5 Ways to Make Time For Yourself As a Mom

Everyone knows that you’re going to have less time for yourself when you have kids, but I think we all underestimate just how much becoming a mom will change us. Not only are you spending time physically taking care of your kids, but you’re spending mental energy thinking 3 steps ahead all day. This can get exhausting really quickly, and if we aren’t careful it can steal the joy from our experience as a mom. As a mom of 2, and at one point 2 under 2, I have been there. I had to make the conscious effort to pull myself up and start taking care of myself again, because a house cannot stand on a broken foundation. Here are some of the things I have learned that will help you make time for yourself again.

Optimize Your Natural Wake Time

When reading The Gentle Sleep Book by Sarah Ockwell-Smith, I unexpectedly learned something that helped me find harmony in my own sleep schedule. Ockwell-Smith explains that the time that we naturally prefer to go to bed and wake up is actually genetic.

Realizing this allowed me to stop fighting my natural inclination to stay up late and sleep in. I had tried and failed many times to have the type of morning routine I’ve seen so many moms promote online. Once I learned that sleep schedules vary from person to person it made so much more sense why it wasn’t working for me and I was able to make a routine that does.

Instead of waking up early, I stay up long after the kids go to bed and I sleep until one of my kids wakes me up, and I no longer feel guilty about it. At night I do chores, exercise, and practice self care. I once told someone that I do my workouts at 8pm and they thought I was crazy. What’s crazy to me is trying to get my eyes to stay open at 5am, let alone lifting weights and doing Pilates.

Moral of the story: don’t try to follow someone else’s schedule just because it works for them. Work with your own natural sleep patterns and optimize the time while your kids are sleeping, whenever that may be.

Change Your Mindset on Chores

I used to avoid washing dishes by hand at all costs. 90% of the dishes would go in the dishwasher and 10% would pile up next to the sink until the pile was extremely stressful and I would have to spend an hour just washing dishes. At some point in the last few months I tried something new. I filled up the sink with soap and water and I washed everything every night for a week.

I quickly realized how much of an impact not washing the dishes was making on my life and how easy it was to clean and rinse the few things that couldn’t go in the dishwasher every night. Doing the dishes turned into a 10 minute chore once a day instead of a 1 hour chore once or twice a week. I also noticed how much better I feel when I start the day with clean dishes. Remember how I said I don’t wake up before my kids? Imagine me rolling out of bed, going to make my toddler breakfast, and I have to wash 3 dishes before I can even start. It was creating friction in my day from the very start.

Because of all of this, I have started to see doing the dishes at night as self care. I am doing something I might not want to be doing, but it is going to set me up for a successful morning and create positive start to my day. Believe it or not, making sure my egg pan is clean and ready to use in the morning is one of my favorite ways to take care of myself.

This can be applied to any chore that really needs to be done in order to make your life better. Who wants to dig for clothes out of a laundry basket? How much faster could everyone be ready in the morning if everything was folded and put away? How will it make you feel when it’s done? Life is a mental game, play it right and you will feel better I promise.

Pick 1-3 Things

Now that you have determined when you’re going to take care of yourself, you can decide what you’re going to do. I heard somewhere that you should pick one thing a day to do for yourself. I think this is great because it sets more realistic expectations so that you’re not disappointed when you don’t get to do everything you want every day. Even if you wake up really early or stay up really late, there are going to be hiccups. Someone wakes up earlier than expected, or has a night waking during your down time.

I think picking just one thing is hard because what constitutes self care? I include a lot of types of things in my self care (re: change your mindset on chores), so I will pick 1-3 to do a night from different categories. For example, I will wash the dishes, do a workout, and crochet. Switch out any of those activities with folding a load of laundry, taking a bath, playing a video game, watching a show with my husband, etc. I like routine so I tend to stick with a few of the same things for a while, do whatever makes you happy.

Find cozy hobbies

One thing that surprised me when I became a mom is that you do have frequent downtime, there are just limits to what you can do with that time. When you are in the newborn stage there are a lot of contact naps, so you will technically have time to rest and recharge, but you have a baby sleeping on you. As your baby gets older, if you are like me and you nurse to sleep, you will have 15-20 minute stretches (or longer) where you are nursing in a chair while they drift off.

Enter: cozy hobbies. If you like to read, a kindle is an absolute must have. I am reading more than ever because every time my baby wakes up in the night I am reading on my kindle so that I don’t fall asleep in the chair (it works most of the time). My kindle is backlit and I use it on dark mode to keep it from disturbing my baby. I exclusively read while nursing these days, and if it’s a really good book I will admittedly stay in his room longer than necessary just to finish another chapter or two.

If you don’t like to read, think about what you like to do that is minimal effort and not disruptive. If you have wireless earbuds you could listen to a podcast or even watch a video on your phone if the brightness is turned down enough. You could play games, journal, write a blog post *cough cough,* do some online shopping, or research something you’re interested in. Get creative and make the most of it.

Create Small Pockets of Joy

One thing I’ve been enjoying lately is waiting to drink my coffee until my youngest is down for his first nap around 10am. I’m someone who drinks coffee for the experience, and I want to be able to enjoy it. Every morning now I lay my baby down, let my toddler help me make my coffee, and we sit on the porch together. It’s a relatively small thing that makes a big difference in my day and it’s something we enjoy doing together.

There are a lot of small moments in the day where you have the opportunity to slow down and enjoy something for yourself, I challenge you to find them. Maybe it’s taking the extra time to do your hair in the morning or going on a walk after dinner. Taking this time to do something small that brings you joy will have a big impact.

I hope you found something in this list that you can start implementing today. Even if it’s just taking a pause to check in with yourself, a little bit of intention can go a long way. Most of all, I hope that you got some encouragement. If you are struggling right now, know that we have all been there and you can create positive change for yourself.