Episode 117: Five Steps for a More Confident Motherhood with Zelmira Crespi
/For the rest of this month, we will be talking all about motherhood starting with an interview with Zelmira Crespi, author of Happy Mom, Happy Kid
We will be talking about the transition to motherhood and how to find ourselves, happiness, and joy in this journey, including
Managing stress levels and find ways to live motherhood on a positive note
Managing expectations that we have of ourselves as mothers
Cope with guilt and shame, and learn to enjoy the ride
To get more information on their book Happy Mom, Happy Kid, check out their Instagram page @happymombook.
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Laura Froyen and on this week's episode of the Balanced Parent Podcast, we're going to be talking about the transition to motherhood and how to find ourselves and find happiness and joy in this parenting journey. So, to help me with this conversation I'm bringing in a colleague and author of a book Happy Mom, Happy Kid.
Her name is Zelmira and she's doing this interview. Although the book is co-authored with her friend Maria, it's a beautiful light book that's easy to read and can really help us shift the way we see our transition to parenthood. So Zelmira, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
Zelmira: Hi, thanks for having us. Well Maria couldn't be here but we are very excited to be doing this podcast. We wrote a book together during the outbreak of the pandemic when we were both being full time moms from 8AM to 8PM. So basically this book was written in the wee hours of the morning or late at night But it was totally worth it. We are both moms of several children. She has um 4 under 11 and I have 5 and 8 and we have been talking about this conversation about what really happens to moms when we hit motherhood.
I'm a communication specialist so I have a very deep need to communicate and process everything that I live and my co author, she's a child psychologist and an entrepreneur, online businesses and stuff like that. And she's just a very curious person as well For everything. And we just had this ongoing conversation throughout throughout the 10 years that we've been friends and and one day we just decided to sit down and really get our hands dirty and investigate and do like a bit of like I told her there's such a thing as investigative journalism which I studied and I, and I know how to do and we started to see what actually goes through the mind body and soul of a mom when she becomes a mother because we did notice a massive change in our lives and then in the lives of all of our home moms around us.
So that's basically the reason that we actually wrote the book. It was more to help other moms and to actually answer our own questions and it's been a ride. I mean it was great because like I, I don't think there's anything more gratifying than trying to write a book and you find these answers and you just have so many “aha” moments because even though you kind of know certain subjects or you've heard or you've read to be able to dive into certain things and and really pick them up and look at them and think about how you process them yourself is really powerful. And that's why in our book we have a lot of information.
We try to give a lot of information or maybe leads to more people that can talk to you, our readers about certain subjects. And then we have our own personal experiences because we're talking about something that we both went through as well and we kind of want to have moms to have the permission to feel whatever they're feeling. And if they have any questions they can read our book and then we can obviously guide them to other professionals that we mentioned or a book that dive in a little bit more deeper into certain aspects of it.
Laura: It's a beautiful book and I think it's a needed topic. I know that for myself personally, when I became a mom, I went into it with such rose colored glasses, I had so many ideas about what motherhood was going to be like, I'd wanted to be a mom since I was like two years old. It was one of the very, like the only consistent aspirations I had through my whole life was to be a mom and it was radically different than what I thought it was going to be. And the only word that I can use to describe how I felt was untethered.
I didn't no really who I was, things were different than I expected. I felt big shifts in my relationship with my husband and in my relationship with myself. And so I really do appreciate that The goal of your book is to make that transition smoother for moms and to help them reconnect with themselves. You have this line in it that I think is one of the purposes of the book is to really help parents get clear on how guilt and shame and unrealistic expectations are robbing us of joy. And I guess I was just kind of curious about, if you can say more about that about how that happens and and what are some of the expectations that we put on ourselves that are make it hard for us to actually enjoy motherhood.
Zelmira: Yeah, I've always said that when I was born, obviously I knew I was a woman that I can have kids and that eventually I could be a mom and I always had it in my future, like CV like my projection of my life, like obviously like eventually I'm going to be married by 25 I have four kids that was kind of like what I used to say when I was like maybe six or seven. And so a lot of us women, we go to school and we're prepared to learn how our ABC’s and and 123’s and then we go to high school and like, and then college and and you write your admissions letter and you have to really have to develop like who you are, what you want in life and we have this huge preparation for our entire professional life.
And then like the motherhood thing is always kind of lingering and then eventually it's like, oh finally I can be a mom and this is obviously gonna, you're gonna walk into that as prepared as I've prepared for the rest of the things in my life that I've chosen and then you kind of walk into it and you're like the homemade class did not give me that much information. I mean I didn't read enough books on this, that one article that I read? I kind of skimmed through it but I wasn't really understanding what I was reading.
So I just kind of skim through it and when I'm a mom I'll read it. And that's when you turn into like you, you get into this cycle of trying to catch up with the whole entire preparation that you maybe thought you should have had. And I'm not saying that we all have to be professionally prepared to be moms. What I do say is that it does kind of come as a shock that naturally your focus isn't there. And then like when you go and you start doing your baby registry and on on amazon and everything's so shiny and so bright and so beautiful and then that there's a baby shower and everything is pink or blue and there's so many balloons and everything is like so festive and then maternity hits. If you had the baby yourself, you're wearing those huge panties with the big diaper that the nurse explains to you.
And like, I mean one of the things that was so interesting for me was like the lightness with which with the nurse was like, okay, so we're gonna put this huge diaper and two pads and you're gonna pull it up and this is how you're going to go to the bathroom for the next three days? Nobody told me about this. Nobody like why didn't anybody tell me now you can kind of see on Instagram, maybe like three kind of mentions it and you kind of start seeing it but 89 years back, I did not have any information about this in my book. I mentioned that I have a certain situation that I started doing crossfit like three months after I give birth. I had no idea that you couldn't, that you kind of had to take care of your body and like the shock to realize that you couldn't just like up and start running so naturally because I had not, I had lost some of the pelvic strength and I pee myself at 28 I pee my pants and I was like what is happening like when?
And that's when I started to feel this. Like maybe I haven't sat down and really understood, understood, understood what I was walking into and then, I mean I just kept on seeing a lot of moms that just walked around through life with their kids.
Obviously you would maybe see them that they weren't sleeping so well or maybe they were saying they were a little bit tired or maybe you could see a couple of things but the actual living through the process of becoming a mom can really be a little bit mind boggling and I do feel that today with social media and so many moms that wanna do so much more than just being mom, there is some sort of like anxiety going on a lot of moms that maybe I'm doing this wrong, maybe I'm not fit for this, maybe I'm not doing what I should be doing for many years. I suffered for, I could be doing so much more and writing the book, I finished the book and during a podcast interview, I swear to God, I was talking during somebody was interviewing me and they were like, so what have you been doing?
And it's like, I've been always trying to do something, do something more, do, like get back on the professional thing and she's like, well when did you have your children? And I started giving her the the years when I had the kids and while I was answering it after writing this book, after publishing it after having a couple of code candidate entries, I was like, did not have that much time for the first time. I was like what?
Like relax, I mean you did a lot during those years and and I think it's hard to really be able to give yourself the permission to not be the Uber entrepreneur mom Pinterest, everything's perfect, strong pelvic floor, baby bounce back girl today because that's basically what we're being fed And I think that it's really hard.
Laura: something I've been playing with for myself because I think you're so right, I think we're inundated with so many cultural messages about what motherhood is supposed to be like, but very little actual support and figuring out how we want it to be. So, I teach my kids about being wise consumers about being kind of aware, conscious consumers, so noticing when they're being sold on something. So when we're walking in the toy oil, we think about like, huh, I wonder why they put that toy right there, you know, really thinking about from a marketing perspective and you know, creating resilient kids who can't be sold to.
So I've been applying that to my motherhood as I scroll through Pinterest or Instagram thinking about like what am I being sold right now, who is benefiting from me feeling badly about myself right now, you know, and of course influencers and folks who are posting beautiful pictures, they're not trying to make any, I don't think most people are actively trying to make anybody feel bad or like they're failing motherhood, but I think that there is a this capitalistic society that we are embedded in, encourage us to do this.
It encourages us to only really post our highlight reel and not show the messy back blooper reel and as a result we start getting into this comparison game and it really steals our joy and being sold a lie about what it's actually like, I really appreciate this conversation.
Zelmira: So I think that there's something really important that you just touched on. I think there is with social media. I think that the wise consuming, I think that's awesome. I've never really looked at it that way. But what I think is that when you do post something, no matter who you are, really ask yourself why are you posting it? Like who are you posting it for? Because for example, I mean I have my private Instagram account and I have a lot of family members or friends that are very far away from me.
So the pictures that I post are obviously the reason is to look like this is how old this this one is and look how we celebrated his birthday. And it's, it's a, it's a genuine like we're, we really want to share because we're connected because we're far away. The other reason why you're posting it or you're looking for the best picture. And I think there should be a conscious, posting process of what you're posting and why you're posting it.
And is there a real reason to post everything you do? Like, I mean today everybody is very on top of let's share everything and let's let's connect everybody. And I think that in the process of trying to share everything with everybody. We're kind of taking away time from sharing actual, more deeper connections with our own kids or with our with our actual husbands.
Laura: It pulls us out of presence with our children and our partners and we lose it, we lose the opportunity to connect that could have been there. I find that for myself. So I talk a lot about play on my Instagram page and I like sharing pictures of my kids play because I think play is amazing and wonderful.
But I do notice that when I'm trying to get a good picture, I don't get to see all of the beauty and wonder in it. I lose focus on those things. So sometimes I have to, you know, put on the backburner my goal of sharing things for my audience versus actually being present for the moment with my kids.
Zelmira: Absolutely. Yeah. Or sometimes you do have the fact that it's the timeline that you're living. If yesterday there was a really nice picture and today is a new day and everything is very nice. But if you keep on popping into Instagram and seeing how many likes your yesterday picture got, you're still not paying attention to the today or the tomorrow. So yeah, I think that as moms, we have to make a huge effort because it's not easy and I'm the first one to figure my phone and scroll my Instagram when I need a mental break to really focus on being connected with the moment.
And just just check in with ourselves and with our consciousness. We talked about in the book about the consciousness of our connections with our friends with our kids with our spouses. The secret is really there because in terms of satisfaction, we did a study of with our book, we did um we studied over 600 women and then we got 100 women and we kind of did a more in depth study and we told them to check on a list how many times they felt that they were taking care of their personal health, how many times they were taking care of their spirituality or maybe kind of like interconnectedness, what whatever you want to name it with their spouses, with their kids, with their friends, with their social life and with their mental wellness.
The great thing about this is that we don't need so much to feel that we're on top of our game. It was just once a week if you take care of these areas and a very conscious way you'll be okay because what we're trying to do is calm down that anxiety that you're doing less, that you should, that you're doing something wrong, that you're not really running at the beat that you should be running. Everybody has their own time and their process to process motherhood. It's a huge, huge ball game
Laura: And it changes right? It changes, it changes when you add a new child. It changes when your kids hit new developmental stages. I think that's something that I also, I really appreciated about your book, You have this Rubik cube analogy in here that really resonated that there's why don't you explain that to us.
Zelmira: I love the Rubik's cube analogy because it was actually the Rubik cube was developed as it's something to actually study physics I think or something and then it turned into like a very popular toy and everybody started to play with it. But it's really hard to play, it's really hard to actually like solve it and uh and not everybody can solve it so quickly. And I think it's a great example of like some people do process motherhood in a faster way for millions of reasons and some people don't and that's okay. I mean I don't, I'm not less of a person because I can't do the Rubik's cubes as fast as my neighbor and same goes for motherhood Maria had a much easier process with motherhood.
I had a much harder process with motherhood but we're both great moms and we both have great kids and a great family basically the idea of the Rubik's cube was to try to explain that you walk into motherhood and you're like okay I got this, I got this and then like certain things of your life for certain aspects of your life starts shifting, it starts even in pregnancy, it doesn't start the second that you gave birth or that you adopted it because it goes earlier when you start like changing that mindset, you start changing that mindset of I'm going to try to dominate this area. I'm gonna try to grab hold of this aspect of my life or who I used to be or I got this baby part down finally and then something else always has to shift when you focused on that something else lost your focus. And that is naturally going to be harder to find later.
And it's just the natural process of how motherhood works because there is a complete shift of your identity. You don't have to be scared about it. 100% of moms go through it. I think that was my favorite part of writing the book was the second I ran into the word mattresses, dr Alexandra sacks talks about there's this great article that she wrote for the new york times and it explains the direct impact that moms have to their hormonal mind and body changes that they go through. And it's called mattresses because it's compared directly to adolescence that teenagers go through this. They have this hormonal in mind and body changing situation going on. And everybody's like, oh, oh, the teenagers are like, like let's there.
So in their teenage years, but nobody really talks about that one with a mom, Like just given birth. Like nobody's like, oh well she's just a mom, she just gave birth, she might might be a little bit all over the place or maybe she's a little bit like, I mean she can't be tired, that's allowed she has to be happy and she has to be very grateful and she has to be and she has to be and as a mom going through it, there has to be can be a little bit heavy because sometimes it can be scary. I mean we talked about postpartum depression.
A lot of women think that they're going through a heavy postpartum depression and we're like, no, it's just that it's hard and it's complicated. But I mean that doesn't make you less of a mom just because you're having a little bit of difficulty trying to understand what's going on or who you are or who you're gonna be.
Laura: Yeah. I think that we have skyrocketing rates of, I guess perinatal mood disorders simply because the lack of support, especially in our society for mothers. I think it's huge. Okay as we're wrapping up, as we're kind of coming to the end of this interview, I'd love to get really practical for my listeners. So if people are listening here and they're feeling like, yes, I feel lost. I'm not really sure who I am anymore. I feel like I'm always failing at motherhood that I'm not that this does not feel how it's supposed to feel what it would be, the three top things you'd want them to do. Like right now.
Zelmira: first of all, I want them to say you're fine and you're normal and it happens, but you're doing great anyways.
Laura: So tap into like self compassion and Grace give themselves a little bit of compassion and Grace, okay.
Zelmira: just give yourself the permission to feel whatever you're feeling and then I am a personal believer in journalism like and journal writing just like get it out, write it down, vomit all the thoughts that are just going on through your head and then reread it and just kind of do like a check, like do you really, really think that you are everything that you're writing down, like, are you going to buy this?
Like if you were your best friend and you read this, like would you say this about yourself then, if you read our book, we have our checklist, which I personally, I developed the checklist. I had already had my four kids, now I have my fifth and he's five months old and I had to do the checklist like twice since he's born and it's just like, I mean I should know this by now, I should be able to mentally do this and no, I mean every time you go through childbirth, everything chips like to the right or to the left and you kind of have to regroup and you have to reconnect with yourself.
And I had a couple of days and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna do the checklist this week to see if I'm being able to cover all the areas that positive psychology and most people that are talking about wellness today, tell you to really pay attention to, to see if I'm okay because if I look back, you know, if I look forward I can't really do much about those things but I can do like I can work on myself today and now and that does have a direct impact on how I live and enjoy my kids today and the messy hot mess that in my house can be sometimes but it's just knowing what to expect right now. I have, he just turned four and the other one just turned three.
They're going through the motions of sharing me with baby and you know what I mean? Everybody needs to be on top of mom right now. Everybody can be on top of mom right now it's fine and just being empathetic with myself helps me be empathetic with them so much so I think it's kind of there and then just like just stop the ball, stop the constant brainstorming of what you could be doing, what you should be doing, what you could have done.
Just put the ball down on the floor and let's stop the game for a second and just you're gonna be okay the second that you stop thinking about everything that's going on and just like really focused on how you're feeling and and how you're connecting to that newborn baby by all means if you feel that something is just more often it should be. There are thousands of professionals that can give you a hand. I had to call up my psychologist which I called her up every once in a while and just like you know what I want to talk for awhile. I wanted, I wanted to chat about a couple of things and just not be scared of the emotions.
Laura: Yeah. Okay. So that was five beautiful things to offer yourself compassion and Grace Journal, write out your story and what you're feeling and then and evaluate it. Don't let it be a passive process but really take a close look at it, check in with yourself slow down and then get support. Those are beautiful. Thank you for that.
Zelmira: I actually I did something different this time because I always journal but this time I had a really bad day my postpartum and I wrote down a lot of things and they were pretty nasty things about myself and what I did was that I showed them to my husband and I was like I don't like this, I don't like what I wrote down and he's like well this is not true and this is not true and this is not true. So like and so it was really like for the first time it was just like I had never done that practice of actually showing it to somebody that I really trust and that I know has my back. So what are we gonna do about this?
And he's like, well I mean I can help you say together let's say together this is not true and the next day I just had such a much better day because I obviously I am tired and I'm not perfect and baby gets up at night and somebody has to pee in the middle of the night as well. And there are so many after school activities right now. It's crazy. And we had to literally sit down with my husband like for two hours and right up our afternoon schedule.
So you take him to soccer, I take him to swimming and and it was like an actually it's a good job but we are organized and we have a very strict routine to just simply not go crazy and then we're really, really, really serious on all kids at night, Bedtime is at a certain hour so that we do have our parent parent meeting, our parent meeting. Are you alive? Yes, I am. Hello every night. So that helps.
Laura: Absolutely. And you know, don't Zelmira, you hit on something right there that I think is really important. You journal out all of these kind of not so great things that you were saying to yourself. I think that sometimes because of the way our subconscious and unconscious mind works, we don't realize that those thoughts are flowing through our head. Whether we recognize them or not, whether we're aware of them or not, whether we write, write them down or not.
And I think a lot of our bad moods grumpy days, just days where we feel like total crap about ourselves. Often we have that internal dialogue just kind of like running in the background is like background static that's making us feel terrible about ourselves and so writing it down, getting it out on paper so you can actually take a look at these thoughts that are there anyway. I think it's so important. I think it can be really intimidating for some folks who aren't, who don't journal to like face writing them down and own.
But yeah, I'm saying this stuff about myself and I know I'm not supposed to and I am, but whether we recognize it or are aware of it or not, that stuff is still rolling through the back of our minds and it impacts it impacts our mood, it impacts our relationships, our interactions with the people that matter to us
Zelmira: Now and it gets, it makes you really tired more than you actually realize it. So at the end of the day, maybe you went to the park for a while, you took the kids to school, you went to the supermarket, you took the kids to the park and if you look at your life in an instagram page, it looks fine. I mean there's nothing there, but if you actually hear the back conversation of your head, it's really, really, really draining. So I think that that's why I say like stop the ball, like all hands on deck, let's do the checklist this week, let's see like how I'm doing in all these areas and just focus.
I mean it's rewiring your brain to focus on today. Don't worry if you were surprised about this. Don't worry if you weren't expecting that. Don't worry about the mom that made that comment. Everybody's going through their own motions. A lot of comments from our mom shaming come from their own personal experiences and you have to again be empathetic with the the other person and nobody wants to put down to mom. If it happens, it's because there may be going through something as well and we, we already have our own internal critic. We don't need more help in and kind of seeing what we're doing. We don't need extra people coaching us. So I think it's just stop the ball relax, take a deep breath.
Look inside, see how you're feeling and see what you can work on you. Maybe you need to go have a drink with a friend and just disconnect a little bit to go back into your house a little bit more fresher or go out for a walk or I don't have the name but the other day I thought I saw like a Tinder for moms find yourself a mom friend and just talk about it. Just unload the brain and journalists journaling and unloading the brain talking as women. We process talking that. That's not a mystery. We need to process a lot in verbally and that helps us a lot.
Laura: Yeah. Okay, well thank you so much for all of these things. Why don't you just give us one last run down of the name of your book and where folks can reach out to you if they want to connect.
Zelmira: Well, our book is called Happy Mom, Happy Kid, it's called and it's how to reconnect with the best version of you for your kids and you can find us on Amazon and we have audible, we have kindle, we have everything, every single sort of format that you need to just get it red or give it to your best friend that's about to have a baby or if mom's that already had babies and moms that have older kids, they feel that something's off, they have to pick up this book if they feel that now they're fine.
But something was off before they have to read this book. It's basically a book about two really good friends having like a very long conversation in-depth conversation about things that we all care about. We're professionals and experience above all, and, and we're just really glad that we're we want this conversation to happen as much as we can.
Laura: Absolutely. And I think that there's things in this book for you, no matter how old your kids are, because the identity of motherhood is a shifting moving target, It changes as your kids get older as they need you less. My nine year old needs me way less than she needed me when she was two.
And that is a shift in identity of, you know, moving from being a very, you know, so my kids are entering into middle child, I'm out of the, the little, you know, preschool years now and it's very different. It's a very different experience. Parts of it are freeing parts of it are like there's loss. So I think that there's, I'm guessing that, you know, as you move into the teen years and as your kids leave for college or careers or trade school, that those things will keep coming up, you'll need to continually shift that identity.
Zelmira: Absolutely. It's more, that's I think that that's the biggest challenge that we want to help moms transition mattress is the best way possible or go through like postpartum the best way possible because you do have a future and the future can be lived in a much lighter note if you really know who you are, what your role is, what you want to be, what type of mom you want to be. I remember when one of my best friends were, she had her first baby. And she's like, I don't know, I don't know about this. I think I want to go back to work.
I don't know if this is for me and I was like, you know what, you just have to relax and you can choose what type of mom you want to be. I mean, and and once you choose it, you have to be okay with it and you have to allow yourself to be okay with that. And if you feel the need to go to back to a 9 to 5 job that's great. I mean, and if not you can stay home, but you have to be okay with who you want to be and that is a choice. And once you make that choice, just roll with it. And if not you can just, it's okay, it's okay. We're not like our kids want us to be happy, our kids want us to be solid and they wanted to be present and they want us to be living our lives.
I mean, I can't tell my eight year old with Down Syndrome that she can do everything that she put proposes herself to do if I don't do it myself. And that's why I wrote a book during the pandemic. I was like, I I'm a writer, I want to write a book, I want to write a book. And I and I I had to tell my kids, I wrote a book. I needed to say that so that they saw that I wasn't a mom that just would tell them you have to go to school, you have to run at soccer. You have to, you have to and I'm just doing the things that moms do. I wanted to give them something that I could say, you know what I, I wanted to do this. I made the effort and I did it and you can do the same
Laura: Yeah, whatever that is beautiful.
Zelmira: You want to be the best baker, like the best breakfast mom maker, that's awesome. Just do it and then tell them, you know, I'm really proud of myself and you should be proud of yourself because of such and such
Laura: Walking the walk that we, that we want our kids to do. Yes. Alright, well thank you so much Zelmira. This was such a lovely conversation. Thanks for sharing with us.
Zelmira: Yes, it was great. Thank you was so nice meeting you.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
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All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this