Mum Life Fatigue: Causes and Symptoms

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An old post for a new audience.

Mum Life Fatigue: What is it?

Let’s face it, everyone gets ‘fatigued’. You had a late night, a physically demanding day, the guy down the street had a party and no respect for your slumber, you didn’t get the z’s you needed to be a fully functioning human being. Every person in the world has at some point in their lives been fatigued!

But there is one type of fatigue that only mums understand, one type of fatigue that makes you want to crawl into a deep, dark crater and observe the world go by. One type of fatigue that makes you lose your care factor concerning just about everything and be enraged enough to commit murder at the same time. One type of fatigue that makes you weep over every tiny little thing and earns you the negative version of the nickname ‘Mumma Bear’.  This type of fatigue is what I call ‘Mum Life Fatigue’.

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Causes:

Mum Life Fatigue is more than your average ‘fatigue’. It’s what happens when you haven’t slept through a single night in 4 years. When your entire day seems to consist of changing nappies, bed sheets and outfits (your babies and your own. Wait…correction, you don’t get time to change your own). When you’ve rocked, bounced, cuddled and sang to your infant for hours on end and they still resist the slumber. When you’ve multi-tasked to the point of feeding a baby, reading to the toddler and hanging the washing on the line at the same time. When you’ve fed, dressed and bathed the kids, done 2 truckloads of washing, vacuumed the floor 3 times, washed the dishes, cleaned poo and crayon off the walls, picked up all the toys and the house still looks like a frat party hit it. When no matter how much time you spend on your feet, there still seems to be 10 more hours of it just around the corner.  When your afternoons and weekends are full of taxiing kids to various sports, activities, play dates, school disco’s, job interviews, shopping trips, hospital visits to remove various tiny objects from body orifices, etc, etc, etc and when your only “me time” consists of sitting on the toilet for 2 minutes with the door locked and ten little fingers wiggling underneath it.

All these things and then some, are the major cause of ‘Mum Life Fatigue’.

Symptoms:

Below is a list of 10 symptoms you may experience while suffering ‘Mum Life Fatigue’.

  1. Your brain no longer functions at a low capacity let-alone an average one (i.e. you can’t remember the names of anything anymore, most objects become ‘things’, ‘thingies’ or collectively ‘stuff’ and nobody’s name can be recalled if it has more than one syllable.)
  2. Your always late for everything including your own bedtime, but that’s because you stay up till midnight in the attempt to get just a little bit of time to yourself without having to answer a thousand questions about why apples aren’t called ‘reds’ or ‘greens’ since oranges are called ‘oranges’.
  3. You spend the whole day using every ounce of strength to stay upright and conscious only to finally get into bed and be wide awake for the next three hours thinking about everything you did that day and need to do the next. Not to mention worrying about whether you mummy’d well enough that day.
  4. You constantly misplace your sunglasses, bank cards, and car keys and have to waste hours searching for them only to find them right where they belong in your handbag, purse or hanging by the front door.
  5. You forget what the outdoors look and feel like and the view of your lounge room and or kitchen is permanently burned into the back of your eyelids, so even when you close your eyes it’s like your still there.
  6. Your hair and face take on a permanent greasy appearance and the clothes you wear during the day double as pajamas because let’s be honest, it takes too much damn energy to get changed anyway.
  7. You have repetitive thoughts of killing, maiming and otherwise making suffer (and I’m sure we’ve all been here) your snoring partner in the bed next to you while you’re up for the 28th time that night.
  8. You break down crying in the grocery store because some old guy who smells like he hasn’t had a shower in a month, snatches the last bunch of spring onions out from under your nose, right after you discover they are ‘clean-out’ of your favorite chocolate.
  9. You keep calling your kids the wrong names and eventually give up and just shout ‘hey you’.
  10. You swear if your partner tells you one more time that they are tired, you will sneak off in the middle of the night, hop a plane and spend the next ten years picking fruit at various orchards around the world.

If you are suffering any or all of the above symptoms, you more than likely have ‘Mum Life Fatigue’ and should consider treatment.


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Treatment:

There are various treatments you can consider if you are diagnosed with ‘Mum Life Fatigue’, one of them being sleep (this can be expensive however since you may need to hire a full-time nanny) but the cheapest and most effective option is to wait until your children reach the age of 18 and go off to live their own lives.

‘Mum Life Fatigue’ is a temporary condition that can vary in length (depending on how many children you are foolish enough or brave enough to have) and eventually goes away on its own. It is however hereditary (if you have any female children), and it can return later in life under the redefined condition known as ‘Grandparent Fatigue’.

  Related articles:

Mum Life Burnout: 5 ways it can affect you and your family

Mum Life Burnout: 10 ways to cool down

How To Find Balance: Is it even possible?

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Looking After Number Mum

Ok, so I know the title doesn’t make a lot of sense but I’m pretty sure all my readers out there are clever enough to work out what my fractured saying is alluding to. To be honest I don’t really subscribe to the idea that we (as humans) let-alone self-sacrificing Mothers are ever number 1, in-front of or above any other person, but after many years (16 in fact) of putting myself last when it comes to basic human needs, I do subscribe to the idea that every now and then we need take some time to make our needs a priority.

Sometimes we can get so wrapped up and carried away with making sure every person in our family has been taken care of, that we have no time left for ourselves, so we start to wear out and break down (see ‘Mum Life Burnout: 5 ways it can effect you and your family‘). Our spirits start to wither and wilt like a flower in the noon day sun and then our family gets a watered-down version of the Super-mum they know and love.


Self Care

I read a blog post the other day by Nicole (sorry couldn’t find a last name), Writer of the blog ‘The Mum Reviews‘ entitled ‘7 self-care ideas make you a happier mum‘, which I found interesting. Her suggestions on how to take care of yourself as a Mum are as follows:

1. Buy yourself little treats that help you slow down and appreciate life.

2. Carve out kid-free time whatever way you can.

3. Style your hair, do your nails, wear perfume, makeup and nice clothes whenever you want (or not).

4. Have reassuring rituals and routines, but break them sometimes.

5. Use your skills for something other than parenting.

6. Exercise. Seriously, this is non-negotiable.

7. Don’t sweat the petty things.

I agree wholeheartedly with all these suggestions. Even if you can’t find time for all of them, picking one or two a day can help you feel less like your the wheels on and old-fashioned horse cart and more like your the jet engines on a rocket ship, when it comes to running your household. Was that an odd analogy? Well…too bad, I like it so I’m leaving it in. I do have a few suggestions of my own however which I’d like to add to the list (Making it 10):

8. Have one space in the house that is “yours”.

Whether it’s a boudoir (or bedroom) decorated in all your favourite colours and patterns or simply an armchair in the lounge room adorned with your grandma’s crochet blanket, you need a little space that is just for you. Somewhere you can relax in an environment that helps you to recharge. Whether it’s beautiful materials, a vase of flowers, a little window that looks out into the garden or a family heirloom oozing nostalgia that uplifts your soul, find a few things that really make “your place” an enticing place to spend your kid-free time.

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9. Spend time with friends.

I’m a big believer in community. Whether your a socialite with a thousand Facebook followers or a withdrawn introverted hermit with 2 cats (and the kids), you’ll most likely find that you feel more ‘alive’ after a bit of social interaction. Sure you have one or two or three (etc etc) children with a million questions and irrelevant “facts” to chatter in your ear all day but spending massive amounts of time conversing with the younger (much younger) generation can be exhausting. If your not lucky enough to have a spouse to offload to at the end of the day (or even if you do), spending just 10 minutes or longer in adult conversation with someone who ‘gets it’ can be a lifesaver to an exhausted, strung-out Mum listening to the 10th hour of “we’re in the wiggle house”.

10. Time to think.

So you may say “but I’m always thinking, all day, every day, about everything!” but what are you thinking about? What to cook for dinner? How to make healthier meals for the kids lunch boxes? How to organize your linen cupboard so that you can find the pillowcases that match your doona cover? My guess is that most of the thoughts that go through your head in a day are about everyone else and the house, am I right? Whilst these things are very important, you need some time to think about what makes you happy or could potentially make you happy. Whether you are a spiritual person or not, prayer can also be a great way to unwind and let go of burdens and things that weigh you down. Taking care of your mental and spiritual health is another vital part of self-care.

So those are my suggestions to add to the list of ways YOU as a mum can look after the one who looks after everyone else. If your not a Mum, then these can be great suggestions you can offer a Mum that you know who is feeling worn-out and overwhelmed. I can honestly attest to the fact that not looking after yourself as a Mother can lead to burn-outs, break-downs and poor physical and mental health, with problems like anger, exhaustion, depression and anxiety. You MUST find a way to take care of YOU, so YOU can properly take care of your family.

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The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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