Grey-Bruce Kids Winter 2021/22
A FREE magazine for parents and caregivers.
A FREE magazine for parents and caregivers.
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FILL YOUR CUP<br />
Emotional needs<br />
• Talk to a therapist or health care provider who<br />
has training in perinatal mood and anxiety<br />
problems.<br />
• Learn as much as you can about pregnancy and<br />
postpartum depression and anxiety.<br />
• Build an empathy team of like-minded friends<br />
who are simply there to listen, not fix things.<br />
• Positive self-talk. Tell yourself you are loved and<br />
keep a gratitude list.<br />
Social needs<br />
• Get support from family and friends. Ask for<br />
help when you need it.<br />
• Join a support group in your area or online.<br />
• Unfollow social media accounts and avoid<br />
websites that make you feel bad about your life.<br />
• Plan a coffee date with a friend or a daily phone<br />
call to socialize.<br />
• Set up “date nights” with your partner once a<br />
month.<br />
Physical needs<br />
• Drink lots of water! Aim for at least two litres<br />
per day, as dehydration is common.<br />
• Make time for eating and focus on balanced,<br />
healthy nutrition.<br />
• Aim for eight hours of sleep a day, however, that<br />
looks for you.<br />
• Sit in the sunlight each morning (Vitamin D!).<br />
• Physically connect with loved ones – a 10-20<br />
second hug releases oxytocin.<br />
Spiritual needs<br />
• Pause for a moment, listen to the birds,<br />
appreciate the blue sky, be in the moment and<br />
breathe.<br />
• Develop a yoga and/or mindfulness-based<br />
routine.<br />
• Start a gratitude or reflective journal.<br />
Practical needs<br />
• Outsource/delegate.<br />
• If you have older children, give them a chore list<br />
and develop a self-care routine for them.<br />
• Don’t track your baby’s sleeping and feeding<br />
routines if it impacts your mental health.<br />
• Say “no” to extra work when possible.<br />
• Work on a budget with your partner.<br />
Mental needs<br />
• Listen to a podcast or audiobook while doing<br />
work around the house.<br />
• Watch a season (or two or three) of a favourite<br />
show.<br />
• Decorate your home, paint, shop, reorganize –<br />
make your space your own.<br />
right for you and your family. Life will go so much smoother for<br />
you that way. Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing –<br />
they’re not perfect either. Those pictures on social media? Fake<br />
news. People are often too busy with their own lives that they’re<br />
not as focused on our lives as we may think.<br />
Spend some time thinking about what makes you, you!<br />
Becoming a parent is such a huge transition, and it can swallow<br />
us up in one bite. Do yourself a favour and think back to what<br />
used to really lift your soul before having kids. What did you<br />
love spending your creative energies on? Did you love to paint?<br />
Did you practice yoga, go for walks in the forest, sing along to<br />
punk music in your car, or skip rocks on the water? I want you<br />
to write down your favourite thing and then brainstorm ways<br />
you can add it back into your life – even just a little – now that<br />
you have kids. Talk to your partner, family, and friends about<br />
what you love doing and ask them to help you. Chances are,<br />
there will be a way you can do it. This will be the best selfcare<br />
you will ever have. It will fill your cup up so that those<br />
mundane, everyday tasks don’t feel as heavy, and you may find it<br />
easier to connect with your kids.<br />
Recognize your triggers. We all have them. Triggers are<br />
things that can set you off emotionally and throw you into a<br />
fight, flight, or freeze mode. These triggers are often related to<br />
previous experiences that we had, and we automatically go into<br />
self-preservation mode. Once you start noticing these triggers<br />
and what your body does in reaction to them, then you can<br />
anticipate it happening. When you know they are coming and<br />
you can name these feelings, the after-effects won’t last as long.<br />
This means that you can snap out of your funks much faster and<br />
go back to enjoying your life.<br />
I’ll give you an example – when I have something important<br />
coming up, I usually end up with knots in my stomach and I<br />
can’t eat or sleep. I go into hyper-vigilance (flight) state, trying<br />
to clean my disaster of a house at record speed, leaving my kids<br />
and husband in complete awe and utter confusion. Then I get<br />
snappy because I haven’t eaten and I’m exhausted. Now that I<br />
recognize this behaviour, I can spend less time in this state by<br />
doing something that calms me down. This could be listening to<br />
a mindfulness track, doing 10 minutes of yoga or forcing myself<br />
to take a break to eat. We all have traumas and triggers. Our kids<br />
often pick up on them before we do, which isn’t fair to them.<br />
Figuring out what sets you off will make your home run much<br />
more smoothly.<br />
Set boundaries and stick to them. I don’t know about you, but<br />
for me COVID-19 has put a lot of strain on my relationships.<br />
Once you know your triggers (again, write them down), it’s<br />
important you set boundaries to protect yourself as much as<br />
possible. Here’s another example – when my kids playfully hold<br />
onto my leg and want a ride, it makes my stomach flip and my<br />
skin crawl. I used to get upset at them for it, which is completely<br />
unfair. Now, I have been able to set a clear, age-appropriate<br />
boundary so that we both don’t need to be in that awkward<br />
situation. They now know that my foot is a no-sit zone.<br />
This can apply to your kids, friends, family, the school system,<br />
your co-workers, daycare, whatever. You may get some pushback
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