5 Powerful Mindfulness Tips for the Overwhelmed New Mom

Learn mindful tips for overcoming new mom overwhelm.

As a new mom, you’re not alone in feeling like an overwhelmed new mom. In a recent study, over 40% of new moms experience overwhelming feelings like anxiety, stress, and tiredness.

And during the pandemic, more and more mothers suffered in their mental health than ever before, making it even harder to process the new mom stage.

Dr. Tali Bogler, Chair of Family Medicine Obstetrics at St. Michael’s Hospital, said it best regarding new motherhood and being overwhelmed during the pandemic, “This is a particularly vulnerable population at the best of times,” she said. “It’s a major transition in a person’s life, in a family’s life.”

Your feelings of overwhelm, tiredness, and anxiety are validated.

Having had four babies myself, I know this feeling well. So yes, of course, we look forward to having our babies, but at the same time, it can be tough to go through the change of hormonal imbalance that happens post-pregnancy and the demanding day-to-day life of being a mom to a new baby.

So, if you’re finding yourself feeling overwhelmed being a new mom, you’ve come to the right place.

This article will give you practical tips using mindfulness to help alleviate the overwhelmed feelings and relieve the stress and anxiety that often comes with being a new mom.

This article may contain affiliate links, please see my full disclaimer here.

What is a new mom mental breakdown?

A mental breakdown is the same as a central nervous system breakdown. And it’s when we experience sudden emotional distress. For example, becoming a new mom can kick in a central nervous system breakdown.

Living feeling that you’re constantly experiencing a mental breakdown is the same as not functioning emotionally as you were able to before. Suddenly everything feels challenging, overwhelming, tiresome, and stressful. Anxiety becomes part of your day.

Symptoms of a new mom mental breakdown include:

• Decrease of motivation
• No longer interested in things you used to like doing
• Feeling moody
• Avoiding social interactions
• Nausea or stomach aches
• Unable to concentrate on tasks
• Feeling physically tired all the time
• Emotional numbness
• Have a hard time sleeping, even when you have the opportunity to sleep
• Feeling depressed
• Experiencing anxiety regularly
• Panic attacks

Under normal circumstances, when we are not experiencing a mental breakdown, our brains are equipped to know when something is a danger or when it’s ok to feel safe. And each part of our brain works in harmony to keep us in balance.

However, when you’re finding yourself constantly overwhelmed, tired, and experiencing anxiety is when your brain takes most of your experiences and translates them into danger.

This leaves the other parts of your brain unable to function as they should and with less energy to do their tasks. And you get stuck in the cycle of overwhelm.

Feeling overwhelmed as a new mom is nothing you desire, but for sure, something you can change. And in this article, you will learn how.  

How to help an overwhelmed new mom

As a Mindset Coach and a Transpersonal Hypnotherapist, I primarily work with mothers who experience overwhelm. And so, I will share with you what you can do to overcome the feelings of overwhelm so that you can navigate your day feeling more at ease and in comfort.

Before I begin, let’s keep in mind that some stress is a normal part of life. The goal here is not to expect a life of zero stress, as that it’s not possible, but to know how to manage stress.

For example, predictable stress has an ending, and the support to overcome is very different from overwhelming stress and anxiety that seems to have no end in sight.

We want to live a life as moms where when overwhelming feelings arise, we know what to do and how to give ourselves what we need to overcome negative emotions. And mindfulness practices are a great way to achieve this.

What do mindfulness practices mean as a new mom?

The act of being mindful is simply being present in the present moment and being an observer of your emotions and feelings, without judgment, simply observing.

The fact is that our thoughts will produce an emotion, should we decide to own the thought. 

I’m sure that you’ve had times when you feel like your current new mom life feels like a lot. You may have even said to yourself things like, “I feel like I can’t even get a breather. It’s exhausting!”

And if you then took in that thought as truth, then your body will respond by feeling a negative emotion that goes along with that thought. So you begin to feel even more exhausted, more defeated, more overwhelmed. 

Let’s say you then have additional thoughts added, such as, “Look at my friends, they seem to be doing so well as new moms; why can’t I do the same!”

And again, if you own that thought, your body will then proceed to attach a feeling to the view, making you feel even more like you’re failing as a new mom and not comparing to others who seem to be handling new motherhood just fine.

Our bodies will respond to the signals we send to our minds. 

But, when you practice mindfulness, you will observe the thought but not necessarily attach yourself to it. So your thought is observed, but instead of spiraling down, your body (through the mechanisms of your brain functions) will remain in a state of groundedness.

And even when a thought triggers your brain to react in an overwhelmed or anxious way, should you continue to observe the thought, rather than attaching yourself to it, your brain will soon (usually in less than two minutes) settle back to base.

Mindfulness, along with practical tips, is how to overcome the feelings of overwhelm, so in this next section, we will discuss how in detail.

5 Practical Mindfulness Tips to Overcome Overwhelm as New Mom

These practical mindfulness tips can help you overcome overwhelm as a new mom.

1) Start a Morning Routine

The healing and restoring aspects of a morning routine are evidence-based. And it does not need to be very elaborate or a long process to create and maintain a morning routine.

The self-care of a morning routine is simply in practice itself, in the consistent, repeating the process you do each morning.

As a new mom, your morning routine will need to be simple, refreshing, and renewing as you begin your day with your little one.

Usually, I would recommend waking up before your child wakes up, but knowing that sleep can also help relieve feelings of overwhelm, I suggest you catch up on that extra sleep and do your morning routine with your little one.

Here’s an example of a morning routine:

1. At waking, take ten deep breathes and give gratitude to one thing you are thankful for in your life.
2. Head to your kitchen once you leave your bed (taking into account that you may feed your baby while in bed).
3. Start water boiling for detoxing water, where you will mix hot water with cold water (to get warm water), and add a slice of lemon. Try to drink three of these within the first hour of awakeness.
4. Smudge your primary living space with palo santo.
5. And put a timer for five minutes where you will sit (even if holding a baby or having a toddler around) and become aware of your body, your energy, and your deep intuition. And in this time, remind yourself of how amazing you are and give yourself the stillness you need.

2) Check in with Yourself Daily

Checking in with yourself is taking inventory of what is happening in your life. In particular, you want to focus on how you feel about different aspects of your life.

You’d be surprised how often we skip the step of checking in with ourselves and instead operate from auto-pilot mode or from wanting to make everyone else happy.

Questions to ask yourself when checking in with yourself daily as a new mom:

• How am I feeling right now?
• When I think about what I need to do today or tomorrow, how do those things make me feel?
• What do I need to be able to feel less overwhelmed?

And follow this by journaling (if you can) your responses, as often, we tend to come up with our own solutions through the process of journaling.

3) Be Willing to Ask for What You Need

Being a mindful new mom, also means being aware of what you can realistically do and what feels too heavy to carry.

While society tends to put on us mothers the expectation of being able to “do it all,” and on top of that, to do it all Pinterest-worthy, it does not mean that you need to take in that unrealistic expectation.

Mothers feel overwhelmed because we have more on our to-do list of responsibilities than we can possibly handle.

The truth is that we cannot do it all. We were never meant to do it all.

Our ancestors did life with others, each taking roles, and when one could not carry the load, others stepped in to help. We were never meant to do all this on our own.

So, using mindfulness to overcome overwhelm is to become aware of your roles and ask for the necessary help from others.

Asking for what you need might be as simple as asking your partner to do the bedtime routine each night to asking friends and family members to come and help you organize your home and care for your baby for a few hours each day.

Big or small, we are meant to raise our babies with others. Allow yourself the awareness of this and the ability to ask and receive for what you need.

4) Simplify Your Day

Simplicity brings about a release from overwhelming duties and expectations. When we live life with a mindful simplicity, we can avoid many of the stressors that come with feeling overwhelmed.

You may even be able to avoid feeling overwhelmed in the first place by practicing simple living.

Ask yourself, what can I do less? What parts of what I do serve me, and which parts overwhelm me?

And then take thought into how you can simplify, reduce, or eliminate the elements that do not help you feel less overwhelmed.

I’ll give you an example of this from a new mom I worked with closely (shared with permission) that was struggling with overwhelming feelings.

Her baby was about six months by the time the feelings of new mom overwhelm were taking over. And as we discussed her life, I noticed that one of the things that gave her feelings of stress and overwhelmed were the expectations of the group of friends she had made. 

The other moms in her group seemed to have it all together – they looked the part and seemed to be doing all the mothering things flawlessly.

There were discussions about how good their babies were in sleep, feeding, development, and all the things. Their babies did all things perfectly. And the moms seemed to do all the things perfectly. 

And so her expectations were set relatively high based on her social circle.

On top of this, they met up for lunch a couple of times a week. She felt pressure to look put together for the luncheons and for her baby to behave well during lunch.

It wasn’t that the other babies didn’t do the usual things that babies do in public.

It was that she had set herself an unrealistic expectation of her baby’s needs to behave and how she needs to look based on her perception that came from the chatter of her mom’s group.

I asked her why she stayed in the mom’s group if it gave her so much stress and overwhelmed? And she said, “Because they are my friends. I’m afraid I won’t find more friends if I don’t do the luncheons with them.”

And yet, these get-togethers were not serving her emotional wellness at all.

I was able to work with her, and she saw that she had set up limited beliefs of how many friends she’s able to make (ie, I won’t make new friends) and that there were only one or two of the moms in the group that she felt aligned in values and beliefs.

Through a process of mindful self-discovery, she was able to release the expectations she had set for herself in her friend’s group.

And instead of luncheons (that caused her to feel overwhelmed), she and a couple of moms met in comfortable clothing and did a nature picnic once a week.

They would set up blankets on the grass for the babies, bring chips, other snacks, water, and spend the time chatting, being vulnerable, and connecting.

It wasn’t that luncheons were not ok, nor that her mom’s group was in the wrong. It was that the activities and the expectations she had set up were no longer serving her.

And there was a need to simplify in a way that fits better into her emotional wellness.

She simplified something that seemed so small but yet made a big difference in overcoming new mom overwhelm.

Where in your life can you simplify? Start with one small thing at a time.

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5) Learn to Live in the Now

The now is the moment you are in without thoughts of what is happening next or trying to process what is coming up in your life, or placing mind space in a future moment that you cannot control.

It’s taking in the space you are currently in. Living in the now is becoming mindful of how you feel right now.

Living in the now is full awareness of the place, time, and space you are in – from the little fluster of the leaves to the colors in your surroundings. 

Living in the now encompasses so much of the previous tips already covered, including checking in with self and simplicity.

I find that life can get busy real quick. And with that comes the feelings of overwhelm.

But, when I take the moment I am in right now, I gain perspective, become aware of the joys surrounding me, and am more connected with what I need and how I feel. 

Next time you find your mind racing to the things you have yet to accomplish for the day and the tasks that are always begging for your attention, pause for a moment to mindfully look around you, at your child, your space, and bring back the energy to your body.

Focusing on the moment you are in and the details in it. 

You will find that living in the now feels like a reset, and many times, that’s what we need to overcome feelings of new mom overwhelm.

Mindfulness in its practicality and simplicity can help you overcome new mom overwhelm.

Listen, you’ve got this. Using these 5 powerful mindfulness tips can go a long way to help you connect deeper with yourself, know what you need, and overcome the overwhelm.

And remember, your birthright is to be confident and at ease, so if you’re finding yourself not feeling that, then reach out to someone that can help.