How To Be A Happy Stay At Home Mom
Are you wondering
Truth be told, becoming a stay at home mom is a big deal.
It takes tremendous thought and planning to make it a reality. And then, when it is your reality, you start wondering how you’ll cope, day in, day out. And I don’t mean the tantrums, tears and nappies only!
There’s family finances to consider, plus careers, boredom, guilt, low self worth, the whole package. Plus, the fact that it’s 24/7 with your little ones without-a-break.
In this post, I’ll share my best tips to stay happy as a stay at home mom, based on my personal experiences being full time mama to my 2 gorgeous baby boys.
1 – Stay You
Or maybe, rediscover you? Of all the things that motherhood can do to a woman, feeling ‘lost’ is one of them.
Just the fact that you love your children so much means you can get lost in caring for their every need, when in fact, one of your other priorities needs to be being yourself. Tuning into you and remembering who you are!
Keeping something that’s only yours is key here. Giving yourself time for hobbies and activities that you enjoy outside of being a mom.
What did you enjoy before you had children? It’s likely you may still enjoy this now, so give yourself permission to discover this.
Another note on this is the acceptance that now you’re a mother, you may not be able to do all the things you did before you had children.
There’s a level of “ah, this is now my life” when you have children, which I only got about a year after my first baby was born.
Before that, I was still chasing the hedonism of erratic travelling and shopping sprees, wondering why it was so hard to get my baby to follow me and comply!
Now that you’re a mother, you must choose to step up and be the best mom to your kids, which is a massive commitment. You need to see everything from their point of view if you can, but balance that with being yourself too.
You need to learn to set strong boundaries but also be gentle when you can. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s the best thing you can do as a parent.
Being a stay at home mom is a true heroine’s role. It takes patience, dedication and planning to make it good on all fronts, for you and your children.
If you feel lost in yourself, however, read this post, which will help – it’s over on my sister blog site.
2 – Stay Active & Socialise
I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but for many women, it’s a struggle.
The most common way women fall into this trap is by taking things too easy.
Locking themselves in the house, sitting the kids in front of a screen and then wondering why it’s all so darn hard.
We can get bored at times. All of us. It’s human nature. We’re meant to be social creatures and need to connect with others.
This is why I’m a big believer in keeping yourself busy and staying active as a stay at home mom. I don’t just mean exercising and going for walks or runs.
I mean… socialising! Get out and meet other people.
This is a great way to start feeling good within yourself. It can be lonely to stay home all day with the kids, so getting out and about is a must.
3 – Embrace The Chaos! Celebrate Your Wins
I think hardly any of us do this! But celebrating wins, no matter how small, is key to being a happy stay at home mom.
Did you put the washing on this morning? Bath the kids? Go out for a walk with the dog and pram? Not shout at your toddler?
Make it a routine that every night before you put your head down to sleep, mentally recap on your wins. Even if they’re the same wins every day, who cares? They are wins!
What you’re doing here is shifting the negative voice in your head to a more positive one, and over time, those new neural connections will be become stronger and stronger.
Eventually, you’ll start blocking out the negative voice and only listening to the positive.
The brain is plastic, meaning it can change and adapt to new stimuli even as we get older. What you feed it most is what’s loudest, that’s the thing.
So, if you can do this every night, celebrate your wins, eventually it becomes a habit, and you’ll be on your way to making a huge positive change in your life.
A change that will make you a happier, healthier, more content mama.
4 – Spice Things Up
Variety is the spice of life, so they say! So as a happy stay at home mom, what can you do to make things a bit spicier?
Some suggestions:
-Take the kids to a different place today, perhaps a new soft play or different town even?
-Do some nice craft activities and commit to an afternoon free of the TV
-Take the kids on an adventure where you collect trinkets on your travels
-Meet a friend who you’ve not seen in ages
-Join a new toddler group and make some new friends
Essentially, anything you can do that’s different from your routine day will refresh your mind and revitalise how you feel. Go get spicy, mama!
5 – No More Doom Scrolling
I seem to cover this in many of my posts, but it’s good to revisit the point because it’s important.
Numbing your *insert how you feel here* by scrolling social media, emails or Google is never going to make you a happy stay at home mom!
Our digital devices if anything are removing our ability to be present to our kids, and it’s very damaging.
As an illustration, we all know the feeling of waking up and checking our phone straight away, feeling dread as we see we’ve missed something, or that we need to respond immediately to something (we don’t, by the way.)
That’s a horrible way to start the day right? I don’t know about you, but I never feel like I’m being the best mom to my kids when I do that.
We’re so obsessed with our phones that it’s like we can’t look our kids in the eye, and this is a big problem for them, as well as us!
So as a happy stay at home mom, consider taking large portions of your time away from your phone and connecting with your beautiful children. Doing nice things together instead, like playing!
Set up a treasure hunt for them, or sit and do a puzzle together. Craft activities, painting, chalks, whatever the kids love, join them and just watch their loveliness. Their smiles as they spend precious time with you are a gift.
They will not be this small for long, so enjoy them while you can.
Summary
- Stay you. Focus on doing things in your spare time (i.e. when kids are napping) that you enjoy, such as hobbies, crafts, reading etc.
- Stay active. Go out and meet others and socialise with your kids.
- Embrace the chaos by celebrating your daily wins! You are doing heroine’s work as a stay at home mama!
- Spice things up. Mix up your days, take different routes, change your routine every so often.
- Don’t doom scroll! Spend more time connecting with your kids and less looking at screens.
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