Making Time For Yourself When There Is No Time For Yourself

I have a vivid memory of my first adventure alone out of the house after my oldest daughter was born in 2014. A wild outing to the local grocery store. Would I leisurely roam the aisles, actually paying attention to what I was buying? Would I use two hands to push the buggy or stop at the drive-thru to get coffee? Could I make it back home before my nursing pads failed me and I started leaking through my shirt? The possibilities seemed endless, and I was excited. 

As I pulled into the parking lot a short 10 minutes later, I received a frantic phone call from my husband. He asked if I was on my way home yet?! In my husband’s defense, our darling chubby baby girl was so fussy and colicky, and he didn’t have the boobs required to soothe her crying. 

I cried my way back to our house and remember thinking, “Is this my life now? I can’t even enjoy a tropical vacation by myself to Publix?! I’ll never be alone again!”

We’ve had two more babies since then and thankfully my husband’s confidence in his baby care skills have advanced and he can easily handle all three of our girls on his own.

I am an introvert by nature. Having time to myself is incredibly important to my mental health and physical well-being. I’ve developed a few tricks and routines that are necessary to maintain my sanity:

• Sleep. I’m a 9 hours-a-night kind of woman, but we have three small children, so that of course, never happens. If I need to go to bed at 8:30 to sleep a collective 7 or 8 hours, then I do it.
• Schedule a night “out” by myself every couple of weeks. My husband travels for work so I often have to do bedtime by myself. When he is home, however, we pick a night where he puts all of the girls to bed on his own so I can go out into the world by myself. 
• Get lost in a podcast or book. Let’s face it, our home is noisy. At the end of a long day of parenting, I need quiet and I need to zone out. The best strategy for me is to pop in a pair of headphones and lose myself in a good podcast. 
• Ditch the mom-guilt. Like most other moms I know, I typically feel like I need to be able to do everything by myself. Accepting help is not a sign of weakness in my own parenting. When someone offers, ACCEPT THE HELP and don’t feel guilty.

There are still days when I fantasize about escaping to a hotel by myself to sleep for the next 10 years or so. But, by giving myself moments of grace and demanding bits of alone time each day, I have found that I am much more patient as a mom and much more relaxed as a wife.