Need to discharge some mum stress?

Hi Subscriber First Name

How was your summer?

Let’s be honest. Summer is a toxic pressure cooker of unrealistic expectations, social media comparison and the need to make everything “the best” for everyone else. It’s f—ing exhausting.

So if your life isn’t looking like the pages of Conde Nast Traveller right now, you’re not alone.

Let me tell you a nap time horror story.

Rafa’s jumped out of his cot and is banging around but I’m ignoring it and working on writing an intense personal story about NICU, which I’ll share with you soon. It’s engrossing, but then I hear him say “Ooh sharp”. I run in and he is covered in blood, standing over Frankie’s cot. Frankie is holding two glass daggers and saying “Knife”.

I’m so scared I stop breathing.

There are bloody handprints on the walls, on the cot. It’s even on the carpet.

I grab Rafa in a panic, squeeze his hands to make him drop the glass, put him in the bathroom, run back for Frankie and wake Jerry up in the process. I am trying to stay calm because I know they vibe off me.

I strip Rafa and shower him down to work out where the blood is coming from (thankfully only 2 small cuts in his hands). We play a fun game called “squeeze”, which involves applying pressure to the wounds.

Then I grab Frankie, and strip him to check him for cuts but he only has one tiny one on his hand. His screams were only for his beloved blanky, which I wouldn’t give him because it was sparkling with shards. Jerry is now screaming too.

I breathe out. Jees, that was a close shave.

A few plasters and we’d be OK. I’d forgotten we had pictures in that room, tucked away out of sight. But of course, Rafa found them and smashed them.

Even though the drama was over, I was in peak fight or flight. Stress hormones had taken hold of me. I was a mess. I called my mum and asked her to come over. For the rest of the day, my brain was still in that fear zone. I was emotionally exhausted. I kept thinking about what could have happened, and how much worse it could have been.

The next day I still felt awful and I realised I needed to discharge.

Think of mums like a circuit, fired with too much electricity, without a circuit breaker. Even when the major stress is over, they don’t have time to process it, they are on to the next task, meeting the next need even though they are frazzled. It goes on and on and gets more dangerous until we have an electrical fire.

We all have days like this. When they come, it’s really important that we take time to discharge that extra stress load and recalibrate our way back to feeling normal, or we end up with too much charge and may blow up. Yeah, it happens…

For some quick ways to discharge and destress check the guide videos in my Facebook group.

Lots of love,

Leila (and the triplets) xxx

ps. The pic is one of my top summer moments - running along the Brighton beach on my own. Bliss.

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