Sustainable living (the personal kind): Part ii

Pretty much a year on from my previous post about how I sustain my own wellbeing whilst parenting an infant, I’m adding a few more habits I’ve been developing as my baby grows rapidly into a toddler.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a picture of pristine motherhood. I am always stained or smeared, my hair is frequently under a ball cap or in a top knot with untamed baby hairs, my fingernails are bare, and my eyebrows are exceptionally unkempt. But I feel like a million dollars on 3 hours sleep, and I can only attribute that to the tiny habits I’ve adopted to get me through the week.

This should be read more like a find-and-replace than a copy-and-paste. What works for me probably won’t be what works for you (thank the stars we are all different!), so it’s less of a how-to guide and more of a why-to guide. The insights are key, and hopefully by reflecting on what matters to you, you’ll find your own.

• Strength: Feeling strong is important for me. I want to know in my bones that I can lift my child out of danger or carry him when he’s tired. My training philosophy has always been “you get good at what you do” so since my motivation for being strong is to carry my child, I babywear daily. We go for walks together (walking is incredible for wellbeing), and take a lot of stairs (getting that heartrate up and building cardiovascular strength and endurance). When we travel or go on outings, we use woven wraps instead of faffing with a stroller. Sometimes that means I’m carrying him plus a diaper bag and a big water bottle, so I lean heavily on Yoga With Adriene to balance, stretch, chuckle, and be reminded to practice self-love.
• Nutrition: Giving my child nutritious food that has been prepared from scratch is important to me. Whilst we do turn to pre-packaged foods for quick fixes and snacks, I share my main meals with baby, so we stick to mostly whole foods and minimal pre-packaged seasonings. We have started growing herbs and veggies together, as chaotic as this is, as it’s important for me that he grows up understanding how to make his own food. We share a garden with my mum, who is a much more experienced grower than me, so he has just started learning how to harvest peas.
• Movement: As well as getting out walking, I place a lot of importance on moving in multiple dimensions and resistances. Baby and I dance a lot, every day. It’s a tool we use to coregulate and switch tasks, and the endorphins are magical. I love so many different styles of music from around the world, and try to incorporate them into our daily listening, as well as the nursery rhymes and children’s songs I grew up with. We go to the pool once a week to play around (without floatation devices, as I’m focused on building water survival skills with him). Added bonus: I get an aggressive jacuzzi massage for a few minutes while baby is fascinated by the bubbles!
• Skin: My skin turned to trash postpartum. It was dry and tight and I felt really rough! I tried a lot of different products to help it feel better and whilst a lot of things worked fine, the biggest difference came when I added a Vitamin C serum to both morning and evening routines, and a facial oil to my evening routine. My skin is smoother, clearer, and brighter. I also find it makes a really big difference whether or not I wear sunscreen! It might be overkill in the cooler months but I try to wear SPF50+ daily — it’s not always possible whilst getting ready in the mornings with a toddler, and I really notice the days when I don’t manage to get it on.
• Feet: I wear sandals from April to September, as they make outdoors life just so much simpler for me. We’re a shoes-off household, uncompromisingly so, and it’s much easier to kick them off at the door whilst wrestling a toddler to take his shoes off once we arrive at home! Whilst handy, this means there’s nowhere to hide crusty feet or chipped toenails. I don’t have the time or money for frequent pedicures so I lowered my standards: I bought a quick-drying nail polish in a colour I love, to make it easy to always have presentable toenails (I need to apply this at least once a week because I scrape my nails on the bottom of the pool during our swim sessions). I keep a pumice stone in the shower to rub my soles with at the end of every shower and keep a foot cream by my bed to put on every night. They’re not perfect, but they’re clean and fresh.
• Smell: My sense of smell was a mess during pregnancy, and I felt cautious about overwhelming my baby’s sense of smell in his early months, so I’ve been enjoying the distance between us as an opportunity to indulge my inner frag-head again! I’m still wary of overpowering perfumes, so I try to stick to next-to-skin fragrances and perfumed bodycare. I know the derms tell us that fragrance is an irritant, but it’s no coincidence that humans have been in pursuit of perfume for millenia; we are wired for smell. I switched to a non-toxic deodorant I love the smell of, so I smell good to myself all day long but don’t have to worry too much about my toddler sticking his face in my pits (realism pls). I used to be really minimal about creams and potions, but now I let myself have a rotation of several lotions and body oils that smell good and turn my quick post-shower routine into an olfactory ritual.
• Style: My goal for getting dressed is to look like I got dressed. Whether anyone thinks I look good or not is besides the point — I just want to see myself in the mirror and know I’m not wearing my PJs. I buy new (secondhand) clothes as my body and lifestyle changes. I used to feel strong and powerful in a coordinated athleisure fit, but my nursing body and nursing overlord do not agree with cute sporty bralettes, so that has had to change. For this toddler phase, I’m loving loose patterned pants that hide smears and smudges for longer between laundering, and oversized button-downs, both in quality fabrics and colours/patterns that vibe with my style. Buying secondhand means I can be chill about more luxury fabrics, because quality fabric really changes how I move through the world, and allowing myself to buy regularly within budget means I can adapt as my body changes or baby unlocks new behaviours that require a different type of outfit.
• Scar massage: I have a lot of scars. Following surgery once, I was told that scars need to be massaged regularly to prevent the scar tissue from building up and stiffening, and I really took it to heart. I had a C-section and was given instructions to rub a little oil into my scar each day to keep it moisturized whilst it healed. I continued this after the stitches dissolved and the skin smoothed over, so that within a year it was flat and faded in some spots. This ritual is a daily opportunity to reflect on what my body went through to give birth to my incredible son, give thanks for our survival and health, and helps me maintain perspective.
• Hobbies: I’m continuing to stick to knitting and yoga, and happy to report this approach is working for me! After spending a fortune and millions of hours on hobby-hopping for years, sticking to one thing for a year has kept my costs down, allowing me to invest in more quality tools and materials — and it lets me see progress from the tiny increments of time I have available for hobby time.

Finally, my body image is so much healthier than it was pre-pregnancy because when I have a bad body day I have a vibrant and vital little human to remind me what it has all been for. I still have bad body days (and bad hair days, bad skin days, bad sleep days…), but I like to think I’m modeling self-care for my kid in a way that is sustainable and attainable.