I have found that being an older mother has been more difficult physically than when I was younger. I struggled with being tired when my son was young too. Every new mother does. Pregnancy, giving birth, and breastfeeding take a LOT of energy. There a few things I do now that I did not do when I had my son. The only one I did do was get a good amount of exercise when my son was young.. I do these things fairly often and fairly well now and they help me get enough sleep, exercise, and energy to keep up fairly well with my daughter. She is already a type A personality and has high energy levels so there may a bigger disparity as she grows and I age but for now it seems to work.

  1. Sleep when baby naps as often as you can – I don’t always get to do this but I do my best.
  2. Nurse longer to decrease any extra crying or clinginess and loss of sleep at night. I know this may not work long term if you try to sleep train but it can for a long time – I am still breastfeeding at 16 months and plan to till she’s 2. You may have to decide between a perfect night sleep and continuing to breastfeed. The only reason I say you may have to decide is because older moms can have more trouble keeping up their milk supply so if the baby wakes at 5:30 or 6:30 and you nurse it is interrupting the sleep training. But you can still get a pretty good night’s sleep if baby goes down at 8 pm and wakes at 7 am, That’s 9 hours if you go to sleep at 10 pm giving you a little bit of time at night to yourself to finish things up.
  3. Get exercise to increase energy. Walking for endurance, weight lifting for strength 1-2 x per week, and stretching for any body pains. Hunching over when breastfeeding can contribute to back pain even if you don’t have a history of back pain and fibromyalgia like I do. So get a foam roll and stretch.
  4. Eat greens, either smoothie, juice, or soup or just cooked, this increases energy and miconutrients in your diet which help keep you healthy and for some people can even reduce the need for as much sleep. When your body does not have to spend a lot of energy cleaning and repairing what you damaged by your diet and lifestyle it frees up a LOT of energy.
  5. Decrease sugar intake, sugar depletes not only micronutrients but also physical energy. For me it causes headaches, abdominal pain, and sometimes even muscle pain. Simply not worth it if you really need that energy for your baby.
  6. If possible get a sitter to take a break. Because my daughter has been very clingy, needy for attention and its not all negative. She has an insatiable desire to learn and watch everything I do or other people do so she wants to be held, talked to, interacted with most minutes of the day. While she is learning at an exponential rate, I can get pretty exhausted when I can’t go to the bathroom or take a shower alone. I sometimes go to doctor appointments or get creative, like blogging and making youtube videos.
  7. keep a positive outlook and speak positive words about yourself, your body, your health, your baby, and your life. The words we speak affect our body, and then our energy, outlook, and ability to get things done and our health–