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I have become obsessed with sleep recently. To be precise, I have become obsessed with getting enough sleep. I love an early night, not just for the added sleep but for how good I feel the next day. I am all about getting enough rest and relaxation at the moment and my mental health is thanking me for it. If you want to sleep better and stress less, today’s guest post is a must read.
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I am no stranger to mental health struggles and if you are reading this, I am guessing you have your struggles too. Today’s guest post is full of advice for anyone struggling with PTSD. I haven’t experienced this myself but I can only imagine how horrible it must be. If you have PTSD, I hope you find this post useful.
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Hands up if you’re feeling stressed? You can’t see me, but my hand is raised high in the air right now! Life is crazy at the moment, there is so much going on with my family. The stress of it all is starting to take it’s toll, this guest post couldn’t have come at a better time. If you are struggling with your mental health at the moment, this post is full of lots of useful advice. View Post
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Grieving the loss of a loved one is the worst feeling. Ever. It has been just over a year since my Dad died and I am still struggling through the grieving process. Grief has taken it’s toll on me but I know it has impacted my relationships with the other people in my life too. Today’s guest post is all about the ways you can help a grieving friend.
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I have been saying this for years, looking after your mental health is just as important as looking after your physical health. For a long time, during those early years of motherhood, I did not look after myself at all. I gave and gave and gave everything to my family, just like so many parents do. Guess what happened? I ended up more anxious, depressed and overwhelmed than ever. I had no hobbies, no self confidence and my head was full of negative self talk. Long story short, I eventually worked out how important self care was and now I feel better than ever before. If you are struggling to look after your own mental wellbeing, there are lots of tips in today’s guest post.
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I haven’t written about my mental health on this blog for a very long time. After I had my second baby, I frequently wrote about postnatal depression and anxiety. Alex is five now and while I do still have my struggles, my mental health is much better than it was. Over the years I have learnt ways to look after my mental health, helping me to be happier person and a better mum. I practice yoga every day, I write in my gratitude journal every night, I swim in the cold sea once a week and I try to speak as kindly to myself as possible.
People deal with stress and the anxieties of modern life differently and today’s guest post is full of ideas on how you can look after your own mental health. I hope you find this post useful and learn some new strategies that you can use to start to feel like your happy self again.
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It is no secret to me that lack of sleep impacts my mental health. If I haven’t been sleeping well, my anxiety symptoms intensify and I am much more susceptible to feeling depressed and irritable. I am going through a bout of bad anxiety at the moment and this is affecting my sleep and the lack of sleep is increasing the anxiety – it’s a vicious cycle. Sleep is so so so important, especially for us mums as we need our energy to be able to do all our mama duties throughout the day. Today’s guest post details all the different ways poor sleep can impact your mental health. If you are struggling with sleep, there is support out there to help and make sure you tell your friends and family so they can support you and give you time to rest. View Post
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If you have read my blog for a while you will know that I have suffered with anxiety. I think I have always been a bit of an anxious mum but it wasn’t until Alex was born in 2016 that I experienced severe anxiety for the first time. Apart from taking medication, the best thing I did for my anxiety was to spend some time figuring out some coping strategies. For me, yoga really helps me to stay calm and if I don’t have time to do any actual poses, just doing the deep breathing and focusing only on inhaling and exhaling can help me to keep an anxiety attack at bay. I have also found making sure I prioritise a little bit of alone time each day helps and if I am feeling overwhelmed I will speak to my husband about it. I used to bottle up all my feelings and it did much more harm than good. Talking to someone you trust is a really effective way to help manage your anxious feelings. Today’s guest post is full of other methods and strategies on how to quickly and effectively soothe your anxiety. If you are an anxious mum too, I hope this post helps you. View Post
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A few months ago I wrote about how I was feeling a bit lost. I felt like being a mum had taken over every aspect of my life and there was no time left for me to just be Wendy anymore. Since then things have changed slightly, slowly I have been finding small snippets of time for myself and have started to do the things I love again. I won’t say I feel like I have completely reclaimed possession of my identity as that wouldn’t be true BUT I do feel more content with life and less trapped. Although motherhood changes us, takes over our lives and can leave us pining for our child free selves, it is possible to rediscover who you are. Mama, it is possible to feel like you again. View Post
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For those of us North of the equator, January can be more than a little gloomy. Sunshine is sparse, and the nights feel twice as long as the days. Temperatures have plummeted, the excitement and buzz over Christmas and New year are all over, and all anyone wants to do is hibernate under their duvet until Spring. Even if you do not suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD), the chances are that you will feel some of winter’s less desirable effects – fatigue, the blues, craving carbs, and general malaise. However, there are things that you can do to banish the blues and make the winter months feel a little more bearable. View Post
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I would like to start this post just by saying the baby blues and postnatal depression are two very different things. Postnatal depression can be a very serious mental illness and if you think you are suffering from it then please speak to your midwife or health visitor about it. While PND is quite common, more mothers tend to suffer with the baby blues than full on depression. I have had both, neither is a nice experience but it can be a lot easier to recover from the baby blues quickly and the symptoms are not quite as severe. Today’s guest post is full of advice on how new mums can cope if they have the baby blues. Sometimes it just takes some self care and support for you to thrive as a new mum. Remember, you’ve just had a baby and you need to be kind to yourself. View Post
Oli and I started trying for a baby when I was 20. I got pregnant when I was 21 and gave birth to my beautiful first son Leo when I was 22. That was six years ago. I now have over half a decade of parenting experience in my back pocket, plus two more children to keep me busy. I have spent my twenties in the mum bubble, my days full of nappy changes, feeds, cuddles, crying, playing games and battling to get tiny humans to eat and go to sleep. I’ve watched friends study, travel, have careers and party through their twenties while every time I think I might be clawing some time back for myself, I am faced with another positive pregnancy test and all the joy and fear that comes with that second pink line. I love my babies and I wouldn’t change them for the world but as far as life plans go, it was never mine to have three kids before thirty with no career to my name. I guess, since Tilly has been born and I became a mum of three, I just feel a bit lost View Post
When I found out I was pregnant back in November last year I was terrified. Why, you may be wondering, having a baby isn’t supposed to be terrifying. Well, my third pregnancy was full of fear and anxiety because I was so scared I would get postnatal depression again once the baby was born. It’s not surprising really that I didn’t overly enjoy my last pregnancy, I felt like my stable mental wellbeing was a ticking time bomb and it was sure to explode and shatter my happy life once the baby arrived. I spent the nine months leading up to Tilly’s birth trying to deal with lots of complex emotions: love, fear, anxiety and guilt to name a few. My depression definitely came back for a little while, I was letting myself get too stressed about what happened in the past and what could happen in the future to let myself just be in the moment and enjoy growing my third (and final) baby. Was all that stress and worry valid? Was I right to be so anxious about my mental health deteriorating again once the baby was born? Was I right to be scared all along, has my postnatal depression come back? View Post
Dear Louis Theroux,
Firstly, I just want to say I am massive fan. I don’t have a favourite documentary of yours because I genuinely love them all; I have enjoyed everything from watching your Weird Weekends series right up to your more recent films delving into serious subjects such as alcoholism, eating disorders and sexual assault. I admire how you try to shine light and raise awareness about such a variety of different issues and phenomena happening in our modern world. The reason I am writing this letter is to thank you for making your most recent documentary, Mothers on the edge. View Post
I am now almost 31 weeks pregnant with my third baby and things are getting really real now. Baby girl no longer kicks gently like soft fluttering butterfly wings stroking my skin, her limbs are instead poking out all over the place and she is constantly booting me in the ribs! My belly is huge and is stretching more everyday, I also have a pretty impressive waddle going on. The weeks are now down into single digits and I can say baby is due in 2 months now which feels insane as the day I found out back in November feels like last week. As my due date gets closer I am finding myself lost in thoughts about what life is going to be like once our daughter arrives. Something I am worrying about is how I will cope with three young children and whether I will get postnatal depression again. I’ve written a poem to try and get all these muddled thoughts out, to try and make sense of how I am feeling. It’s called Who will I be when there are three? If you too have suffered with postnatal depression and are now pregnant again, I am sure some of these words will resonate with you. View Post
