Brittni (00:00.642)
Hello, friend. Welcome back to the Resting in Motherhood podcast. I’m so excited to sit down and just chat with you today. I was thinking before I pressed record to start talking to you, how I’m currently in rest in motherhood. And I know I have to think about this every week. And I think we probably all have to stop and think about it. But I had actually, I have a really good example of how I found rest this week. And it was something that I felt a little bit guilty about.

And it actually relates really well to a recent podcast episode I did about like lightening your mental load or offloading your mental load wherever you can. So I think I shared this last week as I’m recording this, obviously you’ll listen to it a little bit later. But last week, Lila had her first sleepover with her dad in over six months. It was amazing. She had a great time actually when he brought her home on Wednesday.

She was like, I wanna go back and sleep at dad’s. Like she had a great time. It was perfect. It was wonderful for me. And so this week when the time was coming, she told me that she didn’t wanna sleep at his house. And I just told her, I know, I know it’s hard to leave me and reminded her how much fun that she had last time, but also I didn’t want to invalidate her feelings. They’re real.

So I just tried to focus on like, yes, I know it’s hard. You’re going to have a lot of fun. You didn’t even want to come home last time. And so I kind of left it at that. We went to sleep and the next morning her dad came over. She was really excited to see him. I sent her with her overnight bag. And then he texted me around like one o’clock that day, I think, and he was like, Lila’s really saying that she doesn’t want to.

Brittni (01:56.374)
stay the night, so I’m gonna see how it goes, but I might just bring her home or at the time that I used to bring her home, seven. And I texted him back and I said, I think we should really make a point to have her start sleeping at your house every week. I think we should make that the norm. I’m starting to feel really burnt out.

just having to do bedtime every single night. Like it’s really weighing on me. I feel like I’m not showing up as the best mom that I can because I’m feeling so burnt out. So I would really appreciate it if we can have her stay the night at your house tonight. So then he texts me back around maybe like four that day and he’s like she’s really having a hard time. She says that she wants to come home and at first I was just going to say like okay yeah she can come home.

And then I texted him and I said, I think we really do need to just make a loving boundary here that on Tuesday nights you sleep at your dad’s house. She’s safe with him, he loves her. I guess we kind of have maybe like a little bit of an unconventional situation, right? Like most children they’ll be with mom for one week and then they’ll be with other parent for the other week. So, or you know, like.

weekends with one parent, week with the other, and we’ve been really loosey-goosey with it. But I told him I think it’s really important for her to know that you’re a safe space, she’s safe with you, I really think we need to hold the boundary that she’s staying at your house tonight. And he was like, well, she’s really crying and telling me that I can’t force her to stay here. And I said, well, you’re not forcing her. I know it’s really hard. I said she will

to me during the week and say that she wants to see you and I just have to validate. I know it’s hard. I know you want to see dad. You’re going to see him on Tuesday but we can FaceTime him. So I told him FaceTime me before bed if she wants to and then he texted me like 30 minutes later and he’s like she’s calmed down. She’s fine and they had the sleepover and I had so much mom guilt because I was like am I such a bee?

Brittni (04:12.834)
I didn’t want to say the full word in case we have little ones listening in with you. But I felt like such a bee. Like am I so mean that I made her stay at her dad’s? But I like talked to my mom about it and she’s like, it’s good for them. It’s good for you. And guess what? She came home Wednesday, didn’t want her dad to leave, said she had a wonderful time. And that is how I found rest this week. I held a boundary for myself.

I advocated for myself. I got that extra rest that I needed, like that one glorious evening where I don’t have to do bedtime. And it’s not that I hate bedtime, right? But I’m sure you know, I don’t even have to say it. Sometimes it’s just nice to have that load off, take that responsibility off. So that is how I found rest this week.

And chatting about kind of entering in what I want to chat about today, I want to talk about protecting your mental health and motherhood, specifically in regards to protecting yourself against comparing yourself to other moms on the internet or in your real life, feeling like you’re maybe not doing it right or like you’re being judged. So I want to talk about

protecting our mental health and that specific aspect. Because as I was, this idea came to me as I was on my afternoon walk yesterday. And then I was like, well gosh, protecting our mental and the health and motherhood could be like a hundred part series, right? Like there’s so much to it. But specifically what I wanna chat about today is protecting ourselves against those feelings of comparison.

feeling like we’re the only one doing something a certain way or again like somebody is judging us. So I kind of I jotted down like three easy and reasonable steps to help you work through feelings of not enoughness. Now I know that’s not a real term but I think we can all relate to that feeling. So feelings of not enoughness, feelings of…

Brittni (06:28.494)
feelings of isolation, feelings of people judging us, right? I think, and I think I’ve talked about this before, but I think one of the really, really hard things about parenting in today’s day and age is social media, is the internet, right? Like, while it’s also a wonderful tool and amazing because I am so thankful for my Instagram community, Instagram has truly bought.

brought me real life friends, right? That I would have never met if it weren’t for Instagram. But I think that it’s information overload. It also leads to a lot of comparison. And I’ve actually found myself kind of spiraling back into this comparison game somewhat in the motherhood sector, but more for me and like the business owner sector. I like see these accounts that are like, I had a 50K month, right? And I’m like,

I’ve started kind of getting back down that comparison avenue of like, I definitely did not have a 50K a month. Like, am I doing something wrong? What are they doing that I’m not doing? Am I not enough? Right? So first, just recognizing that social media and the internet is a double edged sword. There are a lot of benefits to it. And there are also a lot of drawbacks. And

negative pieces to it, which can really impact us in motherhood. And I know specifically if it wouldn’t have been, and this again is where it becomes a double-edged sword, because in the beginning, if it wouldn’t have been for like Instagram, Google, what to expect, right? The website, I don’t think that my postpartum anxiety would have been as bad as it was, because I was reading all of this information that was like,

My baby is definitely not doing that. Am I doing something wrong? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my baby? And you know, we start spiraling. We’re turning to Google at 2 a.m. And it’s telling us that our baby woke, is waking up because we nursed them to sleep or rocked them to sleep. Or it’s telling us not to look our baby in the eyes at the middle of the night because it’s too stimulating. All of this bullshit, right? I know that caused me a lot of anxiety, but then on the other hand,

Brittni (08:51.986)
I actually discovered safe bed sharing on Instagram. I discovered my sleep certification on Instagram, right? So it’s a double-edged sword. And then on top of that, we have, especially, I would assume if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re parenting in a way that’s a little bit against the grain, maybe not. Like you might not bed share, right? We all are doing different things, but for the most part, I would say you’re probably not sleep training.

You might be bed sharing. You might be extended breastfeeding, right? A lot of things that kind of seem weird in society. So we’re feeling alone in that as well. So we’re seeing all these things on the internet that’s making us feel like, oh my gosh, I’m failing. I’m doing everything wrong. Then we are…

Brittni (09:56.182)
Then we are feeling kind of like outsiders or like we’re really weird because we’re doing things completely different than society. And then we might actually have family members and friends who are judging us or people in a Facebook group chat or not group chat, but like a Facebook moms group or a pediatrician, right? So there’s kind of like three pieces going on here.

that can make it really hard for our mental health and motherhood. And I know it comes from this deep desire to be the best mom that we can be, right? Like we wanna be doing it the best. I wanna remind you that none of us are perfect. The perfect mom does not exist. I have no idea what I’m doing half the time in motherhood. Just figuring it out, right? We all are. So even if somebody

appears like they have it all together. They don’t have it all together. And so this is, this is where it becomes really difficult in motherhood because we’re wanting to be the best, we’re wanting to do the best, and yet we feel like we’re failing because we’re seeing it all around us. We feel like everyone is doing it differently than us. So that was a long little

Brittni (11:22.338)
three or four practical things that you can do to protect your mental health if all of this is kind of resonating with you, right? If you’re feeling like everything you’re seeing on the internet is telling you you’re doing it wrong, if you feel like you’re the only person parenting in a certain way, or your baby’s the only baby doing whatever they’re doing, or if you’re experiencing judgment and ridicule maybe from…

family members, or like I said, the internet, friends, pediatrician, whoever it may be. So the first thing that I would really encourage you to do is know your audience. And this is specifically in regards to like having conversations with friends, family members, maybe even parents at the park or in a mom’s group or wherever you are, even with your pediatrician.

know your audience. So let’s say you’re a bed sharing family. I don’t have to be a bed sharing family, right? But that’s what we’re using for the example. So you’re a bed sharing family. You’re already kind of feeling insecure about it, which I just wanna tell you, don’t feel insecure about it, which I know is so easy for me to say. But you’re not alone. Millions of families all over the world are bed sharing.

You’re not doing anything weird. You’re not screwing up your child. But apart from that, I want you to know your audience. So like if you know your family member or your friend is going to judge you or ridicule you for bed sharing, maybe that’s just not a topic that comes up, right? So that might be, and I recorded a podcast episode on this last year specifically about like the holding boundaries around conversations.

It was right around Thanksgiving. I can share it in the show notes, but I have a full episode talking about how to navigate conversations. So I recommend going to listen to that. I’ll briefly touch on it a little bit in this episode, but know your audience. So if you know that you’re walking into a setting where you’re gonna be with a family member, you’re going to be with a friend, or you’re gonna be with your pediatrician who you know is going to shame you.

Brittni (13:51.486)
either be prepared, right? So, okay, I know that this is probably going to be a conversation that’s triggering to me because they’re going to say something or just kind of hold the boundary of like, if sleep gets brought up, you’re like, yeah, things are great. We don’t really have anything to chat about. Or if you want to be really bold, you can talk about it and feel confident in it. But this is more about protecting your mental health. So know your audience.

know what conversations you’re going to have and know maybe what topics are not necessarily going to be avoided, but that aren’t going to be the biggest topic of conversation.

Brittni (14:34.918)
The next thing that I want you to do, and this is kind of again, knowing your audience, is feel really comfortable holding boundaries about what you will and will not be talking about. Again, one of the, like a big one that I used to use when people would ask like, how’s your daughter sleeping? If I didn’t wanna like go into the whole conversation is I would just be like, she’s sleeping great. She’s sleeping like a baby. She’s sleeping just like she should, right? Just kind of.

keeping it short, not being rude, but knowing that this conversation is not going to go in a way that’s going to protect my mental health unless I hold like this boundary around how I want to talk about it. The next thing that I highly recommend is finding safe spaces. So find your motherhood community, whether that be online or whether that be in real life. And I’ve talked about this before.

I didn’t really find like a motherhood community or friends in real life until maybe in the last year or so. Before that, everything was online. And Lila’s four and a half, right? So that was until she was about three and a half years old, maybe even closer to four. So find a space where you feel really safe. So maybe that’s on my Instagram community page. I’m really…

This is kind of a little teaser that I didn’t even plan on talking about, but one of my big goals for either later this year or early next year is to have like a full community membership where it’s just a space where everyone can come and talk and chat with each other. So I’m working on that. And I’m glad I’m saying this out loud because it will hold me accountable as well. So like maybe it’s a community like that. Maybe it’s a like.

non-sleep training Facebook group, right? Maybe it is a group of moms that you meet. And some tips there that I found, I’ve become really good friends with one of the moms at Lila’s school. And it was funny, cause we’ve both like talked about it now. Like those first few days that we were like doing pick up and drop off, I would hear how she was talking to her daughter and she heard how I was talking to Lila. And we like both say like,

Brittni (16:55.494)
as soon as I heard you, like how you were talking to your little one, I knew like you were my people. Like I knew that we were on the same vibe, on the same wavelength. And so I know that’s harder in the beginning, right? Because you’re still really figuring it out. So if you’re in the first year, that can be a lot harder. And the first year is the most triggering because everybody wants to ask how your baby’s sleeping.

Some people really do ask like, where’s the baby sleeping? Which it cracks me up. Like it’s none of your business where my baby is sleeping. But so like in the first year of life, if you’re in a play group or like a, you know, like a mommy group or a music class, whatever the case may be, you can kind of pick up on cues for who’s in front of you, right? Like maybe it’s the way that they’re talking to their baby.

Maybe it’s the way that they’re just simply like interacting with their baby. And just kind of kind of ease into those conversations. And maybe like if the topic of sleep does get brought up, maybe just you being honest is enough to open a door for someone else to be honest. Because I’ve also found that sometimes people are protecting their mental health too, right? So like we might say something that’s not fully the truth because we don’t want

But if somebody is fully open, then we’re gonna be open too, right? And that’s, it’s actually funny. I just talked about my friend that I’ve met through Laila’s school and we both heard each other talking, but then, I don’t know, it was maybe like the second weekend of school we ended up like staying, Laila goes to a forest school. So we ended up staying like in the forest after school ended and letting the girls play. And…

Somehow she said something about her son who’s a little bit younger, he’s almost three. She said he sleeps with her. And I was like, oh my gosh, like, I found, like, we found each other, right? And then it was like an automatic click. And I was like, oh yeah, Lila sleeps with me. So I don’t know if she wouldn’t have said it, would I have said it, right? So sometimes you just have to…

Brittni (19:13.102)
find a safe space, but also be a safe space and get a little bit vulnerable and be open about what’s going on in your life to kind of put those feelers out. And then obviously you can go like deeper and deeper once you know like, okay, there is a connection here. We are aligned. And that’s not to say that like, you might say something and somebody is like, oh, well our four month old sleeps through the night, right? Or like we started sleep training. No shame to anyone who has chosen to sleep train. But.

putting those feelers out. So getting honest and vulnerable can sometimes help you find your safe space. Also, I think another really good place, if you are a breastfeeding mom, is like a lactation group. You wanna make sure that the lactation consultant that’s running the group is very much in line with like what’s biologically normal, responsive parenting at night, because I know that there are some lactation consultants, which blows my mind, because any…

good lactation consultant will tell you that you do not want to sleep train a baby and stop feeds at night if you have long-term breastfeeding goals. Unless they naturally start sleeping, right? But we don’t wanna make parent led changes to nighttime breastfeeding until at least the 12 month mark. So you wanna make sure like if you are going to a lactation group, you’re connecting with a lactation consultant that is in line with.

where you’re at. And a quick way to do that would be if they have an Instagram profile, they’re going to quickly like you’ll quickly know like what train are they on. And then the beauty there is then you’re with other moms who are one breastfeeding so you can connect with them. And then also you’re kind of being mentored by this lactation consultant who will be very much supportive of how you’re parenting and what you’re doing.

If you don’t breastfeed, that is okay too. There are other moms groups. If you had a doula, a doula is another great way to see like how can I connect with other like-minded moms in the area. Also Facebook groups, like you might just look up like crunchy moms Facebook group in wherever you live, right? So find your safe spaces and if.

Brittni (21:35.126)
Getting out, because I am a total, you’d probably never know this about me since I’m on Instagram, I have this podcast. I am a total introvert. I’m an introverted extrovert, right? So once I know you and I feel comfortable with you, you’re never gonna get me to shut up. I will open book, I will tell you all my deepest, darkest secrets. But getting outside of my comfort zone, talking to new people.

Going to a new place feels really overwhelming to me. And that’s actually something I’ve been working on because I was always the friend who would like make plans and then bail because it just felt like too much in the moment. And I’ve really committed to myself like not to bail because once I get out there, it actually feel like I feel better. But if you’re in that first year of motherhood and the idea of like getting out, connecting with other moms or just leaving the house feels like too much right now, I see you. I was you.

That’s where like an online community would be great for you. And also if you’re feeling really lonely and you just like need some reassurance, send me a DM on Instagram. I really try. I really try to answer all of them. I will say sometimes they get lost. Sometimes they get stuck in like a requests folder that I don’t see right away, but I really try to make an effort to respond to as many DMs as I can.

or if it’s like more of a serious issue, feel free to shoot me an email. My email is britney, B-R-I-T-T-N-I at rest I would love to just help you find some peace. The next one is a big one, and it’s actually where this whole concept of today’s episode came from, because it was something that I was actually noticing in my life. The next one is…

Cultivate your social media. You want to make sure that when you log on to social media the things that you are seeing are inspiring you, educating you, or uplifting you, or just making you feel seen, right? And the education piece, this is where it gets tricky because if it’s education that every time you log on and you’re like, oh, I’m supposed to be doing that. I’m not doing that. And then it starts making you feel bad. I would say,

Brittni (24:02.01)
that is an account that I would mute or unfollow. And this whole concept actually came from, I don’t wanna name names because I think she is a nice person, I’ve never met her, I’ve never talked to her, but there is an account on social media who her whole account, and you’re probably going to know who she is as soon as I say this, but her whole account is based around

not doing any screen time. So like she helps you with independent play, she helps you detox from screens, and that’s what her whole account is based off of. And I’ve learned a lot from her. I actually did one of her courses last year and I think that there was a lot of valuable information in it. But this year she had gone away for a while and she came back and it was like she came back with a vengeance like almost on this like attack mode of screen time and

And we don’t even do a lot of screen time in our house. Like we’ll do our Friday night movie nights. Sometimes we’ll do like Friday and Saturday night movie nights. Sometimes we’ll do Friday, Saturday, Sunday night movie nights, but like we don’t have any like daily, like there’s not any TV shows being watched, right? And no shame to you if there is in your home. But she started posting these really intense reels about like,

If your child can’t play independently, they’re not securely attached to you. Well, that’s a big red flag. Like that one was really like, gave me a really like sour taste in my mouth. Like, I’m not okay with this. Then another recent one, and I’m kind of outing her because I think these posts kind of went viral. So you might know who I’m talking about, but another one of hers compared drugging our children or sedating our children.

it compared that to having our children in front of screens. And that just really didn’t sit well with me and made me feel like, and then I started questioning myself. Oh my gosh, am I a bad mom because we do these Friday night movie nights? Or the other day, last weekend, I was just feeling really, really tired. And so Lila and I watched two movies on a Saturday, right? Not the norm, but actually this.

Brittni (26:25.898)
This reel came like right after that. So then I was like beating myself up and I was like, whoa, whoa. You cannot let one person make you question your reality or make you feel like you’re an awful mom. And so I muted her account, which I will probably go unfollow. I will continue testing the waters and seeing what content is being put out. But that’s a perfect example. In my early days of motherhood, it was following accounts that were talking about their six month old sleeping.

a 12 hour stretch at night, or a mom influencer talking about her baby being placed awake in the crib and going to sleep, or even like friends, right, who had babies, or acquaintances, I should say, who had babies and were like posting about their sleep on Instagram, mute the stuff that is bringing insecurity, doubt, or just feelings of not being enough, mute them. If they are not bringing you peace,

or uplifting you or making you laugh or really adding value into your life, don’t follow them. And that includes me, right? Like if I post something that really triggers you or maybe you decide to sleep train. And so you see my content and you’re like, ugh, right? Like I don’t wanna see what she’s posting because I sleep trained, unfollow me.

We need to be unfollowing accounts that are not serving us, that are not uplifting us. So curate and cultivate a social media account if you’re on social media that serves you and doesn’t make you doubt or second-guess yourself and everything else. There have been multiple accounts, like I said, that I had to unfollow, not because they weren’t posting great educational content,

But that because it didn’t bring me peace. It wasn’t where I was at in my motherhood journey. And even though it was good information, like maybe the mom next to me, she found it so helpful, so uplifting, great for her. It wasn’t uplifting and it wasn’t helpful in that moment for me. And sometimes I’ll unfollow people and then like their content might pop up like on the popular page or somebody might reshare something. And then I’ll be like, oh, I love that.

Brittni (28:45.226)
And then I’ll go to their page and be like, oh my gosh, I used to follow them. I unfollowed them. And then sometimes their content resonates with me and it doesn’t trigger me, right? Sometimes there’s some internal work that maybe we need to do before that content can feel palatable for us. So curate your social media. Again, make it a place that doesn’t bring you stress, doesn’t make you doubt yourself.

The other thing I’ll say is, and I am so guilty of this, like I really have been telling myself I need to stop this. I don’t watch TV at night, but I will read my book. But I’ve been laying with Lila more as she falls asleep. I know we were in a period where she was, we were like doing bedtime and then I would walk out.

But lately I’ve just been laying with her and after she falls asleep, I’ll like get on Instagram and start like scrolling the popular page or the Reels page and then I’ll be like, oh my gosh, 30 minutes have gone by. So just that in itself I’ve noticed has kind of made me more burnt out. So I’ve made a rule to myself, I can do 15 minutes of Instagram after she goes to sleep and then I’m done. So just that in itself.

maybe you’re limiting your time on social media because sometimes it can just be too much information overload. Then you start like somebody pops up on a reel, right? It may be not even somebody that you’re following, but you’re scrolling through reels and something pops up about a baby who sleeps 12 hours at night, and that’s triggering to you. So also just maybe limiting your time on social media. Lastly, and again, I know this one is much easier said than done, and it really comes with time, but.

Trust that you really know best and trust that you’re doing what works for you. Trust in the process. Let go of the worries of creating bad habits. I have a whole episode that you can go and listen to if you’re worried about creating bad habits, right? Many of my episodes will speak to whatever fear you’re feeling, so you can just go scroll through the topics, like the episode titles, and they will quickly help you know, like,

Brittni (30:50.014)
Oh, should I listen to this one? If you’re feeling really alone in your sleep journey, maybe you go listen to my sleep journey, Lila’s sleep journey episode. That one was really like a really big hit. I got a lot of messages from people just saying like, thank you so much for sharing. I feel less alone. So that one might be good for you. But just trust that like you’re doing what works for you. You’re tuning into your baby and your…

tuning out the noise as best you can. And just because somebody else is doing it one way doesn’t mean that you have to be doing it the same way as them. Every child is unique, every family is unique. And just because the people around you might not be doing it the same way you are, there are people all over the world doing it very similar to how you’re doing it, even if you’re not seeing them. So just trust.

Trust in your intuition and trust in your discernment to do what’s best for your family.

I hope this episode was helpful. I hope that this can help you kind of protect your mental health. As I said, if you’re feeling really alone or anything like that, feel free to shoot me a DM. I would love to chat with you. I hope you find some time this week to find rest for yourself. And I’m wishing you a beautiful day and I’m sending sleepy vibes your way. Bye, friend.