Brittni (00:05.548)
Hey mama, welcome into the Resting in Motherhood podcast. How are you today? I’m so excited to sit down and chat with you. And this is like perfect timing for recording this episode because I’ll share in just a second kind of my story that makes this the perfect day. But before I jump right in, I will share how I’m currently finding rest in motherhood. And I feel like I say this every week, but as I was sitting down to chat with you,

I asked myself, how am I currently finding rest in motherhood? And nothing immediately came up because I feel like everything’s kind of status quo. I’ve been really good about my normal self -care practices being built into our day. I’m getting up before Lila. Usually, like yesterday, I decided that sleeping in was better for me than getting up before Lila and doing my meditation.

Actually the last two days because we were up at our cabin. But besides that, like every day I’ve been getting up before her. I’ve been doing my walks. I’ve been doing my water in the morning. If you’ve been listening to the podcast lately, you have a very good insight into kind of my daily practices and how I take care of myself. And so I feel like I’ve been very regular with those. So obviously those are how I’m finding rest in motherhood. But I really like to get creative every week and

just give you like another little tidbit of how I’m finding rest, how I’m filling my cup, just to inspire you and give you other ways to kind of maybe look at self care a little bit differently or look at how you can find more rest in motherhood. But I had a really hard time, like I said, because I sat down, I’m like, well, I’m doing all of that, but everybody knows all of that because I’ve talked about it in the podcast before. So what am I doing differently?

And it came to me, I think I shared that I took Lila and I to both two functional doctors, different doctors, Lila’s is a pediatric functional doctor, mine is an adult functional doctor and did a lot of blood work on myself, did a lot of blood work on Lila. I think I’ve talked a little bit more about Lila’s appointment, but.

Brittni (02:28.194)
Two things that she’s really having me work on, which have really been helping me find rest or find energy, I would say, is I’m really upping my protein intake. think either last week or the week before I shared about trying to have a really protein -rich breakfast. I try to do 20 grams of protein in the morning. And I just had a follow -up appointment with her and she was like, how’s the protein -rich diet going?

And by the way, diet as in like just having a diet rich in protein. I’m not on a diet. I am not a fan of diet culture, but she asked how it was going. And I kind of started talking to her about like what I’m eating during the day. And I’m very mindful of getting those 20 grams of protein first thing in the morning. And then she’s like, and then like, tell me about the rest of the day. And as I kind of started going through it, I am very much a snacker. I snack. That’s what I do.

Like I kind of just move through the day grazing. I have a nice big breakfast and usually we’ll have a nice big dinner, but lunch is kind of like, and I’m sure a lot of us are like this, like it’s more of a like, gonna grab a handful of almonds here. I might have a smoothie, like just kind of throughout the day grazing every hour to two hours. So as I said that, she’s like, well, what are, have you ever like tracked your food just to see like how much protein you’re actually getting?

And by the way, will say that if I do not, I am not recommending tracking your food, especially if you have like a history of disordered eating, but I would say I have a pretty good and healthy relationship with food. So she said that let’s just have you track your calorie, not your calories, your protein to see how much protein you’re getting. And I am definitely lower than I thought. Ideally, my goal is a hundred grams a day and

except the other day I did do 96. So I’ve been really mindful of trying to get to those hundred grams of protein a day and I feel such a difference. And one thing she was telling me is like after four years of breastfeeding, my body is depleted, right? I gave a lot. I gave nine months. I gave birth. I gave four years of breastfeeding, right? And two years of very frequent waking. So yes, of course my body is depleted. And so she’s like,

Brittni (04:57.238)
The protein is amazing just for getting your energy levels up for really nourishing yourself. So that’s how I’m currently finding rest in motherhood. Well, one of the ways is I’m really, really prioritizing hitting a hundred grams of protein in a day just to give myself that energy. And if you have a little one who is up frequently at night, I’m really going to encourage you to get protein.

dense meals because that is going to up your energy levels. I also recommend focusing on eating iron -rich foods because if we are low in iron we’re already going to feel more tired and then add on to that a disrupted night of sleep. So that’s just a little tip, a little sleep tip. And then the second way that I’m currently finding rest in motherhood that came from my functional doctor as well

I’m doing dry brushing. I’m not doing it every day I probably would say every other day and If you’re not familiar with dry brushing you can Google it. It’s or you can YouTube it but you literally just take like a firm bristled hand brush and you Like brush up your skin. You want to go upwards. This is not a dry brushing class So I won’t go too much into detail. But what it does is it stim stimulates lymphatic drainage and so our lymph

our lymph nodes and our lymph system kind of take out the toxins of our body and hold them. But if we’re doing that dry brushing, then it’s releasing the toxins and getting that out of our body, which is also really good for our hormones and it’s really good for our energy levels too. So I have been doing those two things. So I would say those are helping me find energy in motherhood, which we all need more energy. So that…

is it for how I’m finding rest, but I want to jump into today’s topic, which I think everyone can relate to this. Anyone listening can relate to this. I want to talk about this intense pressure that we feel as moms to soak up every minute or not miss a minute, right? We want to be present 110 % of the day. We don’t want to miss anything.

Brittni (07:13.514)
And while I think this is beautiful, right? Because we know that these early years really are fleeting and they go so fast. So we want to soak it all up and we don’t want to miss everything. Having this really unrealistic expectation of ourselves to soak it all up, don’t miss a minute, is actually really harming us in motherhood. They know it comes from a beautiful place. It comes from

wanting to remember it all. comes from wanting to soak up every age and every stage. But what it does is it makes us put so much pressure on ourselves to be present for every moment, to enjoy every moment. And what actually ends up happening is we end up burnt out. We’re not enjoying every moment and we’re not present.

And I shared at the beginning of the episode that this was kind of the perfect day to record this episode because I’m recording this on a Sunday. It’s a beautiful, beautiful day out. Normally I wouldn’t be working on a Sunday, but tomorrow, Monday is a holiday and I wanted to go to the zoo with my mom and Laila. And so my mom was like, well, why don’t you just work, do a few hours of work on Sunday and then we can all go together on Monday. So here I am on Sunday.

Like I said, it’s beautiful out. And my mom was like, Lilo, we can get the splash pad out. We also have a I just lost the word.

We also have a slip and slide. And so she’s like, we’ll get the slip and slide out. We’ll get the splash pad out. And as I like headed up to my office to work, I could already hear Lila like giggling out there and laughing out there. And I’m actually like, I can look down on her right now. And my immediate thought was like, well, maybe I, maybe I don’t need to work today. Maybe I just want to go enjoy every single moment with her. Like this is, we’re kind of ending summer.

Brittni (09:16.642)
We’re not gonna have many more days like this. Maybe I need to be out there. And it’s a beautiful thought, right? And I’m not beating myself up for feeling that way. I actually wanna honor the mama instinct in me to like enjoy it all. But what that mama instinct is missing is, I slept with Lila all night last night. We had the sweetest snuggles.

We woke up, well, I woke up before her, but after she woke up, we ate breakfast together. We chatted. We were very connection -based during breakfast. And then after breakfast, we did our morning reading routine where we go up and sit on the patio and read. Like our morning was filled with connection. Then yes, I did work out, but then after our workout, we went on a beautiful walk together. Our morning was very, very filled with connection of me soaking her up.

And yes, I had to take a few hours away from her to work. And that guilt, right, of, I should be out there. But the other part that that piece of me telling me like I need to be out there is missing is she’s also creating beautiful memories with my mom. I heard my dad go out there with them too. They’re creating beautiful memories, right? And we have a summer full of days with the splash pad and the slip and slide. We have days full of

like so many beautiful things this summer. And yet that voice still was like, I feel like a bad mom because I’m not enjoying it. And I just thought that that was perfect that it happened knowing I knew that this was the episode that I wanted to record today. Knowing that this was the episode I was going to record, I still felt that. And again, I just want to reiterate that this feeling is…

comes from us being good moms, right? It comes from us wanting to soak it all up, but it’s not realistic. And like I said, it’s causing us to burn out. And I was actually just recently writing the week four lesson for my thriving moms club mamas. week four is all about ditching the guilt. And so this topic came up, this topic of

Brittni (11:37.974)
feeling like we can’t miss a moment, feeling like we can’t leave our children for a second because we’re gonna miss something big. We can’t do things for ourselves, which is really this martyr mentality. Like we have to do it all. We have to be there for everything. And again, all it’s doing is leading to us being so burned out. And so as I was writing this lesson and I really write these lessons from the heart, they just come, they pour out. So.

I sat down knowing what the topic was and then just kind of let the words come out. And as I was writing it, I was like, wow, I think I need to share. Obviously this is not the full lesson, but this is like a tidbit of what’s inside the lesson. I was like, I think I need to share this little tidbit from inside the lesson. So what I was talking about was…

I don’t know if you’ve seen, this was probably, I don’t know, six months to a year ago, I’m not totally sure. But the social media trend where it’s like, you only have 18 summers with your little one. And while I think that this came from a well -meaning, beautiful point of view, I think it came from like an attachment mom who was probably saying like, our children are little for such a short period in their lives, like let’s really soak them up.

that same piece that we all have inside of us that is like, I don’t want to miss a moment. I want to be present for it all. Right. I, that’s where I assume that mom was coming from a very beautiful place of like, I know it’s hard, but let’s soak it all up. get it. But what she or what this 18 summers doesn’t look at is, well, first I wanted to share this like,

Here I am at 32 years old and well, we currently live with my parents, but also like we go up to our family cabin with my parents all the time. We go to the pool with my parents. So my parents have had 32 summers with me. So it’s not just 18, right? Same thing with my sister, right? Yeah, it’s not every waking moment, but like we have beautiful memories from every single summer of my life.

Brittni (13:58.53)
since I was born 32 years ago, right? So it’s not just 18 summers. So I first want to say that, yes, it’s 18 summers of younger, but I mean, even 18 year olds are adults, legal adults. So yes, it’s not those like formative, young, beautiful years, but we all grow and evolve, right? And so we get to look forward to.

vacationing with our children and their children. So us being grandparents, right? Like there’s so many other things to look forward to instead of focusing on we only have these 18 summers. But then I want to go a little bit deeper here and I kind of want to take us on like an imaginary journey, okay? So let’s imagine we really only did have 18 summers. Only those 18 summers, nothing after. Let’s just imagine.

And we went into our child’s life or we’re moving through our child’s life with this mentality that I have to be present for every single moment. I have to soak it all up because I only have these 18 summers with them. I can’t miss a moment. I have to soak it all up. And that’s our mentality. And so we don’t do anything for ourselves or we do the bare minimum, right? We don’t want to ask for help because we want to be there to witness it all.

This just brought up a random memory. remember my mom was watching Lila when she was like, I don’t know, six or seven months and she sent me a picture and she had taken Lila to the park and put her in the swing. It was the first time she had ever gone in the baby swing and I was like so devastated that I missed her first time in the swing. But I got a video, I got a picture and then the next day I took her to the park and yes it wasn’t her first time.

But Lila doesn’t know that, right? She didn’t know that. That just reminded me of that, right? And it’s a perfect example of this mentality. We don’t wanna miss a moment. So we’re going into these 18 summers and we don’t wanna miss a moment. So we’re not taking time for ourselves. We’re head deep in motherhood, just focusing on our children. And let’s say we’re on summer three and we’re still in this mentality. We’re not taking time for ourselves.

Brittni (16:19.988)
soaking up every minute. But what’s really happening is we’re burning out. We’re exhausted. We’re bitter. We’ve lost ourselves. We’re disconnected from ourselves. We’ve lost our full joy. And we’re just kind of going through the motions of those summers, right? Like we’re going to the beach, let’s say, but we’re tired and we don’t feel good about ourselves because we’re not doing anything for ourselves. We’re not taking time to fill our own cup.

and nurture ourselves as a nurturer, right? If we’re nurturing people, if we’re nurturing little lives, we also need to be nurtured because we know that you cannot fill from an empty cup, but we’re not listening to that because we want to soak up every minute. So here we are, we’re at the beach, we’re going to the pool, whatever we’re doing, and we’re not actually enjoying it. And I’m sure that…

Just me saying this to you is taking you to a moment. I have lots of memories like this and lots of moments still where I’m going through the motions. Yes, I’m present for the activity, but am I finding joy? No. Am I excited about it? Not really, because I’m burnt out, because I haven’t filled my cup, because like I said, I don’t feel comfortable with myself. Maybe because I’m not taking care of myself. I’m not nurturing myself.

And so we go through 18 years of this. And then our children move out of the house and we’ve given everything. We’ve been the martyr, we’ve self -sacrificed, we’ve soaked up every minute because we’ve been there at every moment. And they’re out of the house and we’re like, my gosh, I finally get to pour into me. I don’t even know what I like to do. I don’t even know who I am anymore. And it’s really clunky and we’re trying to figure out

who we are now, what we like, what helps me feel rested, what fills my cup, right? All of these things. And finally, after a lot of clunky time, after they’re out of the home, we kind of start to find our footing, start to find ourselves, and we do start to find that energy. And then we start looking back on those 18 summers, those 18 years, and…

Brittni (18:36.918)
we realized just like I look back on just memories from Lila’s first five years where I was the shell of a person, right? Where I was just going through the motions, but I wasn’t actually finding that joy. I wasn’t the playful, excited, happy mom that I wanted to be. And so you look back and you start looking at those summers and you think, wow, I missed out on so much joy because I was trying to be present.

But in trying to be present and trying to soak it all up, I wasn’t because I had become a shell of a person, because I didn’t have the energy and life and joy to give to that moment that I have liked to give. I wasn’t soaking it all up because I didn’t have the energy to soak it all up. I didn’t have that playful attitude that I would have loved to have because I was trying to be present. I was trying to be a good mom.

I was trying to not miss a moment and yet I missed a lot because I was so worried about being present that I didn’t fill my own cup. I didn’t have the energy to show up. I didn’t have the joy. I didn’t have the confidence to show up. I wasn’t grounded like I wanted to be because I was so worried about being present that I let myself just kind of leak away.

And that, like I said, is what came out of me as I was writing the lesson for the Thriving Moms Club. And I think it’s really powerful because we get so caught up in worrying about not missing a moment. But what is that at the expense of? What are we sacrificing by trying not to miss a moment? Because like I said just a second ago,

when we try not to miss a moment, we end up missing moments. And I want to say it’s okay. We do not have to be present at every single moment of every single day. It’s just not realistic, right? When we take that time away for ourselves, whatever that means, if it means going to an exercise class twice a week for yourself, if it means that you just want to go on a solo walk once a week for yourself,

Brittni (20:57.666)
I mean, I’m not even talking about like big things like going on a vacation or going away overnight, which if you want to do those things, I want you to do them. But if I’m not even talking about like going to the spa, I’m just talking about like little things like you want to go to Target by yourself. You want to go have a 30 minute walk where you can call your best friend and talk to your best friend without worrying about your little one crying in the stroller while you’re walking. Right. Just these little things where

We feel guilty, but what we sacrifice when we don’t do those things for ourselves in the attempt to not miss a moment, we sacrifice our energy and then we start depleting ourselves. And then we don’t have that joy and that energy to show up in the really exciting moments, right? Because let’s picture this. So here you are, let’s go back to that summer number three when you’ve really kind of started to lose your light.

Let’s say instead of going on your beach day, you, well, you’re still going on the beach day, but let’s say maybe the day before you took an hour to yourself or even that morning, you took an hour to yourself to do whatever you needed to do. Maybe it was sleeping in. So if you have a partner, your partner was with your little one. Maybe you slept in. Maybe you went to the coffee shop by yourself. Whatever you did, you took the time and the energy to fill your cup. And then

When you got to that beach experience, you had the energy, you had more joy because you had poured into yourself. So you had the energy and joy and love and excitement to give. And so if you walk away with one thing from this episode today, I want it to be for you to challenge that voice inside your head telling you, can’t miss a moment. Because I want you to ask yourself, what am I sacrificing?

in this attempt to not miss a moment. Will I show up as a better mom if I take this tiny bit of time for myself, if I do this tiny little thing for myself? How can I show up better? When I take that time, am I then able to show up in those beautiful moments with a lot more energy and excitement? And another piece of this that I’ll touch on quickly is

Brittni (23:21.93)
We often get so worried about not missing out that we’re actually so worried about that that we do miss out. Like I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone and this is probably my my anxiety at play too. So if I have any other anxious mamas here, I see you. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve like gone through the day and like, I should have done this. I should have. This is my perfectionism. I actually think so like

Instead of just being like, today’s been a really good day. We did this, we did this. My mind goes to, it would have been a better day if I did this, or we would have had a better time if I did this, or if I would have planned this differently, it would have been better. And so I’m so focused on making the present moment perfect, on soaking it all up, that I’m actually not living in the present moment, right? And I want you to ask yourself that. How much energy am I putting into trying to be present and soak it all up?

that all of that energy is going into focusing on that instead of just being in the moment. And I’ve talked about this before in previous podcast episodes, but where are your energy leaks? Are you leaking energy to this thought that I’m a bad mom because I wanna go do this for myself and I’m gonna miss a moment? Is that energy leak serving you or would it better be served to say, I’m gonna go take whatever?

I want for myself or I’m gonna go do whatever I want for myself and then I’m gonna come back and I’m really gonna soak it up and so those beautiful memories that I have are going to when I look back on them really be beautiful because I had the energy to show up how I wanted to.

So I don’t want this to come off as like, you need to be away from your child to fill your cup because you absolutely don’t. But I do want this to be, if you’re feeling like, you know, I really would like to go do this, but I should be present for every moment or I’m a bad mom. That’s where I want you to kind of ask that voice. Is this the truth or is it okay to go do something for myself?

Brittni (25:37.386)
And I’ve shared a lot throughout the podcast of ways that you can fill your cup without ever leaving your child, right? Go back, I think it was two episodes ago where I talked about morning habits or filling your own cup. So there’s a lot that you can do, but are you putting energy into it? Or are you feeling like you have to? Here’s another example. This isn’t even a big summer example.

Are you feeling like you need to be present 100 % of the day? So like all their waking hours, you need to be on the floor with them, entertaining them. Because that’s another form of like, I have to be present for it all. can’t miss a moment. And then you’re trying to get them down for an independent nap and they’re not going down for an independent nap, but you’re like, I need this time to get this done. Whereas what if you’re just in kind of…

Obviously, yes, I want you to get on the floor and play with your baby and snuggle them and do all of the things, but does it hurt to add in 20 to 30 minutes in each wake window, depending on how old your little one is? If your little one has our wake windows, maybe you’re not doing this every single wake window right now, but as they get older, 20 to 30 minutes of every wake window of something for you. So maybe that is a light movement. Maybe you’re sitting on the floor and stretching while they’re playing next to you.

Maybe you’re journaling while they’re playing next to you. Maybe you’re listening to an audio book, right? And I’ve talked about a lot of these things, but it’s okay to not be on the floor 100 % of the day playing with your little one so that you can do things that you need to do, so that you can prep meal prep, so that you can eat, right? Let’s take that pressure off and decide that I don’t have to be present at every single moment at 100%.

every single day. I can take the time and the energy to fill my cup so that in the moments that I am there, they really are meaningful and special because I have that energy and that joy and that peace to give. I’m wishing you a beautiful, beautiful day and I will see you next week.