The Mom Health Crisis Nobody Talks About (E89)

The Mom Health Crisis Nobody Talks About

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[00:00:00] Okay. I have a tough question for you. When did you last go to the doctor for yourself? Not for a sick kid. Not a well child visit, but for you, when did you last get a mammogram, a skin check, A physical, when did you last workout? More than just like 11 minutes before someone needed something for you. If you are sitting there going.

Chrissy, please don't come for me like this. I hear you. Because I have been there and honestly, I still visit there more than I'd like to admit. Today we're talking about something that sounds so simple, but feels so impossibly hard in real life. Taking care of your own body when everyone around you depends on you.

For literally everything, we're going to sit in the hard truth of it first, but then I'm going to give you a way out that doesn't feel like it's way too much to handle.

I am Krissy Bold. I'm a stay at home mom to two little boys, and this is Mom's Guide to Finding Herself. So I recently had my first mammogram, and I wanna tell you how that scheduling process went [00:01:00] because it is the most perfect example of everything we're talking about today. I needed to find a day where my husband could be home with the kids, simple enough, right?

Well, not really, because I don't actually know his schedule. I know everyone else's schedule.

I know when there's no school. I know when the kids have doctors and dentist appointments. I know when there's play dates or when we have plans.

But my husband's calendar, I had to basically play detective to figure out a day that worked, and I'm his wife, not his assistant, except some days it really feels like I'm a little bit of both. I finally locked in a day that he had off, so I decided to make it a thing.

I celebrated before and after I treated it like it was the milestone. It is because it is a milestone. I turned 40 last year, and that was kind of a wake up call that I should really start paying attention to myself. Showing up for this version of me, and I am so glad I did. I walked out of there feeling genuinely proud, like I had done something [00:02:00] important because I had, but here's the honest part, if that day hadn't lined up, I'm not sure I would've pushed as hard to find another one. It felt like such an easy thing to let slide and a mammogram.

A mammogram is not something you should let slide. The stakes are too high, I know that. And yet the friction of scheduling around everyone else's life, almost one. And I'll tell you something else.

I've been meaning to make a dermatologist appointment since I turned 40. Just a baseline skin check. Nothing big, but I still haven't done it. So this isn't a story about how I figured it all out. It's a story about how even when you know better, this stuff is still really hard to prioritize. And I think it's time we talk about why.

When you become a mom, your entire world restructures itself around dependency. Your baby literally cannot survive without you, and that dependency is so intense, so [00:03:00] constant that it rewires how you think about yourself and your time. You become hyper attuned to other people's needs. You develop this sixth sense where you can hear a cough from three rooms away and already know it's turning into an ear infection.

You start preloading everyone else's schedule in your brain before you even have your coffee, and then somewhere in the middle of all of that. You become the last variable in the equation. The person whose appointments get rescheduled, the one who skips the workout because someone else needed something.

The one who's been meaning to call the doctor about that thing for, I don't know, six months. Now,

here's what's worth sitting with though. The very dependency that you are managing in your kids. It starts to mirror how you function. You become dependent on everything else being handled before you allow your self care. You basically become a child of your own circumstances, needing someone else's [00:04:00] permission, someone else's schedule, someone else's crisis to be resolved before you can tend to yourself.

Nobody told us that part of motherhood, right?

So why is it so hard to just book the appointment, do the workout, take 10 minutes to stretch? Because when you do, the guilt shows up almost immediately. I should be folding laundry. I should be playing with the kids. I don't have time for this. Other moms figure it out. Why can't I? And then you don't do it, or you start and stop halfway through and then you feel worse.

Here's what I want you to know, that guilt is not a sign that you love your family more than other things. It's a sign that you've been running on empty for so long that rest and self-care actually feel wrong to your nervous system. You've recalibrated around depletion as your normal state. This is what chronic [00:05:00] overextension does to a person. Now, here's the part nobody wants to say out loud. When you keep pushing your own health to the bottom of the list, it doesn't just affect you anymore. It affects everyone who depends on you. You get sick more easily, you get more anxious. You're shorter with your kids.

You hit a wall faster, your capacity shrinks, and then you feel even more behind, even more guilty, even more like you're failing when really you just have a body that needed maintenance and didn't get it. We keep saying, we'll take care of ourselves when things slow down, but things don't slow down in motherhood, they just change shape.

So if we're waiting for slow, we'll be waiting forever.

Okay, so let's get practical now, because I don't want you to leave this episode feeling bad. I want you to leave with a plan. I wanna give you really simple way to think about your health as a mom. [00:06:00] Not a whole wellness overhaul, not a morning routine that requires you to wake up at 5:00 AM just a hierarchy, three tiers, and I want you to start at the bottom and work up.

Tier one. The one thing you've been putting off, this is your minimum, your non-negotiable. The one thing pick one appointment you've been avoiding. One test, one checkup, one dentist visit, one doctor's call and book it this week, not next month, this week.

Here's the thing about the thing. It almost never turns out to be as hard as the dread we carry around about it. The rescheduling, the convincing yourself, you'll do it later. That's heavier than the actual appointment, so let's just knock it out, put it in the calendar. Ask someone to watch the kids. If you need to trade time with a friend, call in a favor.

Do whatever you have to do, but book the one thing. That's it. That's tier one, [00:07:00] one appointment this week, tier two, the 10 minute movement commitment. I know, I know you've heard just 10 minutes of movement before, but I wanna explain why it actually works, because it's not just about the physical benefit, it's about the signal it sends to your brain when you move your body for 10 intentional minutes, even just to walk around the block, a YouTube stretch video dancing in the kitchen while you wait for the pasta to boil.

You are telling your nervous system. I exist, I matter. I have a body that I'm paying attention to. That's actually a big deal when you've been running on autopilot for weeks or months. 10 minutes doesn't require perfect timing. It doesn't require a gym membership or a babysitter or workout clothes you can't find.

It just requires you to decide it's happening. Here's the challenge. 10 minutes of movement a day for 10 [00:08:00] days. That's it. Not forever, just 10 days to remind your body what it feels like when you show up for it.

Tier three, build your bare minimum health baseline once that one appointment is booked and the 10 minutes of movement is becoming a small habit, here's the bigger picture I want you to work towards. Not all at once, just as like a north star, your baseline is made up of things like annual checks, regular sleep, even if it's not perfect sleep.

Just regular, some form of movement each week. Drinking enough water and not completely abandoning meals in favor of your kids' leftover chicken nuggets. Notice I said bare minimum. This isn't about being perfect. It's about having a floor, a standard of your own care that you can return to when life gets chaotic.

Think of it like this. Your kids have a health baseline that you protect. They have checkups, they have [00:09:00] vaccines, they have sleep schedules and regular meals. They have that baseline because they need it to function well. You are also a person who needs to function well.

You get a baseline too. Start with the one thing and then 10 minutes. Then slowly build the floor. If this episode hit home for you today, will you do me a favor and share it with another mom who needs to hear this? We all have that one friend who takes care of everyone else except herself.

Send this to her, and if you haven't already, leave a rating or review on Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening. It takes about 60 seconds maximum, and it genuinely helps this show reach more moms who need it. And hey, if you wanna keep going on this journey of actually taking care of yourself, come hang out with me over on Social Media at Mom Identity Project. I share real honest content about what it looks like to be a mom and a whole person at the same time.

Now stick around because in the next episode we're talking about something, I think [00:10:00] you're really going to connect with the guilt that shows up when you actually do take the time for yourself.

Like, why is it that the second we carve out time for ourselves, the voice in our head starts listing all of the things we should be doing Instead? We're going to unpack that one. Stick around. It's a good one. Until then, take a moment for yourself and remember, you are an amazing mom just the way you are.