rather than profit.
• I made new career plans.
• I started running again (the addition of two children, three stone and five years since my last run have made this a far from easy undertaking.)   
• I started making plans to meet people. In the evening. Sans children.  

And, I started to gently remind my girls that mummy has the right to finish her meal, to put her boobs back in her top for at least ten minutes per day, to sleep. To do things for herself, sometimes. [Actual conversation with oldest child: 'Sometimes you have to let mummy finish what she's doing. Mummy is a person too.' 'No you're not. You're an alligator.']

It took a while to get here, from being subsumed by motherhood. And it’s partly an age thing ~ I have a *cough* milestone birthday coming up, Zen Toddler is (for a few more precious months, only) Zen Pre-schooler, with Zen Baby now filling the Toddler role. I feel like I need to start ticking a few more things off my list of dreams and goals, and now that they are no longer babies {sob}  their needs are not quite so immediate. But also, hearing them parrot back the things I say and watching them mirror my actions, I’ve become very conscious of the behaviour I model. I don’t attach value judgements to food. I make them aware that mummy has another job, as well as ‘being mummy’. I make sure that they know that women are strong, that wearing lipstick doesn’t make you prettier, that princesses can rescue themselves.

And now, by giving myself a little bit back, by re-filling the well, by giving myself a bit of space to do the things I used to love to do pre-children, I’m letting them know that mummies are people too. That mummy loves them very very much, but that mummy loves mummy too. Hopefully, from this, they will learn to truly love themselves.

Visit Living Peacefully with Children and Authentic Parenting to find out how you can participate in next month's Authentic Parenting Blog Carnival, when we discuss babywearing!   Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants: (This list will be live and updated by afternoon June 1 with all the carnival links.)

• Mothering Myself- Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children discusses how her children have been a catalyst for treating herself better.
• The Habit of Intentional Rest - Jennifer Hoffman, of Every Breath I Take, shares how she "puts her own oxygen mask on first" with her habit of intentional rest.
• Replenishing by Connecting - Gwynn Raimondi found the way to self care through connection to those who matter most: herself, her husband, her daughter.
• Overcoming Body Image For The Sake Of Our Children - Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama takes a hard look at how her own body image can positively or negatively affect her daughter and why that scares her more than anything!
• I Resented my Pregnant Body - Mercedes at Project Procrastinot blogs about body image and the pettiness she felt when she couldn't accept the physical changes of pregnancy.
• Staying Sane & Taking Care of Myself - Jana Falls at Jananas discusses how she, as an introvert mama, has made time to take care of herself.
• Depression and Self-Image - At Authentic Parenting, Laura confesses how much her recent depression has distorted her self-image and how she struggles to overcome this.
• mummy loves ... - Helen at Zen Mummy shares a post about re-finding the person behind the mummy.
• Can my inner critics stop me from participating in a self-love blog carnival?- Tat from Mum in search almost didn't get to write for this carnival. Until she stopped to ask herself why she was pulling out.
• Self-Love, A Formula and Pictogram With Ramblings - Susan May of Together Walking gives her formula for Self Love and some of the ramblings from her mind on what Self Love means. Her journey of Self Love began about a year ago when she first heard the "official" term, Self Love.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear: zen and the bad-tempered baby

There’s a saying that goes along the lines of ‘When the student is ready, the teacher will appear’.

My first daughter – Zen Toddler (or, more accurately, Zen Pre-schooler, these days) – taught me to be brave. I wanted to bestow upon her the belief that she could live the life she wants to live and be the person she wants to be, and I felt that she’d be much more able to accept that as a possibility if she saw me do the same. Hence, a frightening, intuitive leap into freelancing and a  career I’d dreamed of for over twenty years. I doubt I’d ever have had the nerve, if not for her.

I drafted this post sitting upstairs in our Mediterranean holiday home while listening to the (somewhat misnomered) Zen Baby rage angrily against Mr Z. Zen Baby is very angry, very often.

There. I said it.

I’ve avoided saying for a long time, anxious not to swaddle her in a label that she cannot wriggle free from, or to lock her into a self-perpetuating definition. But she’s hard work. This has been a hard year. I had optimistic plans to steer my career in a new direction, get Zen Mummy fully-established, be a more active participant in the natural parenting community, lose the baby weight through yoga and mindful eating, plus a few other creative ventures I’d hoped to develop …

Instead, I’ve got two stone of baby weight left, and too many half-started projects to show for it. Fitting my full-time job around the full-time job of placating not-so-Zen Baby has left me just a shade short of burnt out.    

There could be all sorts of reasons why she’s the way she is: innate temperament, elevated cortisol levels due to my heavy pregnancy workload, a need to battle for my undivided attention in a way that my first-born never had to, hyper-intelligence, a chemical imbalance, demonic possession …. I’ve considered them all.

Still, she is who she is. The unique juxtaposition of my genes and Mr Z’s created this feisty little individual, as tempestuous as her sister is placid. And instead of trying to ‘fix’ her, my choice is to focus on working out what it is she’s here to teach me. To be less reactive, more responsive, maybe? To reduce my ‘to do’ list so that I’m less preoccupied, more present? To mirror back my own temper-tendencies, so that I can acknowledge them, amend them? I don’t know yet.

But there’s a lesson to be learned here, for sure. There has to be. Because otherwise? Otherwise it’s just been a fairly crappy year.  


PS: the flowers at the top of the page are from the garden of our holiday home. No idea what they are. Gorgeous, aren't they?  

   

And, breathe ...

I'm coming to this late (I come to everything late: full-time mummy + full-time job = not  a lot of zen for this mummy, recently), but in a lovely moment of synchronicity I happened upon A Living Family's Parenting Challenge Week. 


It's exactly what I need right now. It's taken a while (more than a few months, no less) to work out the tricky balance between looking after the zen babes and keeping my head above water work-wise. I've gone under a few times ~ I've skimmed a few deadline by the kin of my teeth, and I've not been the paragon of peaceful mummyness that I would have liked [read: screaming harpy] ~ but this week the schedule is slightly more manageable. 


I've been listening to a wonderful hypnosis download ~ Overwhelmed Mother ~ which has helped to smooth some of the rougher times. But still, there have been many occasions recently when the pace of life has left me breathless, and many other occasions when the demands (the constant, constant demands) of caring for two littlies feels suffocating. 


So, I'll be remembering to breathe. I'll take the time to breathe a little extra calm into our days, find a little bit of space to soothe the frazzled nerves, and show my girls that you can create calm in even the most chaotic of days. 


Join in. It's going to be lovely. 

Why be a mindful mother?

Here's why:

I am a little kid for you to love.
I am a little kid for you to hug and kiss.
I am a little kid for you to say,
"you are so special, yes you are", to.
I am a little kid for all of those things, and more.
And when you feel and say and do all of those things,
I will be a little kid who will love you.
I will be a little kid who will hug and kiss you.
I will be a little kid who will say to you,
"You are so special, too, yes you are."
I will be a little kid who will do all of those things, and more.
And that is what happiness is all about.

Mattie Stepanek, 1990-2004

Mindfulness and mothering: hand in hand & poles apart

‘Mindfulness’ was not in my vocabulary before I became a mother. Eldest child’s position in my life – fully central – determined my parenting approach. I did whatever seemed most natural: we were baby-led in everything, we co-slept, we breastfed. I followed my instincts, even though this was often in opposition to the ‘wisdom’ of the majority of baby books, health professionals and random old ladies in public places who felt that their day was not complete until they stopped to impart the benefit of their crystallised knowledge (NB: it is not true that babies cannot digest bananas unless they are mashed with sugar. Just putting out there, in case she stops you too).

Everything was going swimmingly, but I started to feel the need to be more mindful (even though, at first, I didn’t know that was the word for it). What I did know was that she was changing so very quickly, and I felt like I was letting a lot of those snapshot moments slip away.  It’s easy to lose your focus amid the nappies and the laundry and the paid work and the bedtime battles and the shopping and the cleaning and trying to find the time to fit in a selfish trip to the loo ~ your child can easily become another thing on the long list of chores and responsibilities. Sometimes I had to remind myself that she was more than just a list of things to be ticked off the list (Fed? Yes. Changed? Yes. Books read? Yes. Park trip done? Yes, yes, tick, tick, tick  … )

And then you blink and they’re a day older, a month older, a year older. Your newborn is walking and talking and there’s already a hint of the teenage ‘tude to come in the defiance and tantrums that pepper each day.

Being a more mindful mother might just help me to make the most of each moment.

But aside from what a more mindful approach might bring to me, the real beneficiary would be my child. By remembering to be mindful, I’d be more present, I’d be looking her in the eye and really listening to her, not muttering ‘mmmmm, yes …’ while wondering which of the twenty pressing tasks on my list I should do next. She’d know she was important, she’d know that I was fully there with her, rather than just in the same room as her.

Ironically, while mindfulness and parenting go hand in hand, it’s hard to master. There’s nothing more conducive to slipping into auto-pilot than reading the same story 45 times in a day. I’m not going to pretend I have the answer to this, but I’m working on it.

                                                                             

 (Oh, and if you do have the answer, could you pop it in the comments, please?)       

A couple of links you might want to check out, by Cassandra Vieten ('Mindful Mothering'):

Mindfulness for Moms: the Basics

Incorporating Mindfulness into Motherhood