The day you see the two lines or plus sign on the stick, you feel overwhelmed, as you are now going to enter the motherhood phase. You celebrate your biggest happiness of your life with your loved ones. The veteran moms start advising on healthy eating habits: stay calm, don’t overthink, don’t stress out, exercise, and start meditating. With this advice, they also warn you about those sleepless nights you will face when the child comes. Every pregnancy book writes and talks about sleepless nights as the reason for the exhaustion in mothers. But the harsh truth is it is not!
For a mother, only a sleepless night is not exhaustion. The tired eyes and aching limbs cannot go away with a full night’s sleep, which you might get on a very rare occasion. Motherhood exhaustion doesn’t just magically go away with a week of relaxing massages, a nice, much-needed weekend getaway, or caffeinated drinks. A mother’s mind never clocks out, as she is constantly worried about raising her child. She carries so much weight in her heart, which is invisible to everyone. She is exhausted by the demands she feels pressured to meet to raise her loving child.
This is the exhaustion every mother faces, and nobody warns them about it.
It Is Not About Being Just Physically Tired.
There is a myth that if a mother is tired, she is probably sleepy. A tired mother, after 4 hours of sleep, is running through the house to make breakfast and pack bags so everyone reaches it on time. Physical tiredness is visible and easy to notice, but what about mental exhaustion?
A mother’s brain is like a calendar where she holds her reminders about the doctor’s appointment due next week. A project submission coming up. A present to be purchased for the kids’ party. The grocery list hanging on the fridge, the parent-teacher meeting, and who knows what else.
Well, nobody is asking a mother to remember these things, but still, she does. Do you know why?! Because deep down she knows if she does not, then nobody will.
This is when motherhood starts to feel mentally exhausting. She is not tired of doing things physically; she is tired of mentally remembering everything all day, every day, even when she is supposed to have a little me time or take a break.
As a mother, even if you are sitting still and not doing any physical work, you are mentally running your to-do list. Sleep can relax your body physically, but the moment you open your eyes, you start with your to-do list, which is already running in your mind without rest.
So if you feel that sleep will fix all the exhaustion, make sure to turn off your mental to-do list.
The invisible Emotional Burnout
A mother who smiles in front of everyone and makes everyone feel that she is complete, but deep inside she is empty. She is not crying; she is not getting angry, but she is feeling hollow inside. A tired mother rarely says out loud about her emptiness, as it is not visible to anyone.
No one can overcome a mother’s love towards her children. Sometimes, when her kid asks her to play with him for the third time, she is clueless, mentally so tired that she is unable to give him what he wants. She starts snapping at small things, even when they’re not worth it. She is juggling between bath time and bedtime, doing all the homework, and yet she feels disconnected from the routine.
This is the least talked-about part of motherhood: exhaustion and emotional burnout!
The moment your child opens his eyes, the mother in you is emotionally turned ON. Before your child says something, you read his mood. You sense something is wrong before he even expresses it. You are managing your child’s feelings by managing your own. You are staying calm even when your child throws a tantrum, even though you want to scream out loud, because for you, your child’s feelings come first. Even if you are half asleep, you are with them because they are having a nightmare and want you by their side to console them.
Every day you give all of yourself, your warmth, your love, and your calmness over and over again, and you are emotionally drained at the end. You rarely get showered with love or support in return.
The math here is that the emotional energy you have eventually dries up like a well, as it’s poured out with little or no return. It is not a weakness.
No matter if you are a mother of an infant, a toddler, or a teenager, at every phase you feel emotionally burnt out. Emotional burnout in motherhood is not postpartum depression, although it also exists. Emotional burnout does exist and is real. It only happens when you give everything of yourself and forget to refill your energy, your thoughts, or yourself. And you know what makes it worse?! GUILT. You feel guilty for feeling empty, and that might make you a bad mother. You start suppressing the thought and hiding from the outside world, and the burnout deepens.
You are preventing things before they happen.
The huge and unspoken truth about motherhood exhaustion, which is almost impossible to explain to someone who has not gone through this. A huge part of your day goes into doing things that have actually never happened. You are stopping the bad things from happening when, in fact, they have not even happened.
Seeing your child get overwhelmed, turn on your motherly love, and, without anyone noticing, leave the place because you think your child will melt down. After a long and tiring day at school, your child comes home all cranky. You try to calm him down by giving him his space before asking how his day was. You sense the rising tension between two siblings, so you distract them to avoid screaming. And that’s what a mother is!! She, with her strong instincts, knows the consequences and, without any delay, deals with them beforehand. This is the effort you put in that goes unnoticed.
When everything flows, kids are happy, siblings don’t fight, and it is seen as everything is good. But what everyone fails to see is that the energy you have poured into having a relaxing evening has drained you completely.
The energy drained by managing and stepping in to avoid mishaps is far more than the consequences that would have occurred if you had not mingled in. But it goes unnoticed.
The main reason for motherhood exhaustion is doing everything and trying to prevent bad things from happening. The saddest part is that whatever you do is invisible, like thin air. You are neither appreciated nor seen. These things are impossible to point to for anyone, including you, and then you wonder what exactly has made you tired.
Asking for help is not as simple as it sounds – WHY?
“You just have to ask for help.” – This is the phrase that every mother hears when she has a meltdown. You, as a mother, must probably be thinking, “I would much rather be ready for a meltdown than to ask for help.”
When motherhood exhaustion hits you, you may not even realise what you need help with. The mental exhaustion has covered you in layers, and it makes it very difficult to think of one specific help you need. You fear asking straightforwardly, ”I need a break. “You start thinking, ‘From which thing do I need a break?'” For being responsible for everything that goes around or for being the glue that is stuck to everyone’s schedules and feelings. You yourself think this is your task and how you can take a break from it!
When you feel you need to ask for help, instead of reducing stress, it gets added to. You need to explain how things will take place. How it will be done: after prompting, you will sneak in to check whether the things are actually happening as explained. Half of the time, you think it would have been better if I had done it by myself.
Often, mothers are told that a good, perfect mother handles all her fussing by herself. Hearing this, you feel ashamed to admit that you need help too. Social media nowadays has influenced mothers to think they are failing as mothers. It shows all the joyful, happy mothers, but emotional burnout and motherhood exhaustion are the topics that nobody talks about. This makes you feel as if you are failing as a mother, and you start believing that there is no such thing as motherhood exhaustion or postpartum depression, and you suppress your feelings with these thoughts. This is why exhaustion increases: believe it or not, you are afraid to accept that you are tired, that you need a break, and, most importantly, that you need help.
Hidden talks to know before having kids
There are talks that nobody prepares you for before having kids. They forget to tell you that you will feel completely alone, even when surrounded by all your loved ones. You will miss the old you, not just life but also your older version who has ambition, who can relax at any time, who can ask for help, who has a space of her own thoughts, and who can leave the place easily without someone constantly needing her attention.
You didn’t talk about how you will feel guilty even though you are tired. You think you can actually rest, but mentally you are running through your to-do list of things to be taken care of. You are unaware that emotional burnout can leave you feeling empty. You see yourself in the mirror and feel you have nothing left within you.
People tend to forget to tell you that many mothers out there are still sitting up while everyone has gone to bed, having the same feeling as yours and convinced that they are the only ones who have it, unable to overcome it.
What a tired mother is looking for:
A tired mother is looking for someone who believes her when she says she is worn out. She is looking for someone to whom she does not need to prove her tiredness. She is looking for help without being asked for. She needs to rest her mental health and pass on the load to someone else, saying, ‘I will manage your work.’ She is looking for a space where she can, without hesitation, say, “I need a break; I am not feeling okay,” without faking cheerfulness.
To all the mothers out there, I want to say one thing: if you are reading this, share your thoughts and moments so that every mother knows they are not alone. Just remember you are not lazy; you are not failing as a mother. Your emotional burnout is the invisible work, and it exists for real. You are a human being who deserves to be heard. I know, as a mother, I can loudly say that motherhood is hard, and I am proud of every mother.
You are doing a fantastic job!