As a newly pregnant mom of a surprise bundle, (seriously, we were done) I am dealing with all the joys of the first trimester again. When I thought I would never have to again.

Our youngest now, is just under two. He is the little brother to three big sisters and a grown older brother. So to say I didn’t want him to have another little boy to play with would be a lie. BUT, my husband was adamant that we were not having anymore and I gave it a good run to try to convince him months ago.

Fast forward to now, I was just getting ready to get rid of all the baby stuff. I was to the point where I accepted we were done and honestly I was starting to get excited about the idea of having my body be mine again. I am still nursing but I was planning to start weaning. I was imagining all my hair growing back and being able to release all this weight I have hanging around. The universe had other plans though. I was two days late. That is nothing to shake a stick at around here and I don’t even know what possessed me to take a test. I had one and thought, well let’s make sure I am not pregnant. When else will I ever use this thing?

I took the test and it was immediately positive. I was in shock for a minute and total disbelief. I called my husband in with the most freaked out voice ever I am sure, he asked me what? I showed him the test and he said “no” also in disbelief. I laugh now thinking about it. But I started crying and said “that’s what it says!”

I thought maybe it was too old. I bought more. They were all positive too. Then I cried for the next few days. My husband is about to be 40 and I am about to be 39. We were done!

Anyhow, we have gotten used to it now but I am not used to what I have to go through again. Morning sickness, gagging, food aversions, smells, cramping and pinching. Not to mention sore breasts and muscle cramps. I am tired AF and a new stay at home mom. So there is no rest! The first trimester is hard and I think almost worse when you are surprised. Luckily I have a few things that can help. Some of them don’t work for everybody but some will.

Number One

Breastfeeding, nursing an older child cuts down on morning sickness for a lot of people. So if you have an older one and get pregnant while nursing you can take a little solace that you won’t be as sick as you were with a first. Each of my pregnancies has gotten slightly better and this one is honestly not bad at all but if you are feeling any sort of nausea you know what I mean, when I say, it is too much. Despite it being relatively manageable, I am still feeling ill. And that sucks.

Number Two

Ok, onto things that will work for everyone. Another thing to help nausea that I have found is this drink mix, Sparkling Mama Fizzelixir. It comes in two flavors. I chose raspberry mint and I can’t drink it alone but I can mix it with flavored water. It is packed with Vitamin B6 and Magnesium which have been shown to help reduce nausea. And I feel better when I am sipping on it.

Number Three

Speaking of flavored water, the one I am really digging right now is Propel Orange Raspberry. If you know anything about the first trimester, it’s that you can’t stand the taste of your mouth. Some people describe it as a metallic taste or tasting pennies. You can imagine it only makes nausea worse. I also can’t just drink water when I am nauseous. The thing that helps me with that is sipping flavored water on ice or sucking on some sort of hard candy. I wish they weren’t single use bottles but I recycle and this won’t last forever.

Number Four

Aaaand speaking of hard candies, these really worked for me in a couple of my pregnancies, Preggy Pop Drops. They are hard candies that are a little sour and keep the flavor or pennies out of your mouth. They have multiple flavors. I also did a ginger candy for one pregnancy but I don’t think I could ever go back to them again after being sick and sucking on them for 14 weeks. I actually can hardly handle ginger at all now but it is also a good way to relieve morning sickness for most people.

Number Five

Gargle with warm salt water. Taste of your meatball sandwich that you HAD to have for lunch, still hangin around? Try gargling. The taste of something that I can’t get out of my throat is the worst. I can brush and use candies but please make it go away. Gargling may not get it all but it really helps.

These are the things I have or am using right now to combat the queasiness. But there are so many more tips out there. Eating bland foods, taking vitamins at night, exercising and so much more. I am all into NOT exercising and eating only what seems somewhat appealing right now but I know if I actually took a walk I would feel better. It is 90 degrees out though and I can’t muster up the courage. Hopefully when things cool a bit I can.

Another thing I could add but I didn’t actually find relief from are the bracelets for nausea. It didn’t help me but maybe it can help you!

Hopefully you find some help here on things that can work. If you do, let me know!

Do you have a hack for morning sickness?

Tell me please, did anyone warn you about what it was to have multiple children? Not at the same time but raising more than two kids? No one told me. Maybe most the people that I knew had multiple kids were actually from another generation where you made submissive kids. And they didn’t speak unless spoken to because they knew they were going to catch hands. But if you are trying to raise your kids up right with emotional stability and compassion-how the f&$! do you do it???!!!

I mean I am losing my mind, people? I want to stay home with these folks?! Am I crazy?

I will tell you what I mean. I can barely get any cooperation from any of them. I mean the moment I do is the moment that another one has a meltdown. Plus I have one that is sick right now. You can bet that at least one is being held right now and all of them are testing every limit I have.

We would all have so much more time in the day if we could cooperate 25% of the time. Just a quarter of ALL.THE.HOURS. that I am home with them. Why can’t I get them to do anything without threatening to swat some buns?!

Well truthfully I actually know. It isn’t all my fault that I turn into a raging momster. A lot of it was never learning how to deal with my emotions as a child and being treated the same way I am treating my kids, when my mom was upset. My mom was a single mom. There was not a lot of patience for the three of us. My mom definitely did better than her mom for sure. But there is a lot left to learn there.

What am I doing about it? I am trying to be really inquisitive when my kids are acting up. I am trying to see the need behind the behavior. What is the act communicating?

I am also reparenting myself. Telling my child self I got this and I will take care of us. Learning to understand my triggers and be conscious of my actions. But…..it is so hard. With one maybe it was manageable. With two even. But with 4 tiny people that I am trying to pay serious attention to as well as regulate their emotions, everyday seems insurmountable. Plus I want to teach them, have fun with them, get outside with them and cook nutritious meals for them.

So no one told me that you were on an emotional roller coaster ride every minute of wake time. No one told me it would be like the drop on the roller coaster more often than not and that losing your sh$& on your kids is going to happen no matter how conscious you are. Not one person said it is way harder with more.

So here I am telling you that IT IS HARD. SO HARD. More means more chaos, screaming , disagreements, emotions to handle, messes learning limits and less sleep!

BUT it also means more laughs, more love, more snuggles, more friends, more moments that you never want to forget, more bittersweet times as they grow and more times that you don’t want a thing to change. That is why we were blessed with these babies, to watch them in awe every day. To be their person. To see the good when it feels like the house is caving in.

Keep at it Mama. I see you. No one can do it better than you for those kiddos. You got this and you are doing one helluva job.

WOW. You have been becoming increasingly aware of yourself and your subconscious programs that are running all the time. You recognize your thoughts and are starting to refuse the ones that do not serve your higher self. You keep learning and trying to find new ways live, work and parent. You are showing up with new ideas but are now trying to find a way to implement them.

Now is the time to learn ways to help you get passed your mind (the jerk who is constantly trying to talk you out of everything) and into your subconscious so you can reprogram. Break the cycle of just staying in what you know. What and where, it is comfortable. Allowing yourself to become someone new.

Breaking the habits of what you do, how you react and what you believe. Becoming a version of calm that allows you control your emotions. Allowing yourself the permission, as a divine being, to change your beliefs. Setting the tone for what you do and what you don’t do anymore.

This is amazing and I am here for it. You can do anything you set your mind to. That truly is what it takes. Setting your mind to it. But how? Dr.Joe Dispenza says it is not enough to know. Now is a time where we need to know how.

You can take a courses to learn to meditate and recondition your body and mind. Dr Joe Dispenza has multiple options. Mindvalley is another great source of tons of ways to learn to meditate to do this.

You can break generational trauma with these tools. You can stop talking the way you always have, disciplining the way you always did and thinking how your parents talked to you. Nothing is off limits.

You deserve to be the version of you that YOU want. You deserve the life that YOU want with all the abundance you can imagine. It’s all yours for the taking if you want it.

I know I want it. Let’s go. We got this.

Do you work on your trauma, manifestation and spirituality? What are your ways to do it?

Look I get that a lot of dads do stuff and I get that they help a lot. I have that husband and he is an amazing husband and dad. But that will not stop the invisible load of motherhood.

This is a term I learned from @happyasamother now @momwell on instagram and let me tell you what an eye opener. I had never had a word that told me what it was that I was experiencing.

The invisible load of motherhood refers to all the things that moms are thinking about that seems to solely be a female thing. And it is in every area of parenting and life really. It is the weight that we carry that no partner will probably ever be able to understand. We carry weight for things that don’t even matter.

Can I tell you something? What I hate most about the invisible weight that my husband does not have, is that, I most often feel it because he simply seems not to care. If I am struggling to get my child or children to sleep and we are out of town for example, but he wants to visit with people or do something more fun. He sometimes simply acts as if there is nothing he can do and leaves me to it. In that moment, I might be on the brink of tears or ready to shoot my rage at all of them. And very often, he knows it but prefers to pretend that it is not happening. Or finally I may get a guilt ridden, do you really need help question. Now I am not an old school woman. I work full time and do most of the child rearing but I don’t think this is solely my job nor does he.

So what is this then? Why are women disproportionately given the work of parenting and household management? Why can’t my husband learn to figure out how to help me?

I DON’T KNOW!! It seems so obvious to me. Also every other woman I know would see it too. I do however have some ideas on what we can do to fix it.

You aren’t going to like this but hear me out. Talk to your partner. I know this is not easy and basically means we are asking for help, ew, but we have to do it if we want anything to change. I don’t mean in broad terms either. I mean lay it out, step by step. There can be no confusion. If you are still waiting for someone to read your mind, you will be waiting for..ever. You must be clear. Dear, I need you to hold this one and keep them out of the room while I get the other to sleep. OR Dear, I need you to do it all tonight because I need a full nights rest. When I realized that in order to get what I need, I had to spell it out, I was a little upset. I mean we are programmed to think that some man is going to understand our every need and complete us. That sh** ain’t real ladies.

What is real is explaining to your partner what you feel like when you are doing ALL. THE. THINGS. Truly telling him the angst, anxiety, depression, sadness, rage, anger and/or helplessness you feel. As well as the complete aloneness for being left to rear children alone. EVEN IF it is not all the time or most the time. Your feelings are valid. There is more to each task for a woman. There just is.

It is no one’s fault. We just think and act in different ways. Women are more all encompassing and men are more singular. Women tend to know, see and be everything for everyone. Men tend to be… not. Women also tend to self sacrifice to the end. I have had days where I don’t remember to go to the bathroom until 5 PM! Tell me a man that doesn’t immediately go to the bathroom the nanosecond he thinks he gets the urge to maybe poop even if he just did that 20 minutes ago! I’ll show you my next husband.

Ok kidding. I really don’t want to do that but that would be some soul mate sh$@.

Please follow happyasamother. She does such a great job showing it in infographics.

Have you gotten on board with speaking to your partner like this?

I was talking to a colleague today about our motherhood woes. We were commiserating about the difficulty of being needed ALL. THE. TIME. by our kids. It is exhausting! I mean a break, a break is all I need. She mentioned with the pandemic there is no space. No break to be able to reset. Her kids have been with her the ENTIRE time. I don’t have that. My kiddos have continued to go to school and daycare. Everyone leaves my home but me.

It got me thinking about ways that you can get a break during the pandemic though. It is a little easier now that things are opening back up a little bit. But how can you do it when things aren’t?

Full time momming is hard and working on top of that is hard. The endless days and night blur together.

I asked around. I talked it over with my husband. I thought about it. Here are the best ways I’ve come up with to get a reset in our present predicament.

If you have a partner, take turns having an evening to yourself somewhere else in the house. Make a plan and keep the kids occupied. Get on a zoom call with friends, have a drink of choice and read or spend all the time treating yourself to a spa experience in the bathroom.

If you don’t have a partner -make a plan! Get some activity ideas together and buy supplies. Plan out something for your kids to do. The whole reason this was so difficult to deal with was the fact that is was so unexpected. Aside from the obvious health concern. But instead of living as if we don’t know what is going to happen, plan what will happen! I would have spent a decent chunk of money on crafts, physical activity toys and more if the kids stayed home with me.

Also screen time, I said it. I am completely against a ton of screen time. However, I use it whether that be TV or an iPad to save my sanity every day. I love to be the hypocrite. I truly would love to not use screen time but hot damn mama needs a break. And here in MN when there are days you cannot go outside because of the cruel winter, or you can only for a very short amount of time, screen time becomes a thing.

Take time to workout. If you can, do it outside. Can’t do it a lot here because, MN. But we can work out and you can do a really effective workout at home. There are so many options and you can find a ton of great free stuff online. Even more so now with the pandemic.

Lastly, if you can and feel safe, go be with people that light you up. I recently did this with two of my oldest friends. I cannot tell how much it soothes my soul to be with them. To know we have so much in common still. To laugh out loud with them. I feel like I may have done most the talking (again?) but I hope they feel the same. Connection with people that care and get you is always the most wonderful thing.

Stay healthy and sane everyone! Share what you are doing to make it during this pandemic!