Coping skills are neat. They are what get us through life. And being a new mom, I have found that I needed to add to my coping skills in this new and foreign land of motherhood.
At my postpartum check-in with my midwife a couple weeks ago a realization was made: I have temporarily lost my go-to coping skill of intense exercise due to childbirth. She validated my experience as to how hard coping can be for mom's who use exercise for stress relief. I could have hugged her for this insight. It was simple and so true. I had lost one of my major coping skills for the time being. And while I mourned the loss of my favorite hobby, lifting heavy. (R.I.P. Weight belts and chalk). I did realize that there are many other ways to deal with stress and life changes. I just needed to tap into different areas of self-care.
Being a counselor and just a solution-oriented person overall, I made a list of things to try and do to add to my basket of coping and self-care. Meditation was one of them.
Up until this point, I have only practiced mindful walking meditation in nature. I love being surrounded by nature and being lost in its presence. However, I live in Iowa and it is winter. I do not want to be outside and lost anywhere right now.
So my husband told me about an app, Headspace, and encouraged me to use it. Well, he actually has been talking about this app for over a year and I never really got to try it out or to make a habit out of meditating. But with being a new mom, I became even more open to trying something other than getting poop in my hair or baby barf in my mouth (actually happened.) And I started to meditate slowly...when I had time. Which was about once per week at the beginning. And it was hard to take the time when a tiny person was dependent on me for everything. As well as, being exhausted on top of it. When forced with the decision to sit in stillness with my thoughts, or to check social media and space out...it was easy to pick spacing out. Because watching cute videos of puppies are always more fun than sitting with your own crazy thoughts. Right? I have since started making more time to meditate. And I am learning a lot about myself. Is this easy to do with a new baby? No. But I am grateful to have started a meditation practice. Research says that after six hours of meditation your brain starts to change. I have not yet reached six hours, but the changes are already present. So I will definitely keep this up.
Along with meditating, I added several other skills to my bucket of calm. One major change was journaling. For myself. Not this blog, but actual pen to paper. And I love it. Journaling has been something over the course of my life that I keep coming back to. I have books filled with my thoughts dating back to grade school in my basement. My husband has been instructed to either burn or publish them when I die. (I'm undecided if everyone or no one should read them.) At any rate, there is nothing like getting the crap out of my head and onto paper first thing in the day. Then I do not have to think about it, because it's out there.
The other fun self-care practice I recently added has been yoga. I have always liked yoga, but during pregnancy it did not speak to me. At all. I did not want to stretch and get into poses with a giant wiggly basketball that danced on my bladder. Not even the prenatal yoga. Stretching, yes. But not yoga. So I stepped away from it. I'm now two and a half months postpartum and have been wrestling with the fact that I cannot lift heavy due to parts of my body needing to repair and recover before moving forward. This is very hard for me. To sit, be patient, and wait. I want to lift up a car, sweat until it hurts, and get weird in the gym. Seriously. I had grand ideas of what I would be doing athletically this year. And I am not giving up on those goals, it's just that I am making peace with what is. And still yearning for exercise, I looked to yoga again. Being on maternity leave with a small mini me makes it hard to hit up a yoga class. And quite honestly, I do not want to go to a standard yoga class as I want to focus on specific areas of my body that still need to heal. As well as, spend time with this amazing kid. So I found some yoga channels on YouTube designed for the postpartum phase. And it has been wonderful. Yoga is very humbling and has meditative qualities. It's something I can do until I'm old and obnoxious and there is reason I have come back to it. And P.S. how great is YouTube?? Cat videos for DAYS.
With these newly implemented coping strategies (plus several others) added to my motherhood toolbox, I have noticed something. On the days that I take care of myself and take the time for self-care, I am more at ease with everything. I'm also a better mom when I take care of me.
As a side-effect of making time for me, I have started to clean and get really organized? Now the thing to note here is that I am not a cleaner. I am more of the creative type and "have to be in the mood" to clean. Am I the type to start a company or a blog...yes. But will I always clean my bathroom on a Thursday because that is cleaning day? No. Absolutely not. But lately, I am cleaning and organizing. And I really attribute that to the emptying of the clutter out of my brain with journaling, meditation, and yoga. I am literally cleaning up my surroundings along with my thoughts. (It could also be that I am now a mom and I have to be organized, otherwise this whole thing is going to be a disaster.) Who knows. All I know is that I am feeling more clear-headed and my house is starting to get in order. STARTING being the key word here. I'm still me and right now my bathroom is dirty. But I typed up a blog entry. So baby steps, right?
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