Hi, I’m Dana. Today I want to talk about something that’s really near and dear to my heart. I had a girl on the Facebook page post that she’s having a really hard time carving out time for herself. She’s had a lot of challenges with her baby. There has been some health issues with the baby.

She is a high needs baby, so she really needs a lot of time and attention from mom. Mom spent really the last fourteen months pretty much exclusively being with this child. I know and we all know that when we do that we are not giving to ourselves in the way we need to.

Everyone needs me time. You need a little bit of time for yourself. You need time with your friends and your family. You need time with your spouse. So often I see moms putting themselves on the very last spot on their priority list or kicking their needs to the side to deal with baby. That will really hurt the family in the long run.

I love the quote that you cannot pour from an empty cup. If you’re not giving to yourself, it makes giving to others that much harder. You really need to sit down and think about that, right? If I’m not feeling fulfilled, happy, and peaceful in my own space, then it’s going to be really hard to give to you or you or you in a meaningful way without feeling some resentment behind it.

I totally get it. I think the biggest mistake people make when they’re trying to kind of step back into themselves is that they go for too much too soon. In this case she spent a lot of time with this little one. The baby has lots of separation anxiety when mom’s gone. Just baby step your way back into this, just like you would anything.

If you’re going to start a new fitness routine, you don’t jump into a ninety-minute boot camp every day. You take small steps. Just carve out if you can find in your day this twenty minutes when my husband gets home from work, I’m going to pass her over and I’m going to go for a twenty-minute walk. Set your timer and make sure that you follow through on that twenty minutes.

I promise you, even if she cries when you leave the house, she will be fine for twenty minutes. She doesn’t have to be happy for those twenty minutes, but I promise you she will be fine. Then once you get into the habit of that, that twenty minutes of you time, you can start bumping that up. Maybe thirty minutes you take a bubble bath and read your book or you watch a program that’s just yours or you meet a friend for coffee, and then maybe you’re doing a lunch date and then maybe you’re doing a night away.

You see how this would grow as you step into it slowly. It will also give your partner time. I mean sometimes as mothers we take on all the responsibility. We push our partner to the side and they’re left feeling like, I’m not really capable of dealing or handling this child without mom around. Baby stepping them into this as well can be really helpful that just for twenty minutes you can take care of things.

Then for thirty minutes you can and really prove to the husband or your partner that they have the ability to take care of this baby when you’re not around. It will show all three of you that this is something that can happen and everybody survives, everybody is fine, and everybody is feeling more refreshed and fulfilled because of it.

I challenge you here today, if you’re feeling depleted, it is not selfish. It is a necessity to give to yourself. I want you to sit down with your calendar and pull out twenty minutes. If you can do it twenty minutes every day or every other day to just spend some time with you. You’re going to feel better. You’re going to be happier. I promise you, you’re going to be a better parent. Thanks so much for watching today. Sleep well.