You’ve had a baby, and your days are now filled with everything that goes with that – to the point that sometimes you forget who you were before you had a child. As rewarding as parenthood can be, maintaining your own identity outside that is sometimes more difficult than you realised it would be – and this is particularly so for mothers. But maintaining your own sense of self can be absolutely vital in order to care for your family – and we’re going to look at some things you can try out to make sure you remain your own person as well as a parent.
Self-care
Yep, it’s time for some self-care! As we’ve mentioned previously, though, self-care is crucial in getting the best you can out of yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to go for something big and expensive; self-care can be as simple as you want it to be. Leave baby with someone you trust and take a couple of hours for yourself - have a bath (and just as an aside, Haakaa’s Oatmeal Baby Bath Milk is fantastic for adults, too), pop on a moisturising face mask, head out for a run, read a book…whatever it is that helps you find yourself and get grounded again.
Maintain Social Connections
This is one that is so very easy to let lie by the wayside – and with understandable reason. Having a newborn is busy. For something so small, a new baby requires a lot of energy, and without even realising it, many parents find that those day-to-day connections with our support networks—friends, family, and other acquaintances—start to become a bit neglected. Carving out time to check in every so often can help maintain those connections. Things might not ever go back to the way they were before baby, but change doesn’t have to be bad – it just is. Adapting to accommodate the new parts of your life with the old is sometimes tricky, but worth it in the end. As for how? That all depends on what it is that makes you you. If you’re a reader, starting up a book club with your other reader friends or joining one if you don’t want to have to start from scratch can be great, especially as these can take place online until you’re ready to start heading out more often. The same can be done with movie nights. Let dad or a grandparent look after bubs and go have a girl’s night out – and that can be as lowkey as you like. Keep you and your partner’s relationship going by asking if someone can take care of your little one so you can have a date night – you don’t even need to go out! Grab takeaways, get food delivered, or even have fun making something together, then relax with a movie. There are gyms that provide creche or childcare services so you can join a class and get a social workout in. Whatever it is you need, there may well be ways to keep your social bonds strong, and even create new ones!
Hobbies and Passions
This one more or less ties in with the above points, but it bears repeating. So much of what makes us us revolves around the activities we do that bring us joy, and keeping them going goes a long way to keeping us grounded through all the chaos that having a baby brings. All the activities mentioned previously? If they’ve been your thing before baby, there is no reason they can’t remain your thing after baby. A lot of them may have to go on a short hiatus while you’re getting back on your feet, but once you, your baby, and the wider family have got yourselves into a good routine, it’s not only ok for you to start incorporating your hobbies again – it’s almost vital that you do so. Just the same as with self-care—and really, this is just a form of that—maintaining your hobbies is part of what helps keep you on an even keel. And as we all know, making sure you’re looked after makes it that much easier for you to look after them.
Becoming a parent becomes a large part of your identity – but that doesn’t mean it has to be the only part. Looking after yourself, maintaining social ties, and keeping up the hobbies and activities that you enjoy—outside of being a parent—are just some of the ways you can help retain your sense of self. Not mentioned, but salient nonetheless, is maintaining your boundaries – and this can look however you need it to look (within reason, as always). There are as many ways to stitch all those disparate things that make us who we are as there are people, but keeping those threads close can help retain who we are, even as we embark on a whole new life journey.