"Listen to your body"... what does that mean?

Sometimes I have a (perhaps unreasonable) annoyed reaction when I read health bloggers or fitness gurus touting the phrase “listen to your body”.  You know-- pregnant mom bloggers will say “I’m listening to my body and trying to get more rest,” or fitness people might say “I’m listening to my body and eating more to fuel my workouts.” Etc. etc.

Perhaps I’m jaded, but it just seems like that phrase takes on a different meaning when you’re a Mom. If I “listened” and took a nap every time “my body” screamed “I’m exhausted”, my children would have no supervision for half the day. If I “listened to my body” and prepared my own food exactly at the time I was hungry, and then immediately sat down and took my time to eat it, well... that just doesn't happen.  Ever.

I learned with each subsequent pregnancy that there was less and less time to put up my feet and pamper myself. This is really good in some ways-- it taught me that I have more strength than I thought, and I could push through a lot of “pain” and exhaustion and still make it okay. I remember when C was newly born and my Mom came around to help, she kept repeating the phrase, “You’re doing too much!” She was right-- I had just given birth, every muscle in my body was sore and recovering, my hormones were surging, and I was sleep-deprived and nursing around the clock.  Despite Mom's admonitions, however, I continued to "do too much"... because there was just nobody else to complete the daily chores that simply had to get done. My kids needed me too much and there was the bare minimum of making/cleaning up meals and laundry. I really had no choice but to push myself way past the point of exhaustion, even though my “body” was telling me to go to bed and sleep for 48 hours.

I suppose that's the way it goes for anybody who works their fingers to the bone at a profession they're really passionate about.  You feel burnout and exhaustion on a regular basis, but it's all worth it, right?

With that said, the phrase “listen to your body” has been on my mind a lot lately. Why? Well, it’s been a HUGE year for our family. I’m working more hours than I’ve ever worked since I worked full-time while M was in grad school and we had no kids. We now have two girls in two different schools, and there are schedules to remember and bags to pack and supplies to buy and projects to supervise. There are violin practicing sessions to supervise and dance classes to drive to.  And yet although we have “big kid” school girls now, they are still little in so many ways and need Mama, not just for things like zipping their jackets and pouring their milk, but also for guidance with things like managing their emotions, developing socially, and dealing with the problems and excitements they encounter in their little worlds. On top of all that, there is still laundry to do and a house to clean and meals to cook.

(and this silly girl to take care of :)

I realized a few months into the school year that I couldn’t handle it. I told M that something had to go. We decided to eliminate some of my commitments. We left our church job after Christmas, and I’ve given my resignation at my youth orchestra job and I’ll only be conducting two more rehearsals before being done with that.

And then came this winter. My feelings of being worn down were confirmed by a long string of sickness. We had our two different bouts with stomach flu in January followed by a really bad cold.  Just this past week I started having symptoms that were exactly like when I had mono just after graduating college. Extreme sore throat, swollen glands, fatigue, achey joints and a low fever. And it seems like stomach virus may be visiting our house for the third time this winter-- poor little C got sick at our friends’ birthday party yesterday and was sick every time she tried to eat something for the rest of the day. I’m super paranoid right now that I’ll get it and the rest of the girls will too. Talk about exhausting... not sure I can handle all the barf for a third time.

It just seems like, for almost two months now, every time I try to jump back in to my normal schedule, I’m stricken with some new illness and forced to cancel some activity or schedule more sleep into my day-- simply because I’m not physically capable of keeping up this pace any more. And we’ve already eliminated a lot. Maybe it’s just been a really snowy winter and we’ve been cooped up with too many germs, or maybe that’s the breaks when you have your first child in kindergarten and bringing home all kinds of new illnesses. But because I’m not normally a sickly person, it’s hard to shake the feeling that “my body” is trying to “tell me something” these days.

{I'm still trying to figure out if part of this is just feeling my age.  I feel like I used to be able to handle way more activity with ease.  Any other 30-somethings out there feeling a new level of exhaustion?}

There were a lot of viewings of songs from "Frozen" while we were all sick

And so I’m finding myself taking a long hard look at everything I’m doing-- everything-- and seeing if there’s anything more that I can or should be eliminating.

Running, which is usually a great source of energy and happiness for me, has felt really draining lately. Since the only time I can run is at 5 AM before my kids are awake (or at 8:30 PM after they're in bed... but I never have the energy for that), I do lose a lot of sleep when I’m keeping up with running regularly. It sort of feels like I can’t afford that right now. I haven’t been running in a week and I’m considering taking a long-ish hiatus, perhaps even as long as a month. I went from being ready to register for a half marathon at the beginning of the year, and even ready to register for a 30K at the beginning of March... to being completely ready to give up running entirely for a little while. In the past week or two, when I started thinking about these races I wanted to do, I saw my little L standing in the kitchen stomping her foot and insisting on doing something that she had her heart set on, despite the fact that it was a completely impractical and unhealthy thing for her to be doing. Where do you think she gets that stubborn streak??? It wasn’t an easy decision for me to think about giving up running, since I really crave that time to myself, but it seemed that every time I started to jump back in to my early morning training routine, I would get sick again. I knew in my heart it wasn’t helping me, and it was time to slow down for a while.

I’ve also been thinking about the time I spend in the kitchen preparing healthy meals from scratch (and subsequently doing lots of dishes). I do think that the health of my children is worth the sacrifice of the extra time I’m spending to prepare food for them, so it’s hard to feel like I can cut that back. What I have decided, however, is that I need to take a more hard-line approach to picky eating, and start refusing to prepare separate meals and snacks for different people. (I don’t do that too terribly much for supper, but giving the girls too many choices at breakfast and snack time is turning into a big energy-sucker for me. I might do another post later with my thoughts on the whole picky eating issue to give you more details on that whole problem.) And obviously, if there is a healthy food option that is simpler and easier to prepare, I’m definitely going to choose that over something more complicated these days. Crockpot meals are becoming my best friends... any healthy suggestions out there?? :)

I’m also seeing the necessity of setting up a daily chores system for my girls, and a weekly housecleaning and laundry schedule for myself (we’re talking bare minimum on the housecleaning here). I need as much help as I can get keeping up with everything, and my girls amaze me every day with their capability and willingness. I’m sure they would latch on to that type of system quite easily. It’s hard to carve out the time and creativity to even figure out what that kind of schedule should look like, when things are so hectic, but it has to be done.

And so, after several years of “Be strong Mama” I find I’m adopting the “listen to your body” approach a little more. And if any other working Mamas out there have advice on how you handle work plus small children, I’m all ears!