How to Boost Your Wellness Being a Busy Mom [Episode #499]

Today’s solocast topic is: How To Boost Your Wellness Being A Busy Mom

I just had my second child, as many of you know, and going from zero to one I think is obviously the biggest change. But as you mamas and papas out there know, going from one to two is also a big change, because it feels like one of them is sleeping or quiet and then the other one needs your attention.

And suddenly there’s just a lot more to handle and to deal with. There’s two of them to feed, and there’s two of them just to make sure their needs are met. Bubby is still quite young. He just turned four, and he’s not in preschool now with COVID going on. He’s at a pretty needy age where I still have to watch him and sort of monitor and guide what he’s doing all the time.

And of course having a newborn is also a lot. So I thought this topic would be really great for us to talk about, because I want to share four tips with you guys that I have been using in my life, and ways to really make sure that you’re nourishing yourself and feeling good.

Just like the title of our podcast, our Feel Good podcast, feeling good by the way, doesn’t mean that you’re just super cheerful all the time, that you always bounce around the room in extreme happiness. To me, feeling good is when you feel connected to yourself.

Topics Covered In Being a Busy Parent and Keeping Up with Your Wellness Practice

#1. Doing your practices when you can, where you can

#2. Connecting with nature while playing with your kids

#3. How to use smoothies to nourish yourself

#4. Tips to stick with your evening routine

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Hey Beauties. Welcome to our Monday solo cast episode where our topic today is being a busy mom or parents, and this is for men as well, and keeping up with your wellness practices. So this is a topic which is very close to my heart right now. Literally I have baby Moses slash Mr. Eggy, as Bubby calls him, in his skin to skin carrier, which really looks like an extension of my shirt.

He is snuggled up right on me right now. I’m looking into his little sleeping face, and hopefully he will stay asleep for the solo cast. I just had my second child, as many of you know, and going from zero to one I think is obviously the biggest change. But as you mamas and papas out there know, going from one to two is also a big change, because it feels like one of them is sleeping or quiet and then the other one needs your attention.

And suddenly there’s just a lot more to handle and to deal with. There’s two of them to feed, and there’s two of them just to make sure their needs are met. Bubby is still quite young. He just turned four, and he’s not in preschool now with COVID going on. So he’s at a pretty needy age where I still have to watch him and sort of monitor and guide what he’s doing all the time.

And of course having a newborn is also a lot. So I thought this topic would be really great for us to talk about, because I want to share four tips with you guys that I have been using in my life, and ways to really make sure that you’re nourishing yourself and feeling good. Just like the title of our podcast, our Feel Good podcast, feeling good by the way, doesn’t mean that you’re just super cheerful all the time, that you always bounce around the room in extreme happiness. To me, feeling good is when you feel connected to yourself.

That may look like honoring periods of rest, or honoring times where you need to ask for help, or you need to give yourself a little bit more nourishment. We are the sun and the moon. We are, like Solluna, we have many different sides. We have the full range of emotions. So feeling good doesn’t necessarily mean that you only express the “happy, positive emotions.”

We need to express our fullness, but it means that we are connected. And when we’re connected versus disconnected, we tend to just be more in tune with what we need. We don’t tend to get as depleted and we are able to create more sustained energy. So as a busy mom or dad, I know that it’s much easier to say that, than to actually practice it in your life.

Solocast

But I do know that with a little bit of commitment and a little bit of planning, which we’re going to talk about in the tips, it’s definitely possible to do it. And we’ve all heard, “You’ve got to take care of yourself first.” You need to really nourish yourself, and then what runneth over from that cup is what you can use to really give to your family, to your children.

And I know when I’m depleted, when I’m really feeling run down and I haven’t even taken the time to eat, which happens sometimes for all of us, or one of those nights where we just got no sleep, it’s super tough. And as a consequence, the whole family suffers, the kids. We’re still doing our best obviously, but the kids know, Bobby’s like, “Mama, what are you doing?”

And I just don’t have the same level of presence when I’m playing with him, when I’m feeling really depleted. So keeping up with your wellness practices and really taking care of yourself is essential, not just for yourself, it’s not a selfish endeavor. It’s really for the greater good of the whole family.

When I was digging into this topic, I started looking around and I found some pretty alarming statistics, including the fact that this is a longterm study published in 2019 in the Sleep Journal, founding that new mothers face up to six years of sleep deprivation, which as we know, substantially increases the risk for developing depression and anxiety.

It was the first time that I saw that number laid out, six years. And by the way, this study was for mothers, but fathers definitely experience that as well. If we’re nursing, breastfeeding, of course mamas have more of the sleep deprivation. But my hubby, John, definitely helps with diaper changes at night and he’s there if I need anything, some water, some snacks, he is definitely there.

It’s nice to have a partner that you can be in the same boat with. If you are a single mom or a single dad, my heart really also goes out to you, because of course that makes it even more… Everything tends to fall on you, which means these wellness practices are even more important. I will say that that was a little bit, whoa, seeing six years, but I think it ebbs and flows.

For instance, Mr. Eggy is a much better sleeper, I think, than Bubby was as a baby. I also am co-sleeping with Mr. Eggy. We’re very careful, but it feels really great. Whereas Bubby was in a co-sleeper next to our bed, and there was just a lot more hours, I think, rocking him after nursing him to get him back to sleep. Whereas just co-sleeping feels a lot more fluid and a lot more easy this time around.

Every baby is different, every child is different. But there’s another statistic I want to talk about here, which was that 50 to 75% of new mothers experience baby blues, and 15% of them develop full postpartum depression after delivery, according to the Cleveland Clinic. So feeling moody and feeling down and having just different emotions is completely normal.

You can see up to 75% of moms experience this. And of course there’s this huge swing in hormones involving progesterone and cortisol, there’s a lot more stress, and adrenaline, estrogen. There’s so many different things going on in your body. And so you really need to take the time to nourish yourself, because otherwise it starts to feel you’re really at the end of a very frayed rope.

In my experience, I didn’t feel as emotional, I think, as I did with Bobby, for different reasons. I think I’m sleeping more now. And another thing that I did in this pregnancy that I didn’t do in my first pregnancy, was I did decide to encapsulate my placenta. And that has been a great experience replenishing, and just the act of doing it.

I also feel like I know so much more about the postpartum period. I’ve studied it more from an ayurvedic standpoint, and I just learned a lot along the way. So if you’re interested in… If you’re having more children, if you’re currently pregnant, I also wanted to quickly mention that I have been working on our fertility, pregnancy and postpartum course, which is going to be really comprehensive.

It’s going to have Eastern and Western. It’s going to have scientific research and ayurvedic wisdom and recipes and all these amazing practices, and teaching you how to do a yoni steam, which is a really wonderful thing to do in the fertility period, to connect with your body and to release old emotions and shame from the sexual organs, which is really important, I think, for bringing in, inviting in life.

Anyways, not to get too off topic, but just know that’s another offering I’ve been working on for you guys. So there’s a lot that were going on, there’s sleep depression. And on top of it, the last study that I wanted to mention is a new study from Frontiers in Global Women’s Health, and it found that the current coronavirus pandemic has tripled levels of anxiety and depression in new mothers.

We know this is a very interesting time of our lives. Nothing has ever happened like this. There’s a lot of unknowns, there’s a lot of stuff going on in the news. So it’s natural that as mothers and parents, I keep saying… Obviously, as a mother, it’s natural for me to say mother, but of course this includes all you amazing fathers out there and papa’s. Papa’s what Bubby calls hubby, so I tend to say papa. Anyways, this is applicable for any parent.

There’s so many unknowns. Bobby’s not going back to preschool this year, and a lot of you are homeschooling, or you just doing your best with your kid not going back to school. So there’s a lot of going on right now. So back to the central theme of our solo cast today, which is keeping up with your wellness practices, which, yes, is possible. We need to pick and choose. We need to prioritize.

The reality is you’re not going to be able to do everything as if you didn’t have any kids. And I know that, you know that, but I feel that there’s so much love, there’s so much heart expansion that comes from being a parent, there’s so much nourishment in that. Of course it is, in my opinion, more than worth it. I love being a mother, but it’s challenging, and we really have to figure out the balance for our lives so we don’t lose ourselves in being a parent and we don’t completely lose our wellness and our vitality.

We’re not going to be able to do everything again, but with thought and practice, you will be able to do some of your wellness practices. And then also get that huge, huge, huge influx of love that only your child, your beautiful little one, smiling at you, he or she tells you that he or she loves you. The love, the brightness when Bubby looks in my eyes, and he says sometimes, “Mama, you’re so beautiful.” And then he picks me flowers from our yard and it just fills my heart with so much.

That actually wasn’t one of my tips, but as I even think about Bubby and Mr. Eggy, now that he’s starting to smile, I think really staying present with your child as much as you can when you’re with them, and relishing those moments, the love, looking in each other’s eyes and really having those heartfelt moments, is in itself a wellness practice. It’s a beautiful form of presence. Children are so present.

They are such wonderful teachers of being present, that anytime you can really hone in on that and focus on it and let it fill your heart, is going to nourish you. Nourishment doesn’t just come from food, it comes in so many ways. It comes from the sunlight, it comes from love, it comes from gratitude, it comes from your meditation practice. So when we really start to open up and look at this as a holistic lifestyle, which is at Solluna here, what we teach in our four cornerstones, food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth.

#1: Do your practices when you can, where you can

It’s really important when we’re talking about wellness practices to nourish all areas of our lives. So that was sort of a bonus tip, a bonus practice, but let’s get into the five I was thinking about and crafted for you guys. The first is do your practices when you can, where you can, and don’t worry about them looking a perfect or doing them perfectly.

What I had in mind was my meditation practice, and the way I did it before kids and what my guru, Yogananda, talks about is really having a dedicated space. It could be a corner of your bedroom. It was this tiny little corner when I lived in my tiny, tiny New York City apartment, yet it had a little altar and there was candles and there was framed pictures of some of the gurus, some of the Indian gurus that I connect with and Jesus.

There was crystals. There was all sorts of things. There was a Buddha. And I knew that when I went into my corner it was time to meditate. It was really neat, curated space. Now my life looks like co-sleeping with Mr. Eggy, and then Bubby crawls into our bed probably by 5:30 in the morning. So it’s sort of groggy, I’ve been up and down all night, feeding Mr. Eggy. Bubby comes in. Usually he goes back to sleep, but he wakes up if I get up for any reason.

And sometimes I let him watch videos for a couple of moments, he watches Peppa the pig, and Daniel Tiger. He has a couple shows he likes. I let him watch it on my phone when I meditate. And if I don’t, it goes out the window. And I know for myself, this is where I draw the line, this is where I prioritize, this is where I really know there’s certain practices that I cannot skip.

And one of them is my morning practice. In the morning practice I teach you guys, I’ve written about it on the website, in my last book Recipes for Your Perfectly Imperfect Life, you really want a strong morning practice that will give you energy for the day. So again, do it when you can, practice where you can, when you can, and don’t worry about it being perfect. I’m not having my little meditation seat anymore, and it’s not completely quiet.

Bubbie’s video is very low, but by letting him watch videos for a couple minutes, I do sneak that morning meditation practice in. I prop up on my pillow, I close my eyes, I drop in. And then together, we go downstairs in a little while and we have breakfast. And then I’m making my herbal tea, hot water with lemon, GGS, the smoothies for the family, the rest of the practice continues.

Again, stick to what is really important, even if there’s some noise or it’s a little bit messy around, or you have to have your kid watch a video for a couple of minutes, which by the way, I do not feel bad about at all. I feel like, especially with COVID and we’re all home 24 hours, it’s okay. I know I was a stickler, until he was three, he didn’t watch anything.

This is somewhat recent, but it’s been going on for a little while. And again, our family doesn’t have a TV. So it’s very conscious when I turn on the phone for him or the iPad, he doesn’t really know how to use the iPad. It’s our iPad. But it’s curated and I’ve really relaxed into that. And I think he’s at an age now where a little bit of video is totally fine.

#2: Go outside and play with your kids

Number two, go outside and play with your kids as much as you can. So as a busy parent, you’re probably not going to be… Well now I don’t think anybody’s going to the gym, doing yoga classes, but if you’re like, “Oh shoot, I can’t do this Zoom class,” or this… What’s the bike called? The Pentalon, I think it’s called, that they have, the home bike system, the spin class.

If you can’t do all that, because it’s so crazy and it’s so busy, don’t worry about it. I try to go on a walk, but I don’t always get the chance to, but I’m always suggesting games outside with Bubby and we run around. We are very lucky that, I’m so grateful, we live on almost an acre of land here in the mountains. And we just have a front yard and a backyard where our garden is.

And there’s so many games we play, and we play hide and seek, and we play these funny superhero games, because Bubby’s really into that. And we play under our Redwood trees, we play this Darth Vader emperor game, although Bubby calls them emperader, Star Wars game. Even though he’s never seen Star Wars, he’s really into the characters. We have these play light sabers and we run around.

But anyways, why this is so important is for a couple of reasons. Number one, getting some sunshine, fresh air. Of course use adequate sun protection as necessary. But the grounding, I try to be barefoot a lot outside if that’s possible for you, or if you can still get to a local park, just really connecting with nature has this ability to help restore us to equilibrium, to restore our overall energy, I think.

Because of the negative ions that are given off from the earth surface, helps to rebalance the positive ions, which can create inflammation. And it just feels really good, it feels really natural, it feels very stress reducing to be outside. So anytime you can get outside with your kid, maybe you’re not getting a full gym workout, but you can get your heart rate up. You can run after them. You can certainly get active outside and it feels great. And again, you’re getting all those other benefits.

#3: Using smoothies to nourish yourself

My third tip is to use smoothies to nourish yourself. This fuels into our first cornerstone, of course, which is food. And the reason that this is so important, is because food is going to give us that fuel to get through the day. Obviously what we’re eating starts to transmit and transmute energy into our systems, especially when we’re consciously choosing what we’re eating.

The energy of food becomes the energy within our bodies. And as a busy parent, a lot of times you are feeding your kid, you’re running after them, you’re changing diapers, you’re doing all this stuff, and you don’t get to sit down and eat and chew properly yourself. So for me, smoothies has been a huge saving grace. I’ve been talking about smoothies for years, but now it has a whole new level and a whole new just element of usefulness.

Because again, as a parent, you don’t realize how your time eat to eat is not something that is just given to you anymore. It’s something that actually you can’t take for granted. So glowing green smoothies. I have this Ogus vitality enhancing shake. I just put the recipe on my Instagram, which is @_KimberlySnyder, if you want to check it out.

But it’s basically I’ve been, as busy as I am, making raw almond milk. It doesn’t take that long, and I just love the freshness and the enzymes of it. It’s got sprouts, it’s got a vegan protein powder, and also, let’s see, women’s herb called shatavari and a frozen banana basically.

And there’s some other things I mix and match in there, but that’s the basic component of it, and it just makes me feel great. I know I’m getting nourishment, I’m getting protein and minerals and energy and vitamins and all sorts of things from that amazing smoothie. And of course you know how we love our glowing green smoothie and the energy you get from that. So if you can’t sit down to eat, the next best thing is smoothies.

#4: Using your partner or outside source to stick with evening routine

My fourth tip is use your partner or outside help, whatever that looks like, to really allow yourself to stick to your evening routine, or elements of your evening routine. So for me, by the end of the day, I am pretty tired. A lot of the times I am frazzled, I am so looking forward to just chilling out and giving myself some love. And this is the time of the day where you really need to have some help and support in that. Not necessarily doing another huge pile of dishes, or now you’re getting around to folding the laundry.

That’s why I frame this as help. Maybe, if it’s possible, you could get a relative that’s in your bubble, your COVID bubble, or someone safe, or someone you feel comfortable with. If someone is wearing a mask and obviously disinfects their hands and maybe they stay in a different part of the house or whatever. You could hire some cleaning help, or your partner, papa or mama, if you are a papa listening to this, can really take on some of that work, or watch the kids during that time and allow you to do what you need to do to nourish yourself at the end of the day.

What you don’t want to do is let it compound. So you have that stress and then it goes into the night and then you’re up with a baby, and it goes into the next day and it becomes a cycle. And then you’re very susceptible, very vulnerable to depression and anxiety, because you’re just not refilling your cup. You’re not renourishing yourself.

For me, I love to do abhyanga. I warm up my oil. I give myself a little massage, only about two, three minutes. I take a hot shower. I need to do that otherwise I do not feel good and I start to feel frazzled. So hubby always takes the baby, watches the baby. I do this after Bubby’s in bed. And he’s really, really great about it. He knows it’s really important to me.

If baby starts crying, because he’s used to really just being on my body, he bounces him on the exercise ball and he just knows that’s really my sacred time. And sometimes I stay in there for a while, I’ll tweeze my eyebrows, and I will use our little Solluna Vibrating Facial Wand, which feels really good. It’s a vibrating wand. You could also check that out. I think we still have some left, but it’s limited edition. So check it out, it’s on our site.

And I just do some little things in there. What else do I like to do? Sometimes I’ll put on a mask, not too often admittedly these days, but yeah, sometimes I like to tweeze and just take my time putting on my eye cream and our products and whatever. He knows do not come in until I leave the bathroom and I open up the door.

Whatever that looks like for you, if you are a single parent, sometimes if your kid goes to bed really late or however you need to manage it, maybe that’s the time to create that for yourself before dinner, and that’s when they watch their 20 minutes of videos or whatever it is. So just figuring out how to prioritize the practices that really make you feel nourished in your body and your soul, and sticking to that.

And ideally something in the evening, so it breaks up the busyness of the day. And especially if you have babies, the nighttime, which is going to be phase two, like a whole other part of parenting really. And fifth, my fifth tip for you is to stay connected to your tribe, to our community, so you don’t feel isolated, so you don’t start to feel alone, so you don’t get too caught up in your thoughts.

They spin around and around and around and you start to feel really disconnected. Again, feeling good is about connection, and connection to yourself and connection to community, because ultimately we are all one, we are all so connected, and it’s just really important that you foster that in all the different ways that you can and that feel good to you.

That can include… Obviously now we are in the midst of this coronavirus and we’re not able to do as much as we usually do obviously, but there’s a lot of great resources online, including our Solluna Circle, including this podcast, which obviously I always try to give you guys love and positivity, and I love you and appreciate you. And so we are connected. So just by staying here… Oh, I forgot to say, to make sure you subscribe.

Sometimes at the beginning of the podcast, the solocast, I have my little routine. Perfectly imperfect. I totally spaced on that today, but yes, it’s a good idea to subscribe, that way you don’t miss out on any of the shows. And I will say that positive social media, be discerning, because some of it can feel depleting and can start to feel a little bit neg, as a negativo.

But I think especially a lot of the news channels, news feeds and things like that, but just be discerning. And if it feels positive, follow it. If it doesn’t, I would say unfollow it, or just don’t tune in too much. And of course, FaceTime with family. I’ve been making it a point to really carve out that time with our relatives, none of which by the way, have met Mr. Eggy yet, which is pretty crazy.

And realistically speaking, none of them are going to meet him until next year, which is wild. I never in a million years thought that there would be this much time, but it is what it is. And we FaceTime and we stay connected, and that feels really good. So whatever feeling good and sticking with your community. Is for you and our Solluna community, we are here for you. I am here.

I do answer all my comments, try to answer almost every single comment I can see and get to on Instagram, on the newer posts. I’m still figuring it out, so I keep going back to the last few posts, but if you comment on one from like a year ago, I don’t really know how to see that. But stay connected. Leave me a message. You can also ask your questions here on the podcast.

In Closing

Let me sum that up again, these tips for being a busy mom/parent, and keeping up with your wellness practices. Number one, do your practices when you can, where you can, and don’t worry about doing them perfectly or looking perfect. Like meditating in bed with your kid next to you watching a video for a couple of minutes, because that’s when you can fit it in. Or maybe you can’t do it right away, but your kid is playing next to you and that’s when you can fit it in, whatever, when there’s a little bit of noise or whatever.

Number two, be outside, get outside, connect with nature, take your kid outside. That’s a really great form of movement. And so much nourishment comes from being in nature, being out in fresh air and sunshine. Number three is use smoothies to nourish yourself, because as a busy parent, you’re on the go and you do need that really high form of physical food nourishment as well.

Number four is to use your partner/outside help to help you stick to your evening routine, to break up the parenting of the day and the parenting of night, however that looks for you. And number five is stay connected to our community and remind yourself that you are part of a greater whole, you have support, you can speak your truth, you can be witnessed, you can lean on other people, which is really the premise of our Solluna circle, which we continue to develop this offering.

Just so you know, so it’s going to get better and better over time. And yeah, so those are my four tips for you. I think it’s a really wonderful, beautiful journey of course, to be a parent, but it’s of course very challenging. And so the more that we tune in and take care of ourselves, the better it is for the whole family and the better you’re going to enjoy this incredible experience of being a parent, which can open you and nourish you in amazing, amazing ways.

Thank you so much for tuning in. I love doing our podcast. I love doing these solo casts, and I love to share with you. So all the ways to connect, again, I mentioned writing in, checking out mysolluna.com, is where you can leave the questions and the comments. Please also be sure to leave us a review on iTunes when you get a chance, which is a great way to find the show.

I’m also on Instagram @_kimberlysnyder, And we have a new Solluna Instagram, which is sollunabyks. And that’s where online you’ll find the new recipes and information and offerings across all our cornerstones. So you’ll find inspirational quotes and more in depth information and tips on our products, body care, all sorts of things.

Sending you lots and lots of love. Thank you so much Beauty. We’ll be back here Thursday for our next Q&A podcast. Until then take care and lots of love.