Stress, Your Hormones and Being a Mother
If you’re a mother, you know that stress is part of the job! I don’t think there is a day that goes by that something doesn’t make my heart skip a beat, or blood pressure (momentarily at least) jump up a notch, and my kids are all teens or adults now. I wish I had better news but mothering is the best and most stressful and most rewarding job all at once.
But today I want to talk about stress; how it affects our hormones and then our mothering.
We might still be running after kids, sometimes younger and sometimes older, jobs are demanding and if you stay at home then all the cooking and cleaning is sitting there waiting. More often than not women are holding the mental load for the entire family. We dream of all the freedom we will have when our kids are out of nappies and start to sleep through the night but then the kids are teens and all the fun of the circus begins. Then they move out and your heart seems constantly raw with the worry of how they will manage. Once a mother, always a mother.
And more recently, life has thrown us some extra stresses. Mortgage payments increasing, petrol prices rising, world events are being played 24/7 so there is no escape and throw in all of the natural and man made disasters going on, we have a recipe for hormonal disaster.
Or not! Because if you know what is happening you can do something about it. So, let’s look at a small selection of symptoms that reflect how stress is affecting your hormones on a general level and how that starts to affect how you show up for your kids.
Stress increases cortisol as it is a survival hormone. Our body prioritises survival over reproduction, so it takes the nutrients and starting blocks that our hormones require to make more and uses it for cortisol instead.
Fun times as we usually end up with a lower progesterone to oestrogen ratio. Progesterone is the calming hormone and oestrogen is quite emotional. Relatively higher levels of oestrogen means more PMT, bloating, emotional behaviour, eg. teary or irritable or both, heavy periods, painful periods, and a general intolerance to your children just before your period.
How it affects mothering: This imbalance can cause varying degrees of irritability leaving us with guilt over yelling at our kids or just generally losing the plot and saying or doing things we wouldn’t dream of through the rest of the month.
· Weight gain or difficulty losing weight is another symptom of stress and hormonal impact. Cortisol is the stress hormone responsible for our stress bellies and increases insulin resistance. As I mentioned earlier, we are often chronically stressed holding the mental load for the whole family.
How it affects mothering: weight may not seem to affect our mothering but if it is affecting your mental health, the way you feel about yourself, the way you turn up to trips to the beach or sports or anything fun and active…then your kids are noticing. They notice the diets, the covering up, the refusal to go for a swim or the negative self-talk even if you don’t.
· Sleep is another hormonal victim of the mother’s stress. Cause we didn’t lose enough when the kids were babies hey lol! Again, this is part dysregulated cortisol and part low progesterone. It can also be a blood sugar issue. Dysregulated cortisol will keep mums tired and wired. They need coffee to become human in the morning and a glass or 3 of wine to relax at night or just lay there staring at the ceiling. Progesterone, we noted how that is affected above, is a relaxing hormone that is often depleted under chronic stress so we have more trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep. And then the blood sugar may be an issue with dysregulated cortisol causing insulin resistance so you may have a very busy liver at 3am as it tries to release glucose to help bolster those dwindling blood sugar reserves.
How it affects mothering: This one is obvious. When we are tired, we are irritable and snappy. We have no patience; our brain is foggy and we are not driving safely. Yes, I said not driving safely. We have double the risk of a crash after just one isolated night of rubbish sleep. Here’s the research article. And here’s the quote:
“After one night of either 4 or 5 hours of sleep, there are large decrements to driving performance and approximately double the likelihood of a crash when compared with well-rested individuals. When considering the scientific evidence, it appears that there is a notable decrease in driving performance (and associated increase in crash likelihood) when less than 5h prior sleep is obtained.
It's not a foregone conclusion! I promise. You can create stress resilience even in the thick of motherhood.
· Look after your liver and it will look after you. Give it a fighting chance to metabolise your hormones and keep them as balanced as you can by reducing or eliminating alcohol, reduce takeaways and prioritise self-care over self-indulgence.
· Get some sleep! You need sleep above almost everything else. You can have a look at these tips I wrote about a while back
· Try working with your cycle. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself to go everywhere, do everything and be everything. It’s ok to slow down when you need to. Not sure what I mean? That’s ok. I wrote a whole other blog about it! Take a look to see how you can find a better flow in your life (pun intended)
· And then there is just the good old self-care! As boring as this is, we get lost in motherhood and forget about our own needs. Pop yourself back on the priority list because you can’t do this job well if you don’t put some effort into yourself. Here’s a link to Red Flags of Stress and Struggle — Simply Healing - Natural health clinic to a fabulous blog that walks you through some ideas.
Sometimes with the best will in the world we are simply too overwhelmed to put any of this into action. It’s then you really know your tank is empty and you need help. Reach out. Make an appointment. Let me help you start to get your hormones back on track so you can get back to being the mother you want to be.