A Special Kind Of Stress For Moms
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by Marsha Maung
Nov 14th, 2008
I think the first article about stress and time management that I read was left a very strong message in my mind. When I read it, my first child was merely 2 months old and hormones were still surfing through my system…and yet, I was already working outside of the home…which wrecked further havoc in my system.
Little did I know, I was already introduced to a special kind of stress reserved only for mothers. Two kids later, I can attest to the kind of emotions a stressed-out mother has to go through and endure. I cannot imagine my own mother went through all of that and yet, I was clueless about it. Here’s a list of things that you can do to keep over-stress at bay.
Being a mother, you’re battling an unending list of chores every single day
The above statement is a fact. If mothers were drawers, they’d be an overcrowded one with contents lying one on top of another in no particular order. Mothers often have to shift from one role to another – just like THAT, at the snap of the fingers. Mothers shift from being nurse to cook, tailor to teachers, drivers to a simple woman.
It’s important for us to remain in one position or role long enough for our minds to settle before we move on to the next one. we give too much of ourselves to others every single day; hence, you don’t need to give yourself one more excuse to kick yourself for not finishing up the list of chores.
The truth is that…it can never end.
Way to go….it’s only been an hour??
You wake up early in the morning with tangled hair, you trudge on to the bathroom for a quick brush and clean-up before your baby wakes up. You sneak a peek at the clock and it says 5.30am. A little bit of mental calculation later, you derive at the fact that you have precisely 2 minutes 24 seconds to yourself before havoc is unleashed.
Ten seconds into your teeth-brushing, you hear baby holler and realize that she’s up early today. with toothbrush in your mouth, you run over to pick baby up and soothe her. The crying woke up your 5 year old daughter who had a nightmare. With toothbrush still in mouth and baby on hip, you manage to ask your daughter to go to daddy for a while.
Baby is whimpering because he’s hungry. You finish up the toilet thing, run to the kitchen to fix the milk, and you hear a cry. Apparently, daddy’s got the bottom half of his body on top of your daughter and she’s crying out because another child’s woken up and decided to join the whole piling game!
Once you’ve gotten everybody sorted out, you realize that you’ve don’t have much time to get everyone ready for school. Your husband is still asleep…pretty much in an un-wakeable state of sleep. While you get your two elder children ready for school, baby sips on the bottle silently.
You know it’s not going to last too long, though. That’s when the two elder kids are fighting in the bathroom and baby drops his milk bottle because he’s groggy.
Nothing’s perfect so what makes you think you can make them perfect?
It’s true. I am not, by trait, a perfectionist but for some time, I lived with people who were. And their expectations rubbed off on me and I became this ‘person’ who could literally solve multiple problems at the same time. I could breastfeed, dust the shelves, bounce a son on my knee AND make a list of what to cook for the day…all at the same time.
So what some things are not in order?? So what? Now, learn how to say this out loud. Fling your arms around if you have to – practice that whenever you find yourself expecting things to be perfect. If you want to remain sane, you’re going to learn how to play the imperfection game.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marsha Maung is a Malaysian-based freelance writer with two kids. She spends her time ferrying her kids around, watering her plants, writing web content, SEO stuff, ghostwriting books and also indulges in the occasional Facebook-ing. Visit her blog for more dirty details on the life and times of a mother, writer, designer, housekeeper, coffee-maker, poop-wiper, chef...and just about everything else under the sun.
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Listen up! I am a very nice person, if you think this article is neat and you'd like to publish it in your website, all's cool with me but with one condition. Only one and from the bottom of my heart, I wish that you would, in all sincerity, allow me my one single wish....to place the following codes into the your website at the END OF THE ARTICLE. It's not going to disrupt much, so please do it?
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<b>Marsha Maung</b> is a Malaysian-based <a href="http://www.marshamaung.com" target="_blank">freelance writer</a> with two kids. She spends her time ferrying her kids around, watering her plants, writing web content, SEO stuff, ghostwriting books and also indulges in the occasional Facebook-ing. Visit her <a href="http://www.marshamaung.blogspot.com" target="_blank">blog</a> for more dirty details on the life and times of a mother, writer, designer, housekeeper, coffee-maker, poop-wiper, chef...and just about everything else under the sun.
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