Stay-at-Home Mom Stress: 7 Ways to Find Relief

Family / Motherhood
stay at home mom stress relief

Inside: Unnecessary stress can steal your joy and make being a stay-at-home mom completely miserable. Get stay-at-home mom stress under control with these 7 must-have tips!

Who knew that being a stay-at-home mom could be so stressful? When I left my job to stay home with my first baby, I never imagined the stress caring for a single, tiny little human would cause.

Combine a screaming, clingy baby with a huge life change (a.k.a. motherhood), plus general household responsibilities, and you have a recipe for extremely high levels of stress.

A few years (and a few babies) later, I finally learned how to manage stay-at-home mom stress and keep it at a manageable level. You can find stress relief as a stay-at-home mom: I promise!

You just need to know where to start.

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The Mother’s Day Gift Moms of Littles Really Want (and so desperately need)

Family / Motherhood
Mother's Day Gifts Moms actually want

Inside: Mother’s Day gifts are on the brain, but the Mother’s Day gift moms of littles really want (and so desperately) need can’t be bought at a store. And the nature of the holiday itself makes us feel too guilty to ask for it.

As a blogger, I use Pinterest all the time to promote my blog posts and share good stuff with my readers there, and what do I see this time of year?

  • Mother’s Day Gift Guides
  • Mother’s Day Brunch Ideas
  • Mother’s Day Crafts for Kids

What’s so terribly ironic about these posts is that us moms will be executing most of this Mother’s Day stuff ourselves!

WE are the ones searching for it.

WE are the ones reading it.

WE are the ones budgeting for it (so very ironic).

WE are the ones sending gift guides in our hubby’s direction.

WE are probably the ones putting together the brunch for a holiday that celebrates US.

Mother’s Day: the one holiday that is supposed to be all about moms, but ironically, it somehow adds pressure to moms, especially when you still have little ones in your crew.

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Moms: Your Free Time is Yours. Do What You Love. (you’ll be a better mom – promise)

Family / Motherhood
moms free time

Inside: Do you ever feel pressured to use your free time as a mom doing things you don’t love? Then, you need to read this.

“Make cookies, please, mama?” pleaded my two year old for the second time that week.

The horrible scraping sound of kids pushing stools across the kitchen floor.  The awful anticipation of kids surrounding me on all sides.

The stress of keeping three kids from dumping ingredients into the bowl unbidden, trying to remember whose turn was last so each kid got a chance to help.

I started hyperventilating just thinking about it.

So I pacified my son with a few chocolate chips and a murmured promise of making cookies at some later (unspecified) date.

And I tried to stop feeling guilty.

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9 Tips You Need to Prepare for a Successful VBAC (from a mom who’s had three)

Family / Motherhood / Pregnancy
tips to prepare for a successful vbac

Inside: Want to know how to prepare for a successful VBAC from a mom who’s been there? Get realistic tips from a mom who’s had three.

When I found out I was pregnant for the third time (my second pregnancy ended in a missed miscarriage), I knew right away that I wanted to attempt a VBAC (Vaginal Birth after C-Section).

I absolutely did not want a doctor telling me how many babies I could or couldn’t have.

As confident as I was in my decision, attempting a VBAC was scary and unfamiliar territory for me, and I didn’t want the medical-sounding, “hospital-approved” facts and advice from doctors who had never experienced a VBAC.

What I wanted most at that moment was more realistic and personal advice from fellow moms on how to prepare for a successful VBAC.

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A VBAC Delivery: Should You Attempt It and What You Need to Consider (from a mom who’s had 3)

Family / Motherhood / Pregnancy
VBAC delivery, should I attempt a VBAC delivery

Inside: If you have had a c-section and want to have more kids, you’re probably asking, “Should I attempt a VBAC delivery?” Get one perspective on VBACs from mom of four kids who has had not just one successful VBAC delivery, but three.

We have four beautiful children. But when our first child’s delivery ended up as an emergency c-section, I asked the same question you may also be asking: “Should I attempt a VBAC delivery?” 

As I sit here typing away with my two-year-old asleep in my arms, I think, “Had it not been for my VBAC delivery more than six years ago, you might never have been born.”

I remember the day I decided with certainty to attempt a VBAC delivery, like it was yesterday.

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Yep, Your Kids Watch Too Much TV, and That’s O.K.

Family / Motherhood / Parenting
Inside: Why your kids watch too much TV, and why you need to stop feeling guilty.

Your human alarm clock tiptoes into your room just after six o’clock (in the morning). Bleary-eyed, you try to pull it together, but the baby woke up five times last night.

Not going to happen.

You mumble something unintelligible. The only word that gets through is “TV”. She runs out of the room excitedly, and you roll over.

You’re dead to the world until the baby next to your stirs and starts to cry. The sound of PBS hits your ears, and your eyes fly open.

Glancing at the clock, you realize to your horror that the kids watched far more TV than you intended. You planned on using a show later that day to take a shower and maybe read for ten minutes in peace and quiet.

The day has barely even started, and you already feel like a failure.  

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The Question We Need to Ask Our Daughters (and why we’re afraid to)

Family / Motherhood / Parenting
question to ask our daughters

Like many other stay at home moms today, I went to college. I went to college, and I’m still paying for those degrees I’m not really using (and I’m not sure I ever will).

As I watch that loan payment deduct from our bank account month after month, I sometimes question my choices. I wonder how I might have chosen differently had I known that I wanted to be a mom, and a stay at home, homeschooling mom at that.

You see, that wasn’t the plan.

In high school, when I was touring colleges and picking degrees, I wasn’t planning on getting married at 21 or having a baby at 23 or having four kids by now. If you have told me then that this is where I would be fifteen years later, I would have laughed in your face! Motherhood was not even a thought. In fact, I shunned the idea altogether and imagined having kids later in life.

And now I have a daughter.

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7 Things Every Mom Needs this School Year

Family / Homeschool / Motherhood
solutions for stress free school year for moms

It’s that time of year again: the time of year when all the moms are scouring the web for ideas on how this school year can be as smooth and stress-free as possible.

Whether you are homeschooling or sending your kids to school, all moms face similar challenges: what’s for dinner every night (before your family asks), how to keep up with the laundry, staying organized. Having solutions to these problems ready to go before school starts will make your school year so much easier!

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Stay at Home Mom Depression: One Way to Fight It

Family / Motherhood
stay at home depression

Inside: Stay at home mom depression is very real, but it’s rarely talked about. Here’s one simple way to fight it.

Being a stay-at-home mom is amazing. It’s also incredibly challenging, exhausting, and just really, really hard sometimes.

The good days outweigh the bad for the most part. Most of the stay-at-home moms I know are so thankful for the privilege to do something that not everyone can, especially since it seems more and more moms are trying to find a way to stay home, too.

Most of the time, a good night’s sleep can cure anything…except when it can’t. And that’s when stay-at-home mom depression becomes very, very real.

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How to Make Mom Friends (when you’re tired of trying)

Family / Motherhood
make mom friends

Inside: Making friends as a mom is so much harder than making friends pre-motherhood. Put your finger on what makes it so difficult to make mom friends in the first place, and get tips to make finding mom friends easier.

When your first child is born, it’s fairly easy to make mom friends. There are groups designed just for that: like the ones your local hospital or community center coordinates for new moms. You check the birthday range set for each group, pick one, and enjoy regularly attending an event that you didn’t have to lift a finger to initiate, plan, or host.

Connection is easy, nearly effortless, right? You just had a baby; they just had a baby. The topics for conversation are endless!

Birth stories. Baby sleep. Swaddling techniques. Your choices are endless and fairly safe (unless you’re in a group that happened to attract moms who want to duke it out over breast versus bottle or schedules versus attachment).

Making mom friends was never easier. Fast forward five years to when it’s anything BUT easy. 

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