Stress Free Mama

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Humorous Stress Tips for Moms

Tired of time management?

Think you’ll pop if you take one more deep breath?

So bored with yoga that you want to bang your head on your sticky mat?

You may find these reduce stress tips just the ticket.

The Top 10 Humorous Tips for Moms to Reduce Stress

1. Bored at the kid’s soccer game? Take over as team manager and arrange for chair massage at every game.

Laundry overflowing its basket2. Tired of laundry? Every week take your dirty clothes to Goodwill and Target.com send new ones.

3. Sell the dog.

4. Can’t stand to make dinner anymore? Set up an open account at your Thai Food restaurant and have dinner delivered every night. Too expensive? See #5.

5. Worries about money? Take an extra job at Shopko–you will have extra money and you won’t see how dirty the house is.

6. Your career stalling? Quit your job and become an extra in a George Clooney film.

7. Husband forget so take out the garbage (again)? Time for new shoes.

8. Child home for school sick? Eat chocolate. You know–it has anti-oxidants.

9. Both mother and mother-in-law want you at their house for Christmas? Make a podcast of how much you love them and post it on the family website. What’s more holiday than YouTube?

…And the final of the

Humorous Stress Tips for Moms

10. Frustrated at listening to your girlfriend’s dating troubles? Time for new shoes and margaritas.

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More Stress in Women than Men

As a woman and a mother, you juggle the needs of many people and the many roles you play. Whether or not you work outside the home, your job is not done at 5:00pm; nor is it done at 9:00 when the kids go to bed. You work from rising to sleeping. And throughout your days, you face repeated stressful events.

Women’s stress is frequent and constant. Now there is a study to prove it. The University of Arizona, Tucson did a study of 166 married couples. The people in the study kept a daily diary for 42 days, recording their daily events and stress.

The study concluded that stress in women is higher than in men.

The results make an important distinction, however. Women are more stressed because they experience more episodes of distress and not because they carry their distress from one day to the next.

This is an important insight into women’s stress. I think it reflects some of the differences in how men and women are wired.

  • Women multi-task. Women juggle so many roles and duties that they bump into stressful situations more often. Instead of starting one thing and completing it to the end, you have many priorities at once and this is bound to create conflicts.
    • Perhaps one conclusion is that women need to muti-task less. Would stress in women decrease if you completed one task fully before starting the next? Stop calling the dentist while driving to the grocery store. Say no to volunteering at church and stop splitting yourself into many little parts.
    The other conclusion is that even though you multi-task, can you learn to focus your attention on what you are doing now, and not worry about what is coming next. How many times do you plan what you will do after dinner, while you are making dinner? Be busy, but be busy with one thing at a time. Keep your attention single pointed.
  • Women let go of distress but they have lots of stressors. According to this study, women’s stress was caused by many stressful events one after the other; it was not caused by carrying stress from one event to the next. So women let go of an event when it happens, but there is always another one down the line.

Could this study reflect how unsupported many women are in their everyday lives? Few women have a community of family or friends which help them everyday. Often you shoulder the burdens of your children and spouses alone. Maybe women are stressed because they need more help?

The study goes to great length to discuss whether women’s stress is caused by their different gender role from men or because they process distress differently, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. As a woman, you need to find the ways which create peace in your life.

Stress in women is high. You carry a big responsibility to your family, friends and loved ones. It is important to make your well-being as important as the well-being of the people you care for.

Find peace for the benefit of everyone you love.

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Can A Stressed Pregnant Mom Affect the Health of her Baby?

When you are a stressed pregnant mom, your stress is felt by your baby. Your stress can influence your baby’s immune system and even their sensitivity to allergens and their asthma risk.

As mothers, you know that you have a deep connection with your unborn baby. You feel that you and your baby are both separate and one.

Now a study (American Thoracic Society. “Mother’s Prenatal Stress Predisposes Their Babies To Asthma And Allergy, Study Shows.” ScienceDaily 19 May 2008. 9 June 2008) from the Harvard Medical School has found that your connection is not just emotional. A stressed pregnant mom may pass some of that stress on to her unborn baby in the form of increased sensitivity to allergens. This increased sensitivity may even increase the risk of asthma for the child.

Pregnant mom looking at her baby's ultrasoundThe predisposition to asthma is only partly genetic. Exposure to come substances in the environment, such as dust mites, can increase the chance of developing asthma.

Researchers monitored the level of stress in each mother, combined with her level of exposure to dust mites. They found an increased level of IgE (a marker of the child’s immune response) in babies from stressed pregnant moms, even if the dust mite exposure was low. The mother’s stress magnified the baby’s immune response, even with low level exposure to dust mites.

“This research adds to a growing body of evidence that links maternal stress such as that precipitated by financial problems or relationship issues, to changes in children’s developing immune systems, even during pregnancy,” said Dr. Rosalind J. Wright, M.D., M.P.H, assistant professor of medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

“This further supports the notion that stress can be thought of as a social pollutant that, when ‘breathed’ into the body, may influence the body’s immune response similar to the effects of physical pollutants like allergens, thus adding to their effects.”

There are several important ideas to remember. First, this does not necessarily mean that these children will develop asthma. More follow-up research is needed for that.

Second, the study suggests that it is the combination of stress and exposure to allergens which causes the problem. So stress is just magnifying the risks.

And third, we all get stressed. Financial stress, relationship problems, work issues happen. A pregnant mom doesn’t have control over all the events in her life. Even if you try to remain a Buddha of sanguineness, you will not harm your baby if you loose it one day.

The biggest point is in Rosalind’s observation that stress is like a pollutant. Our country has made great strides in improving air quality and water quality. Now we must work on our inner-life quality. Instead of viewing stress as a necessary evil of modern life, we must actively envision a slower, quieter life. A life with contemplation. Appreciation. A life with less stress.

We need to reduce stress in our lives for ourselves. But if we can not be motivated for ourselves, then we may be motivated for our born and unborn children.

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Stressed Moms have Unique Challenges

The special role mothers have as caregivers both nurtures us and creates stressed moms.

Mothers are here to care for others.

We are hard wired to serve others. This trait makes our stress unique. Unlike other stressed people, when we need to reduce stress, we must not just disengage from our duties and responsibilities, but we must disengage from our natural inclination to care for those we love over the needs of ourselves.

Another way to view it: Caring for ourselves is one way to care for our loved ones.

Stressed mom pushing a grocery cartStressed Moms.

Stressed Moms are everywhere.

At the grocery store, a woman in business clothes pushes the cart with her 5 year old, trying to sound interested in the story about the cereal. The tensed lips, and the overly strong “Mommy really needs your cooperation now.” are the give-aways. She has 35 things to do before she gets home, and she is quickly feeling like she’s failing at all 35.

Our modern life has created this stressed mom, and while getting out of the cycle of stress is difficult for everyone, it is particularly difficult for a mother. The last thing she needs is to think that she must take a drawing class to relax. When would it be? Before or after the grocery store?

The Unique Problem of Stressed Moms:

  • We serve. We give. We help.
As mothers, our lives are designed with the needs of others first. And now that many mothers work outside the home, we give at the office and come home to give at home. We never get down time.
Mothers are made for this job, and can flourish in it. But modern life has pushed the demands to the maximum, while reducing the support to a stressed mom to a minimum. The system is bound to crash.
  • Because so many people rely on us, when a stressed mom needs to take time for herself, she feels like others will not get what they need in order for her to get what sheneeds.
How do you fit in a yoga class when the kids need to get to soccer?
This is a real and valid concern of stressed mothers, and adds to the level of stress.
Compound this with the statistic that around 25% of mothers are single, then the question about how to find time for oneself becomes even more vexing.
    • A mother’s brain is a never ending “things to do” list. Another way to say this is that a mother is never done with her chores. Unlike an executive who can complete a project, a stressed mom always has more to do. There is no project completion party.
    • As the snowball of stress grows, many mothers feel more stress delegating and instructing her family to help, than to do it. Lacking a system of help at home, many stressed moms just grow more stressed.
  • Like all mothers before us, moms are the heart of the family. Now, many mothers must be the brains at work as well.
When the mother’s world was closer to home, all of a mother’s tasks would have a theme of directly building the home for her family–growing food, cooking, mending clothes, teaching, raising the children, caring for the sick. She had one job description which predominantly involved more heart centered, right brain tasks.
Now mothers must often work outside the home. She must shift every morning and every evening from right brain to left, from heart to head. When her kids need to talk about their hard day, she must ignore her work deadline. And when she’s at work, she must focus on her job, and not on sick kids at home.
A work-outside-the-home mother’s life requires two opposing skills, and this is stressful. We can never do one skill completely.
  • A modern mother is disconnected from the woman’s community. Even stay-at-home-mothers do not have the companionship and support of other moms. My 80 year old friend tells me about how she would go to a fiend’s house and work together during the day to complete their tasks. For many women today, their closest women’s community is watching Oprah.
Mothers need each other to replenish themselves. When stressed moms get together, after a chat, some tea and cake, and some good girl-friend talk, they are often revived and ready to go home and work again. But few women get this support.

To find out more about Stressed Moms, please view the resources below.

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Troubles Sleeping for Women in Bad Marriages

Women in happy marriages get good sleep. Sleeping for women in unhappy marriages–not so much. How can insomnia help you improve your marriage and your life?

Woman with stress and insomniaWomen in happy marriages were 10% more likely to get a good night’s sleep than women with unhappy marriages concluded a recent study by Wendy M. Troxel, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh.

Wendy reviewed questionnaires from 2000 women who participated in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN). The women reported on their sleep quality (how often they had trouble falling asleep, if they stayed asleep, and how early they woke up) and the quality of their marriage.

The women with happy marriages had less trouble getting to sleep, were more likely to stay asleep, had fewer sleep complaints and had more restful sleep. Sleeping for women in unhappy marriages was not as good.

Is it a surprise that poor marriages and poor sleep go together?

…After all, these women are in bed with the person they are not happy with.

…After all, relationships are very important to many women and relationship issues are bound to trouble women.

…After all, an unhappy marriage is bound to increase stress.

Wendy points out that her study does not examine which comes first–the bad marriage or the bad sleep, but only that poor sleeping and women in unhappy marriages go hand in hand.

While this study comes dangerously close to stating something so intuitively obvious that it doesn’t need stating, there is a deeper point you can learn.

Too often we look at the pieces of our lives and forget the big picture. No doubt some of these women have gone to doctors with sleep issues and have received medication for insomnia. No doubt some of these women attribute their sleep problems to the many stresses (besides their marriage) in their lives.

But at the core, these women are not happy in their marriage. And some of them are not happy at all.

If you view the symptoms of your health as clues to your deeper needs, then insomnia becomes an opportunity to ask, “What is really going on with me?”

If you view the symptoms of your health as clues to your deeper needs, then insomnia becomes an opportunity to ask, “What is really going on with me?” Instead of shouldering your stressful life unquestioningly, look at your health and assume that you most likely, barring the whims of fate, would be healthy. If you can’t sleep at night, then ask why not?

It is hard to look at your life without blinking, and as a woman, harder still to face the cold realities of a troubled marriage. But in doing so, and accepting what is really happening, you become free to both improve your relationship, and get a good night’s sleep.