5 Tips to Implement Self-Care Habits for New Moms: Support your mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Recently, self-care has become popular; women search for inspiration and how-tos to start their own self-care routines. New moms need simple DIY self-care practices to help them maintain their sense of self and find peace during their busy daily lives. Self-care is different for everyone. But what is not different is that every person, especially new moms, doesn’t just deserve but need self-care to feel happy and healthy.

As new moms, we are often offering so much love to our new babies that sometimes it can be easy to forget about ourselves. Even if we do think of ourselves, it often seems like there is not enough time to show ourselves some love. This post will help you consider what kind of self-care works best for you and provide strategies for integrating these habits, even on the hard days, to experience peace and joy.

This blog post will cover:

What is self-care?
How to determine what self-care habits are most beneficial for you.
How to find time to implement self-care.
Self-care habits that should be non-negotiables.
How to add in new self-care habits.
Self-care ideas for when you have extra time.

What is self-care?

One of my favorite authors, Thich Nhat Hahn, argues, "If we do not know how to take care of ourselves and love ourselves, we cannot take care of the people we love. Loving oneself is the foundation for loving another person. Your true home is in the here and the now.”

At its core, self-care is making choices for yourself from a place of love. This means learning and caring for your unique self in ways that feel right and good instead of practicing habits that you believe will help you meet society’s expectations of who you should be.

Making choices that do not honor yourself from a place of love is not self-care.

Let me break it down:

Forcing yourself to eat in ways that create conflict within yourself is not self-care.

Learning how your body responds to certain foods, feeding yourself nourishing, healthy food that you crave and enjoy, and omitting foods that cause you long-term harm or immediate discomfort is self-care.

When working to implement self-care practices, especially when you are a new mom with a busy schedule and many physical and emotional demands, it is imperative that you move through these habits from a place of love, or they will not become sustainable habits.

You deserve to be loved, and the beauty of self-care is that it allows you to learn how to love and care for yourself. For moms, this will equip us to care for and love our children with each of their unique needs.

Tip One: Determine what self-care habits are most beneficial for you.

When your self-care comes from a place of love, you must find practices that work well for you and not just try to implement practices others use or buy products you see advertised through Instagram.

I had a very difficult pregnancy, so I started experimenting with self-care then, and the way I was able to hone in on what worked well for me and create such strong habits that I continued postpartum was being self-reflective and removing myself from looking at what other people were arguing were the best habits on social media.

This is not me telling you to stop reading my blog or other blogs for ideas or to learn about different types of practices or what other women are doing that work. I tell you that after you do that, you must try some things and then self-reflect to see what feels good for you and what does not. To find what feels like an easy integration into your life and not try to make a practice that doesn’t make sense for you fit.

This post will provide you with some suggestions, and at the end of this post, there is a place for you to enter your email for a free downloadable pdf that covers my nonnegotiable self-care habits and additional self-care habits I like to implement when I have time.

Try a few of my ideas, but then self-reflect and find what feels good. Keep an open mind, but don’t force yourself to create a habit that doesn’t feel good or fit your lifestyle - if you do, it simply will not be sustainable.

Tip Two: How to find time to implement self-care.

It can feel like there is no time for self-care, ESPECIALLY when you have just begun your motherhood journey. However, this is the time of your life when it is absolutely necessary to implement self-care habits - if not, motherhood will feel even more difficult than it already is, so you must make the time. Still, there are ways to find small blocks of time in realistic ways because we all know taking an hour-long bath just isn’t a thing unless your partner or other family or community members help care for your baby while you rest.

Looking at my non-negotiable pdf on self-care, you will see that many of these habits take 1-5 minutes at most. Therefore, there is really no argument that there is not enough time.

To ensure that you complete the non-negotiables, I recommend not setting a specific time at which they need to be done but keeping the PDF handy (even printing it off and having it in your planner or next to your bed) and checking off each habit as you complete it.

When we get too hung up on time, it never feels like there is enough. Instead of approaching your habits from the perspective of finding time, approach it as a checklist of things to do during your waking hours.

If you are open to creating space and time to implement the non-negotiables within a designated time frame, I suggest waking before your children and your partner do and completing them.

This is how I approach my self-care. But rest assured, this does not mean that waking up before my daughter and my husband to do my self-care is always how it happens. My daughter has been sick this week, so I have been fitting in self-care when I can, even during one of her shorter 30-minute naps.

Tip Three: Create a small list of nonnegotiable self-care habits.

At the end of this post, I provide a free downloadable PDF checklist with my self-care non-negotiables. Still, as I recommended earlier in this post, it is important to determine your nonnegotiables for yourself.

Nonnegotiable self-care habits are habits that you will complete no matter what. My non-negotiable list is not linked to a nonnegotiable time frame but a list of habits I must find time for at some point in the day.

It may sound silly, but as a new mom, it can be difficult to remember to implement self-care habits. So, I find that having a checklist where I can mark off what I have completed helps me stay accountable and focused on the things I must do throughout the day to care for myself.

A few examples of habits on my list are washing my face, brushing my teeth as soon as I wake up, and drinking 16 oz of water. Something like drinking water throughout the day when you are nursing a baby or chasing around a crawling or walking baby can easily be forgotten if you are not intentional about it.

Another important thing on my nonnegotiable list is meditation. I have a very strong and consistent practice, so throughout my pregnancy and my entire postpartum journey, I practiced 20 minutes twice daily. That may sound overwhelming to some, but habits start small, and you can build stamina for the ones that work for you and are most important to you.

These non-negotiable self-care habits may seem oversimplified, but when implementing them consistently and making them a priority, you will feel a world of difference in how you show up in the rest of your life as your own unique person and as a mother.

Tip Four: How to add in new self-care habits.

I recommend starting small and choosing approachable habits when adding new self-care habits.

I have been practicing yoga and meditation for 15 years, so my strong meditation practice has been a long time coming. Still, during the pandemic, my mental health took a plummet, and one of my most consistent self-care habits was drinking 16-32 ounces of water each morning. This habit was approachable for me at the time, and I stayed consistent with it; it spearheaded many other healthy habits.

So, pick a few approachable self-care habits at first. With time, you can add more, but I recommend adding one habit at a time and committing to it for three weeks before adding another. Three weeks is not an exact science when determining how long it takes to make something a habit, but it is a good marker to use when considering whether it feels right for you. Additionally, it allows you to try one habit before adding another and feeling too overwhelmed.

It is much better to start with a small number of easy-to-implement self-care habits. When you stay consistent with these habits and begin to reap the benefits, you will be motivated to add more.

Tip Five: Explore new self-care ideas for when you have extra time.

Before becoming a mom, I often had FOMO if I was not with my friends or family. Becoming a mom was a true self-evolution, and I now value my alone time as one of the most sacred aspects of my life. Once you start truly caring for yourself in loving ways that feel good, you will evolve as I did, leaving you craving more alone time for self-care.

When you have the time to take some longer alone time, I suggest dedicating some of that time to longer self-care practices. In my free PDF checklist, I have provided a choice menu of different self-care practices to try out when you have extra time, and not all of them are related to healthy living or beauty either. The individual determines self-care, and the only lens he needs to consider caring for yourself is that of love. So, indulging in your favorite meal or an old or new hobby is what you crave; if you provide it to yourself with love, that is self-care. Still, a long Epsom salt bath, a massage, a yoga class, or journaling should not be tossed to the side in terms of their positive impact on your relationship with yourself.

Habits like taking long, luxurious baths or practicing a relaxing yoga class are intimate self-care habits that allow one to be with oneself in loving ways, get to know oneself, and determine what feels good for one. Long baths and journaling also open up the space for a reflective dialogue with oneself, where one can consider what is actually working for one's life and what is not.

My drive to share my knowledge and resources comes from hitting rock bottom and crawling my way out. I understand that life can be whatever we want when we let go of what the world expects. Additionally, I want to provide women with a place to learn ways to reclaim their health and self-worth for free.

In this post, I discussed how self-care is not determined by an influencer’s self-care aesthetic on Instagram but instead means treating yourself in loving ways that feel good to your unique self. I covered tips on how to find time, how to discover what habits work for you, how to add in new habits, and the importance of creating a nonnegotiable list and continuing to build an intimate, loving relationship with yourself.

I also mentioned a PDF checklist I created with free self-care checklists and resources for new moms. If you enter your email address below and subscribe to my newsletter, you will receive the free checklist. Take some time to try out some of my suggestions and nonnegotiables, but also make your checklist and brainstorm what might work for you.

The point of self-care is both to care for yourself so you can care for your baby and also to care for yourself because your relationship with yourself matters (all the other relationships in your life are a reflection of your relationship with yourself). As Thich Nhat Hahn says, yourself is your true home.

As mothers, we must care for ourselves well if we will care for others well. No matter how overwhelming it might feel to start implementing some of these practices, we must do it. Once we start feeling good in our minds, our hearts, and our bodies with some simple habits, it will become easier and easier to add more, and I promise you will crave it.

Create a self-care inspiration board on Pinterest and save this post and others so when you are feeding your baby late at night scrolling on your phone, you can revisit this and remember you are important and feel inspired to keep moving forward caring for yourself in loving ways.