When You’re Exhausted

Right? That whole time where I was pregnant, nursing, new baby, teething baby, sleep regression. All the things and it was really difficult. And now my youngest is five. Everyone sleeps through the night. The only time we get woken up is if someone’s throwing up, which is pretty rare. And I go to bed on time and I pretty much always sleep through the night and then I wake up.

And it’s incredible how simple that is, but it really does change the way that your brain works. And the way that you’re able to think clearly. And I even think things like exercise and taking care of your body and solving problems. And so what do you do when you’re in a season of exhaustion where you know, I might be here for months.

I might be here for years. We might be living in little kid land for a long time and I might not be getting a lot of sleep. So the first thing is instead of telling myself all day long, I’m so tired, I’m so tired. That thought will make you more tired. Like, just think about it when you think, I’m so tired, there’s like this whininess about it. 

And instead, if you just think, Oh, I’ve got some physical symptoms of exhaustion right now.  That is totally different. That will feel completely different when you think that in your mind. And it feels kind of clinical or Spock-esque to think. I have some physical symptoms of exhaustion, but I think this is important because we get so trapped in the loop of I’m so tired, I’m, I’m never gonna sleep again.

I’ve been so tired for a long time, and we just get a bit complaining and spinning out on those thoughts is also adding to your exhaustion,’cause it takes effort to be upset. It takes energy to whine in your mind. And so I want you to acknowledge that you do have the physical symptoms of exhaustion.

That’s real and it sucks. I don’t think you should shine it up and be like, I feel great. I think you should acknowledge that you’re exhausted, but then we want to move to okay and so what kind of day am I going to have? I think 20 minute naps are really, really powerful. And I bet if you go to the internet and Google like  ways to nap while your kids are around you, you know, there’s a bunch of ways where you can lay down on the floor. 

I saw one recently where you lay down on the floor and you close your eyes and you say, okay,  bring me an object and I will feel it and guess what it is. It says that the kids would bring you like  a matchbox car and you touch it and be like, this is a car, but you’re laying down with your eyes closed. 

So I just think this is a legit strategy for being tired is finding ways to entertain your kids while you are laying down with your eyes closed. And then actually napping, napping when your kids are napping. And here’s the rub obviously, when we are thick in little kid land, we are so desperate for their nap time to clean or cook or rest or scroll on our phones.

And usually we feel a bit rebellious about using that time to sleep because we’re like, ah,  there’s so much else to do. And one of those things might even be scrolling on your phone to feel alive and connected and to feel like there are adult things going on. And so it can often feel really difficult to give that time up for sleep, but I just think it’s worth it.

I think it’s worth it to learn how to take a 20 minute nap. I would YouTube, you know, I think most of us don’t want to take those hour and a half long naps where then we wake up kind of like sweaty and out of it. But there are a lot of benefits to taking a 20 minute nap. If you really like science. Huberman has an episode on sleep and naps  and it’s, I just think , more helpful than we think. 

So recognizing that if you’re in a season of exhaustion, prioritizing a nap during the day I think is really, really good. Then, I want you to also just be clear with yourself, maybe even the level of exhaustion that you have. And I think this is important for, I don’t know, I want to say like, especially those teething seasons where maybe you have a couple nights of sleep and maybe you have a couple nights of not great sleep, but there’s a big difference between waking up once a night and waking up four times a night. 

And so telling yourself, you know, maybe you put it on a scale of 1 to 10. How tired are you? And then maybe you decide ahead of time. Okay, when we are level 3 tired, here’s what the day looks like. And when we’re level 8 tired, here’s what the day looks like. 

And then you just pre plan what kind of food are you eating? What kind of activities are happening? What is the minimum amount of cleaning that you could do? And you just decide ahead of time, hopefully in a clear state of mind, and then all you have to do is decide what level tired you are and what you’re gonna do. 

I’m that level tired. I’d probably pick three levels, by the way, now that I’m thinking about it. I would pick really well rested, medium tired, and really tired. Maybe four, maybe there’s something between medium and really tired. Maybe there’s three levels there. I don’t think I’d do ten levels. I think I would do four. 

And this just helps because by the time we’re exhausted in the morning, your brain is just not there. And so we want to make decisions ahead of time when we feel rested and we feel fresh.  So then the other thing is I would really lean on husband if possible for weekend sleeping. And I would also really prioritize going to bed on time.

And again, that’s hard when you’re in little kid land because we’re so desperate for that adult time. That we don’t want to go to bed at nine, but in these seasons, I want you to convince yourself oh, those extra hours are really worth it. 

And then I want you to speak to yourself with so much love and so much gentleness throughout the day. I love you. We’re doing this. I’m so proud of you. You’re doing a great job. You’re a great mom, even when you’re tired. What do we need to do to make sure that these kids feel safe and loved today? 

And then I want you to ask yourself, how can I support you today? Can I make you some coffee? Can we wear something soft? Maybe we’re listening to books out loud instead of reading books and that’s either for yourself or for the kids. You know, maybe we find like, let’s say you have little kids and we’re sitting there and we’re going to listen to frog and toad and you, you say, climb in my lap.

We’re going to listen to frog and toad. And you’re able to do that. I think sometimes we just get in this powerless, helpless, hopeless mode around being tired  and we just stay there instead of problem solving. Instead of going to the internet and saying, you know, I’m, I don’t know, I’ve just been playing around with, I feel like until we die we’re going to call it Twitter, Twitter’s new AI.

I’ve been playing around with it and it’s really great. And so I would ask, hey, I’m a mom who’s getting very little sleep. How can I have the best quality of life, given the fact that I have very little sleep? And see what it says. 

It is a beautiful sacrifice that mothers give up so much for their kids to grow them and to raise them. And there are just years where we don’t sleep well, but we get to choose how we feel about that. You can feel the honor of it or you can feel bitter about it and I want you to tuck in the back of your mind. It does end. I mean, even though 10 years of not great sleep, it’s a really long time, it did end for me. 

And then some of my friends have, you know, what we call wide families where, you know, maybe there’s two years of not sleeping and then two years of better sleep and two years of not sleeping when they have another baby. And so they can tell themselves, all right, we can do this for two years. 

So I do a lot of coaching of moms who are, you know, overwhelmed and tired. And I just see that they really are so hard on themselves. And I’ll ask them, you know, what did you do yesterday? And they always tell me an amazing amount of stuff, not a Pinterest, Instagram amount of stuff.  But just like, yeah, I fed the kids or we went to the park, or I read two books to them.

You’re feeding them, you’re keeping them alive, you’re loving them. And that’s just incredible. It’s incredible that we do that with the level of exhaustion that we have. 

So I think it’s important to, one, acknowledge that we are exhausted. We have the physical symptoms of exhaustion. Your eyes kind of hurt a little bit. Your body has low energy and your brain is not running on all four cylinders, right? It’s got a little bit of cotton balls in there. And then you can ask yourself, you know, what are the standards that you want to uphold? 

On medium tired days and really tired days and maybe really, really tired days. And then I want you to speak to yourself with so much love and kindness. You’re doing a good job. You got this.  And then take naps, go to bed on time. Ask your husband for help. And maybe there’s other people you can ask for help, too.

Maybe there’s somebody in your life that you can call and say, Okay, can you come over so I can take a two hour nap or a three hour nap? Sometimes it takes me, like, when somebody’s watching my kids, it would take me a little while to, like, calm down enough to go to sleep. 

But then I just want you to, like, mentally link arms with all the moms. Link arms with all the Catholic moms in the world who are tired right now and just think we are doing it. We are here. We are good moms. We are taking on this incredible honor of motherhood and it often involves many days where we feel exhausted and we’re here for it. And that will bring just this sense of  awe and wonder to it. Making it feel special and worth it. I really believe that. 

So, you’re doing a good job, you’re doing a better job than you think and I want you to be nice to yourself today. Why don’t you just speak to yourself kindly in your mind and I want you to know that God always gives us all the resources that we need to do what he wants us to do today. He gives us enough time and money and knowledge to do what you need to do today. We don’t need to worry about anything else. All right, my friends, I want to make this episode for you so you could reference it on those hard days and you could send it to your friends who just had a baby. 

And you just feel, again, part of this club, you’re part of this motherhood club, all these women, millions of women who have young children and aren’t sleeping well and still get up and do the things. And I’m proud of all of us for doing the things. And on top of that, I want you to speak kindly to yourself about it and then feel empowered to do some problem solving. 

Right? How can I nap? How can I play games while I’m laying down? How can I make food that’s really simple? How can I find really slow screen time for the kids that I feel good about  those problem solving things.

All right, my friends,  if you want to come join us for Lent, I want you to go to catholicmomcalm.com/lentendeclutter. Come join us for the challenge. Lots of, lots of people are signing up every day and I’m really excited about it and I want to teach you how to make a room always 10 minutes from being tidy. And I want to teach you how to  really detach yourself from the category of things that are stealing your pieces.

The category of things where you’re like, ah, I should probably let this go, but I’m having trouble letting it go. We’re really going to deal with that category of stuff. And I think it’s a really beautiful thing to do to grow closer to the Lord because, you know, the more we are attached to the things of the world, the less we are attached to him.

And we just want to change that ratio. We want to be a hundred percent attached to him and zero percent attached to the world. And I think that that’s a journey, right? We’re all figuring that out and hopefully walking on the path towards him and away from things of the world. And I would love to help you do that with the stuff in your home.

All right, my friends, I’m praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.