Yesterday, I woke up in a horrible mood. It was 4:20 a.m. and Gus wanted to nurse. By the time he was done, my alarm was about to go off so I just had to start my day. I was just feeling off all day, short, no patience, and a bit angry. So when I had a child wake up feeling similarly, it was not a good start to the day. I was not being the parent I want to be. And, I had a day full of commitments that I had to face. Sigh.
I put the call out for help - on Instagram - asking for some tips on how to turn my day around and get myself in a better mindset. And what I got was an overwhelming response of love, suggestions, support, and commiseration. It ended up being exactly what I needed in the moment. But, so many of the private messages I got were from people in the same boat looking for suggestions and asking me to share. So, here they are - some of the ideas that I got from lovely people on IG on how to turn it around on a bad day.
Owning Your Feelings
Lots of people suggested this, and honestly, it was so helpful. Basically, people suggested to just put it out there "I feel angry/cranky/annoyed/whatever" "this will pass, I can handle it." Just sitting with those feelings helped me feel like at least someone acknowledged them (even if it was just me). And then acknowledge that this is hard, it feels hard and that I'm doing my best. Followed up with a reminder that tomorrow is a new day and that our children are very forgiving.
Self Love and Meditation
Another really popular suggestion was to practice some meditation. Take 30/60 seconds and just clear your head and deep breathe. Tell yourself that you're strong, your capable and you can do this. Tell yourself that you love yourself. Take some time to just breathe. And just be. For me personally, this is something that I have a really hard time doing. I cannot stop thinking about all the things I've either been doing wrong, or things I should be doing instead. But, it was a good reminder to work on these things. Basically, love and nurture yourself!
Check your Expectations
Sometimes we just need to keep our expectations in check for how we can be expected to respond and for how we are expecting our children to respond. We need to really examine if maybe we are expecting too much, or if our vision for how things are going to be is realistic or not.
Practical Self Care
Finally, people gave so many great and practical self care ideas including:
- take a shower
- cancel all your plans and just sit on the couch for the day
- put all the media away and just do something fun with your kids
- eat all the chocolate/extra desserts
- wine, wine, and some more wine
- have a dance party - a surprising number of people recommended this!
- get out in nature
- lock yourself in the bathroom for five minutes
- take a walk or engage in some exercise
- take a bath or shower - even midday
- get out a pile of books and just read
- put on a good podcast
- use naptime to actually rest
- look at pictures of your tiny babies
- eat more protein
- drink a ton of water
How do you turn around bad days? Do you have any tips you would add to this list?
Also mom life - Gus is 16m old and the only non-selfie I could find of myself was from his birth. oops.
