How to Recognize and Stop Mom Burnout in Its Tracks
Ignoring the warning signs was my biggest fail
When I became a mother, I knew my life would change forever.
I couldn’t wait for all the warm, fuzzy feelings to wash over me in the delivery room and make up for the less glamorous parts of childbirth. (Hello, third-degree tear!) All my years of baby-sitting combined with my nursing background would translate to being the best mom ever, right?
Wrong.
When they put Evan on my chest, I felt happy but shocked. In the days that followed, I began to feel like a hollowed-out version of myself. I felt I had made a terrible mistake.
I wanted so badly to conform to the image of the doting mother, and I felt guilty for not feeling all the motherly feels. So I overcompensated by making sure everything seemed perfect. Hiding these feelings meant I was headed straight for burnout.
A recent essay in the New Yorker highlights the unspoken pressure to be efficient in everything we do as moms. At one point, writer and parent Kimberly Harrington states:
I have righteous anger and more righteous anger. In fact, I have so much righteous anger, do you think maybe I’m a character in the Bible?
