Transcript: The Importance of Self Care For Moms

As a new mum, there’s always lots of demands on your time, making it really easy to neglect your own self care. It’s so important that you always ensure you take care of yourself so that you are able to provide your little one with the best care. In this episode, I speak with Rebecca. Jean-Baptiste a life strategist certified coach, and a mother of four, about the importance of taking time out daily to focus on yourself.

I’m infant massage instructor, Helen Thompson. Hello and welcome to first-time mum’s chat. Being a parent for the first time is challenging and changes your life every way imaginable. To help ease your transition into parenthood, I aim to offer supportive holistic approaches and insights for moms of babies aged four weeks to 10 months old.

My goal is to assist you to become the most confident parents you can and smooth out the bumps along the way. This podcast is brought to you by MyBabyMassage. So let’s do this together. This podcast is for informational purposes only. And does not constitute medical advice. Please contact a medical practitioner if you’re a concerned or have any medical issues.

Hi, Rebecca, and welcome to my podcast, the First Time Mum’s Chat. It’s a pleasure to have you here. And I think this, this we’re going to be talking about how we can help moms to support them, you know, new moms, how to support themselves and how to take, take care of themselves. So I’ll leave you to introduce yourself and tell my moms a little bit more about you and where you come from.

Yes. Hi Helen. And thank you so much for having me here in your podcast. My name is Rebecca Jean-Baptiste and I am in the Tampa bay, Florida area. I am a life strategist where I help people create great tax management and productivity so they can create an extraordinary life. I’ve been doing this for over six years here and I am a certified life coach as well.

When you say you’re a certified life coach, what kind of life coach are you? Yeah, so I am ICF accredited and, I teach more, a lot on time management and productivity. Just pretty much anything with task management and system buildings with your calendar. I’ve been helping a lot of families engage with finding ways to help them with their schedules throughout the week.

And I just started gearing in this year to help moms and moms who have businesses who struggle with that, trying to balance out everything with their family life and their business life. So I I’m, I. So much joy doing that for the community. That must be big task. I was going to ask you are there some, some ways that you can advise to help moms sort of take more care of themselves, because I know there are times when they get all stressed and they get overwhelmed.

They’ve had their baby they’ve come out of hospital and they suddenly think, oh, wow, I’ve got this baby all by myself. What am I going to do? Is there anything with your experience as a coach and what you do? And I know you’re a mom yourself, right? So I’ve been, I’ve been married for 12 years and I’ve been blessed with four children.

My youngest is two months old. My oldest is 11. So we have a nice gap of in-between ages, from, you know, your infant to preschool, elementary and middle school. Now, from my experience as a mom especially when I was a new mom, I learned that we just don’t take care of ourselves, like we should. We’re giving so much to everyone else and we’re saying no to ourselves and yes, to everyone.

And by the time the end of the day comes we’re burnt out and we really don’t know why we’re burnt out. One way I can say that a mom can mentally self care themselves is doing something every single day that brings them joy. Something that keeps them saying something like brings peace to them. Even if it’s for 10 minutes, if even if it’s a TV show that makes them laugh, doing something that would bring them joy and taking some time away for yourself each day by yourself.

That alone time is so precious and important. It just helps you regain rejuvenate, starting what I do as a mom, I start my day alone for about an hour, either meditation, journaling going about exercising, whatever it is. I do that alone time. It’s very important for me to do that a little time first thing in the morning.

And then towards the end of the day. I, my husband, he knows this too. I need that alone time again. It just helps me declutter. What happened throughout the day and just to unwind because we’re living in a crazy world where anything can happen. You can just sit there in your living room and there’s an accident right across the street.

So you just need time just to declutter on a daily basis and that not just for mums, everyone up to put that into practice. No, that’s, that’s a very good tip because I know from a childcare point of view, when I used to work in childcare, I, I used to have to have that time at the end of the day. Cause I had about 20 kids screaming at me all at once and I just, I come home and Jonathan’s asking me my partner’s asking me all these questions.

And I just said, Just give me 10 minutes to be by myself and then I’ll focus on you. I it’s. So yeah, it’s hard to do that. So that’s a, that’s an excellent tip. I think for moms to do the other one was I know some moms, they strive. They’re always striving for perfection. They’re always striving to. Make sure that everything’s right in the house that the house is clean, the laundry is done, and yet they’re still sort of having to look after the baby and the baby might have colic.

They might be screaming and they’d just sort of distraught because I’ve had that. I’ve had that with some moms who I nanny for, they just, they’re just so distraught that their, their child is distraught. Not only because they have colic or whatever, but they’re just, they’re distraught because their moms are distraught.

So. I guess, is there anything that you’ve done as a mom or anything that you can sort of advise that they can do around the home too? You mentioned declutter, but is there anything you can sort of suggest that they can do to, to take away the stress of everything that’s going on around them? I know when I was a new mom, you want the nursery to look perfect.

You want all the, everything to look nice. And all that is important to plan because planning is important, but life happens. We can plan from a to Z and there will be clutter. There will be mess and things like that. But one thing I can say that helped me as a mother is the night before. Just plan all your things.

If your child is on formula, you plan your bottles the night before plan your, what your child’s going to wear that that night before you have your, your diapers stocked up your wipes stocked up the night before. And if there is laundry that needs to be done, sometimes you just got to push it to the side and just focus on you and the baby.

Because that laundry we’ll, we’ll still be there and you can go back to it, which is focusing on what’s really, truly important. I know too, scheduling things throughout the week is important too. So let’s say you’re a person that cooks, or you go out to eat. I would schedule out what, what you’re going to cook that day meal prep, what you’re going to do.

So that way you’re not so overwhelmed with, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? What I need everything to be perfect. I need, I need to do this. Right. And that, right. Because you just get so flustered with all the tasks that are happening. And then if you have a partner or you have some friends or family that can assist you, you know, just go about asking for help.

That’s one thing I know that moms struggle with. They, they tend to not ask for help. They suffer in silence. They suffer in silence so bad. They know they need that help, but they’re too embarrassed because women are so detailed oriented naturally, and we feel like, okay, if I’m a mom, I should, I shouldn’t know at all, I should do it all.

But in the long run we still need help. It takes a village to raise one child. We can’t do it by ourselves. So, and so I, I, I, I sometimes feel for some of these single moms, you know, who are doing it and they, they need some help and support too. I’m a married mother and I need help all the time with my children.

So. I would say definitely just getting that support system planning ahead on what is it that you normally do throughout the week from I’m going to do laundry only on Tuesdays or, or I’m a cook only on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Just that just so that the household could be at peace with you and the baby. Yeah. And also if you’ve got friends coming round to visit you, don’t worry if the house is untidy or cluttered, because, you know, if, if they’re good friends they’ll know that, you know, you’ve got a baby and you can’t, you can’t do everything.

I mean, moms, no mom is a supermom and I think. A lot of, a lot of young mums think oh, gosh, as you said, I’ve got to do this by myself and you know, I’m supposed to know what I’m doing. I’m the mom, you know, and yeah, that’s good tips. I think that’s what I think that’s what I’m, it would be a good thing for them to hear because some moms just.

Don’t know how to take, you know, take that step and ask for help if they needed her, mom’s really overwhelmed and they’re finding it too much and they maybe don’t have family and friends who can help them or something. I mean, what, is there anything that you can sort of think that we as a mom or that you can advise those people to do.

Yeah. So,   I can have some suggestions for that. If it’s a mother that’s far away,  from their families or friends, let’s say it’s for work reasons or what have you, there are programs out there where you can sign your child up to certain things, so you can get certain help or you can go on these mom groups.

Like w we’re in living in a life where social media is just it’s free. So there’s a lot of groups out there where you can get support from local people. I know I’m part of a couple of mom groups locally. Not that I need a whole lot of help, but I’m in there because sometimes you can get some advice. And some guidance from these other moms that have been there, done that.

So going to these free groups and letting them know that you live in town, planning out these play dates with these other moms. I have a child that’s probably your age group as well. And then as you grow with these communities, you can probably build some amazing friends and they can come help you out.

Maybe one day. You can go and watch their child for something. And then, so the mom can go get a pedicure for say or something like that. And then there’s even websites that can help you with, like, I think there’s one called care.com where you can go in and you can interview someone, hire someone to help you out with tours around the house.

Like you don’t have to necessarily. Being a new mom. You don’t want to just leave your child with anyone, but you can still be in the household, caring for your child while this person go and clean your kitchen or does your laundry. So that way you don’t have so much, you don’t have so much on you. You know, you don’t have like a huge burden on you and that would just help ease some of the stress that the overwhelming stress that moms go through.

Yeah. I know with COVID that was COVID. People have been stuck in their homes all the time and, and I’m not a great believer of technology. I mean, no, that’s not true that I am a believer of technology, but what I mean is I’m not a great believer of plonking kids down in front of the TV, because I don’t believe that a TV is a babysitter.

However, I guess during COVID, I mean, for a mum, who’s got the kids at home. If she’s a  first time mom and she’s got a baby at home and she can’t go out, that must be, I guess that must be quite a stressful time. But then there are, if you say that there is stuff on the media that you can do, you can do meditation, twist them, you can play with them.

You can communicate with them that way. And you can put on nice relaxing music and stuff like that. So I guess for moms can’t get out and go to those mother groups or go to the library, it must be a sort of tough time for them. It was, it was really tough for us. Well, I guess it all depends on which part of the state they live.

I live more in the rural area, so it didn’t really hit us as bad. My kids were able to go to school in the fall. It wasn’t to the point where we were mandatory to stay home and do homeschooling the whole time . We did do it those first couple of months. Obviously everybody did. Because I already had like such great connections with other people.

We, we would have zoom calls with others, they’re friends and, you know, and just engaging in that. I mean, zoom became this amazing platform to use during the COVID time, the pandemic time. So there was a lot of video chatting with grandparents, with aunts, uncles. So we were still able to engage in that aspect.

I even attended a virtual baby shower. Which was pretty cool. Yeah. So there’s a lot of cool things out there that I feel like people are very creative and people are realizing, oh wow. We actually can meet up without meeting up for real for real. So, but yeah, there are many ways to bypass what’s going on in society to actually engage with one another outside of your home.

Yeah. Giving me an idea when you said that, which I’d never thought of before. I mean, you could, you could have an online sort of mums group. You’ve got your baby with you, so your baby is also interacting with the other babies as well. And they can sort of, I know people say that babies can’t talk, but in fact, that’s, that’s, I don’t believe that because I’m actually talking to somebody tomorrow who does Dunstan baby language.

And it’s, it’s really, it’s actually really interesting. So babies definitely can talk, I’m sort of thinking of when you said that, that. They can talk like you and I are talking on zoom now. I mean, they could still interact with other babies. They don’t have to be there physically. Right. It’s just a new world that we’re living in.

So, so is there anything else that you’d like to add that you feel that would be advantageous to first time moms in a self-care that we haven’t covered? Yeah. One thing I can talk about is after being a mom, Don’t forget about yourself. Don’t forget about who you were prior to being a mother. A lot of moms after become a, becoming a mom, especially the ones that become stay at home moms that don’t go back into the work world and they forget about themselves.

They’re so drawn into being a mom that they lost, who they were before. So always engaged with what you were passionate about. Always do what you used to do before becoming a mom, because you, you were who you were prior to being a mother. And, uh, lastly I would say, enjoy the baby, embrace the baby because babies grow up so fast.

It’s just one year and they’re gone. Like my daughter she’s, you know, like I said, she’s two months old and we’re looking at her, we’re like, oh my gosh, you’re going too fast. And it’s, it’s, it’s so crazy. Will you just get that one year of, of, of them being a baby and then they become toddlers and so on and so forth.

So embrace it, enjoy it as much as possible. Don’t take it lightly because being a mom is, is, is, is a true blessing. And being honored to be a mother is a blessing on top of that too. So do you. I always apply self care, always do what you love doing that keeps you sane and brings you joy and never forget about yourself.

That’s a wonderful tip to leave with. Babies are so beautiful. And as you say, they, they’re not babies for very long. They may cry. They may get stressed, but after all the crying is how they communicate and just enjoy that time. Yeah. It’s it’s a good way of bonding with them as well to do that, so. Okay.

That’s great. Thank you so much. I’ve really, I’ve really enjoyed talking with you and I’m sure they’ll, there’ll be very proud to  hear your words of wisdom. Rebecca shared some great ideas on how you can take care of you. So you are a hundred percent there for your little one. You can find Rebecca at RebeccaPJB.com.

That’s RebeccaPJB.com and book a discovery call when she can help you with task management, productivity and other life strategy needs. I’ve included some further information on Rebecca in the show notes, which can be accessed. At MyBabyMassage.net/podcast/022. I’ve also started a new Facebook group called First Time Mum’s Lounge.

So please join us as you’ll gain access to tips to help you and your baby through the beginning stages of your journey. You can access this group. By going to MyBabyMassage.net/facebook. Thank you so much for listening.