By Tiffany Shedd

I don’t know about you, but this Mommy needs a break.

A break from cleaning up dirty dishes, putting away laundry, picking up hundreds of toys, making dinner, grocery shopping - I think you get my point. I need a break. As a stay-at-home mom, that break typically doesn’t come.

I am sure that this is true of all moms and dads, whether you work inside or out of your home, the tasks never end. This can be compounded when you have a child who has special needs as well. You have to add the appointments and therapies and just plan for every eventuality, because any deviation from a schedule can throw your entire day or even week off. It can get to be extremely overwhelming.

But, you don’t have time to be overwhelmed. It’s a vicious cycle. In order to take care of those that we love, we have to learn how to take care of ourselves.

Taking care of ourselves, especially for women (moms especially), does not come naturally. We tend to put everyone else’s needs before our own. This might mean that we are lugging around kids while we’re running a fever of 101 or taking a forgotten lunch to school when we are late for an appointment on the other side of town. All of these things add up and start to take a toll on our mental and physical well-being.

So, what’s the solution? I don’t know. I wish I had the magic answer that would make everything fit into place, the baby sleep through the night, kids remember their coats, or spouses lend more of a hand, but I don’t. You have to figure out what works for you and your family.

However, I can tell you some things that work for me and point out a few resources that may help take some of the pressure off of you.

I feel most rested, calm and collected when I am organized. I keep several calendars with all of my child’s specialty appointments, play dates, my physical therapy dates, my husband’s TDY dates, basically everything in strategic places around my house. I set alarms on my phone to help me remember to give my son his medicines. You would think that after doing so for over a year that it would be second nature, but again, any unforeseen event can send me off in another direction and without that reminder, I might not remember to give it to him on time. Maybe writing things down doesn’t work for you, figure out what does and do it.

Taking care of myself physically also helps me feel calm and less stressed out. I try to get to the gym several times a week. This can be tricky if you do not go to a gym that provides childcare. If you live on a military installation, check out your Child, Youth, School Services (Army) and find out about their drop-in child care. You can use this as a way to get to the gym, run a few child-free errands or even go to a doctor’s appointment by yourself. I know that with the Army they charge a smaller fee for drop-in care if you are going to a medical appointment.

If you can’t make it the gym by yourself because CYSS is booked up, take half an hour before your kids wake up or after they go to sleep (or during naptime, if you’re so lucky) to do a quick workout on YouTube. There are plenty of free workout routines that you can do in your own home.

If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, check out the classes that Morale, Welfare and Recreation (Army) offer. I took a multi-day course dealing with resiliency and learned some very valuable coping skills that have gotten me through long TDYs, deployments and my son’s medical challenges.

One technique I use a lot to deal with anxiety is taking a problem and thinking about the worst thing that could happen. For example: I forgot to pay my phone bill on time. Because I forgot to pay, the phone company dinged my credit report. I didn’t have good credit, so I had to get an apartment in a bad neighborhood during our next PCS. The bad neighborhood was full of crime, and we got robbed. All of our stuff was gone, and we had to live in our car. Our car broke down and the windows were broken out of it. We had to live in a box under a bridge. Obviously, none of these things happened to me, but when you think it out to the unforeseeable end, you’ll end up seeing that whatever the problem was probably isn’t as bad as you think. You might even laugh at how farfetched you take it, and laughter really is great medicine.

The most important thing is that you know yourself and know your limits. Sometimes just taking a few minutes and stepping away from a situation and being quiet and breathing deeply will give you enough resolve and calm to get through it.

If you get to the point where you just can’t do it one more second, call someone. Ask for help. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you need some help, even if it is just someone to listen to you vent. Use your support system, that’s why you have one.