I’ve been offline for a few months. I was exhausted and overwhelmed so I took some time to restore my energy and recover from fatigue. I needed to slow down and take care of myself.

This is the issue with adrenal fatigue.

It comes back very easily. There are no warning signs, its just blows up suddenly and knocks you off your feet. Therefore, for anyone who ever suffered with it, daily self-care rituals are a necessity. I forgot about that. I went back to work for 35 hours a week, cycling 20km to work 3 times a week. At home it doesn’t stop either. In the evenings I do my gentle exercise and stretches, read and study. I share cooking and cleaning with Dave but anyhow it is a lot to do every day. Adding blogging and social media to this full schedule felt like too much.

I want to have it all. I love doing it all.

I love being a mum, reading, studying and blogging but I struggled to find the time to do it all. I felt like the only way to do it all was to sacrifice my sleep which is not an option. F is three years old now and she still wakes up every night. If I don’t get my 6 hours of sleep each night, I am exhausted. My aim is 8 hours of course. I get to bed early every night but how much sleep I actually get depends on F.

As I was struggling with my energy and therefore my motivation, focus and consistency, I decided to rethink and reprioritise my daily choices.

Restoring my energy was my top priority.

Most of the famous productivity coaches recognise that and stress that sleep and self-care are important elements of high performance.

Every mum is a high performer!

The most important element to improve was sleep.

I need to go to be early to increase my chances of recovery. I used to struggle with it. I always identified myself as a night owl. It took me years to fine tune this new habit. I used to go to bed way after 1 am and slept 4-5 hours a night. This sleep deficiency wasn’t too challenging in my 20ies. In my 30ies I started suffering with adrenal fatigue but still struggled to get to bed early. Even if I did I couldn’t sleep. After having F. when I was 39, my body just couldn’t do it anymore. Exhausted from years of stress and lack of recovery, pregnancy and traumatic birth I was barely coping with anything. Improving my sleeping hygiene wasn’t a choice anymore. I needed to do it. I needed to take control of my sleep and redefine my “sleep identity”.

Now, I go to bed between 9:30 and 10 pm (I am so impressed with myself when I write it). I get up between 5:30 or 7am. If I cycle to work, it needs to be 5:30am. Otherwise I aim for 6am. If we have a really bad night or I know that Freya isn’t sleeping deep enough and I may wake her up when I get up, I stay in bed with her until 7am. I use this time to snooze, plan my day, do my gratitude or my visualisation exercises. I like these morning cuddles and when I get frustrated that I cannot get up (as I have a to-do list to start ticking off) I remind myself that it won’t last forever. It’s actually a great opportunity to stay still (such a weird thing for someone who is always on the go) do nothing or dream. This is how I come up with my plan, that I think makes sense to me and my family.

The second big item on my list was coffee.

I stopped drinking it completely. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I quit it in the past but then I always found a reason to start drinking it again. I love coffee but I hate how I feel after having my cuppa. Just a few minutes after finishing my coffee my energy was gone and I felt sick. I crashed every time. It’s difficult to be back in the office and not to have my coffee. Office and coffee go hand in hand for me. But with enough motivation anything is possible. Whenever I am tempted to have one I remember how it made me feel and I don’t want to feel like that. I want to do my work fast and without errors. I don’t want to work overtime and I want to have energy when I get home. I cannot fully control how much sleep I get but I can control what I drink and eat. That feels good.

I don’t eat sweets or drink alcohol. The latter was easy to do. I haven’t drunk alcohol since my pregnancy. It just happened and I don’t feel the need to do it. Especially that even one glass of wine disrupts my sleep and gives me a hangover out of this world. But sweets are a different thing. I love sweets. I may be addicted to sugar as well. They say that sugar is as addictive as cocaine. Just one bite and I go for a full-blown binge. You know what happens next. Bad tummy and no energy. Quitting sugar is a hard thing for me to do. I tried many times in the past and it never lasted too long. We’ll see what happens this time. My wish is to be able to eat a piece of cake every so often without the need to eat the whole chocolate bar right after that and continue doing so for days or weeks.

Another new thing is journaling and visualisation exercises.

I tried journaling a few times before, but I was always bored with it. I could never find time to do it. This time it clicked, and I am truly enjoying it. Funny that I started doing it now, when I have the least time I ever had. It helps me to slow down my crazy fast brain, preparing me for a good night sleep. Sometimes I journal in the morning and in the evening, sometimes only once a day. Just putting my thoughts on a piece of paper helps me switch off and reduce that knot in my tummy that has been a part of my life since I got back to work. I don’t know why, but every evening my stomach was just “twisted”, and I couldn’t relax and I struggled to sleep as well. Sometimes I get stressed without any obvious trigger. I guess, that by being switched on the whole day long, having no down time, and always checking the clock, I keep my cortisol high. As it takes time to metabolise cortisol, l end up feeling stressed in the evening while I should wind down. Even when I thought I had just a regular, not so crazy day, the knot in my tummy was there. Journaling and visualising helped me reduce the frequency of it. As I am a “visual” person, visualisation works for me better than meditation. I see everything in pictures, so visualisation makes so much sense to me. I’m not saying that I am never stressed in the evenings, but I am not stressed every evening without any reason. That is a great win for me.

However, my favourite new habit is star gazing.

In the fertility course I’m doing now, the author asked what I do for myself. What do I do to feel joy? I realised that most of my new habits help my body feel better and have more energy, but nothing really fuels my soul. I didn’t even know what that could I do to feel joy. It’s such an unfamiliar idea for many mums I think, it’s a luxury. Then one night, as I took Tia for a wee, I looked up in the sky, as I always do, and I realised that this one simple thing always makes me happy. I’ve always loved it. It immediately brings up smile at my face, makes me breathe deeply and fills up my body with joy and gratitude. Since then, I spend 5-10 minutes every night just star gazing. I do my visualisation exercises outside and feel this enormous peace. It works like magic. There will be nights when sky gazing is not an option (as it rains) but then I’ll use my imagination to visualise it and just feel it 😊 Let’s see if that works.

These simple changes improved my chances of having energy throughout the day and reduce adrenal fatigue. I still feel tired sometimes (mainly because F. still wakes up at night) but not as tired as before. I feel empowered and proud of myself for introducing all these difficult changes. It hasn’t happened overnight. It took me years to create these habits. Just now I don’t have an option. It’s quite simple now.

I want to mention here that I exercise every day and I drink clean spring water. These are important elements of a healthy routine, especially for someone who suffers with adrenal fatigue. They help me stay energised and have been an important part of my lifestyle for years.

I changed how I exercise though. I honour my energy and menstrual phase I am in. I needed to apologise to my body for abusing it with too much exercise in the past and I promised I will now exercise with care and joy. Exercising is easy when we do it with, not against our body. It is the opposite of what mainstream gyms and fitness trends make us believe.

To finish, I would like to share with you my plan.

I will keep on blogging, but I will publish one blog post every four weeks. I aim for the first Thursday of my follicular phase. This is when I feel like I have the most to give and share. My energy keeps on increasing and I am ready to have plenty conversations with you.

I will be back on social media discussing topics that interest you the most. I’ll see how it goes and if I need to, I will make further adjustments. I will be doing less reels and more valueable content. It needs to feel easy and fun otherwise I will struggle to do it consistently.

Once a week I will send you a short email with some tips and food for thoughts if you sign up for my newsletter.

Finally, in the background I am working on my abdominal rehab course - Tired Mum Core Basics Program, that I recommend to any mum, no matter when you had a baby. No women should get back to mainstream, regular exercising programs or classes without fixing post baby abs first.

For a first few months it will be absolutely free so sign up for my waiting list here.

My final words to you are: do less to achieve more.

Mum’s sleep is a priority, no matter what we were made to believe for years. Cutting on sleep to make everyone else happy is not a long-term solution. Tired mummy is a grumpy mummy and no one wants that. What is even more important is that sleep is the first step to achieving what you are born to achieve without sacrificing your health, feeling burned out and demotivated. It’s time to feel joy and be proud of yourself. You are brilliant and you can be successful whatever success looks to you. Self-care will help you get there.

With love,

Karo

#60: I am back and ready to rock‘n’roll