A Morning Routine for Teacher Moms

How many of y’all feel like you do a great job with starting your day well? Do you wake up and set the stage for the way the day will go for you? Or do you wake up to chaos and let the day tell you how it’s going to go?

This is the thing about being a mom that is the hardest for me to deal with: the world will show you what a Good Mom looks like, and you (read: I) will take that model and put immense amounts of pressure on your own shoulders to meet and/or exceed that Good Mom Model every single minute of every single day. When you’re working outside of the home, you feel that pressure about 10x more than normal.

The world will also then tell you that self care is important. You can’t pour from an empty cup, sweet mama! Make time for you, and your whole family will benefit! And when I was a new mom and I saw moms around me on social media preaching the gospel of self care I wanted to throw my phone at a wall. When on earth are you supposed to take care of yourself when your newborn doesn’t sleep outside of your arms?? I would bitterly stare at my husband, who was peacefully sleeping through the night, while my babies were keeping me up literally all night to eat. That sounds super creepy when I write it out, but if you haven’t stared at your husband and contemplated murder during the newborn days, are you even a mom?

Slowly, I have started to figure it out. The bitter pill that is being a working mother: self care comes in the margins of your day. And that sucks. It’s first thing in the morning, when your babies aren’t awake to climb in your lap when you’re trying to pee and ask you lovely questions about your body. (‘Mommy, why is your belly so squishy and mine is not?’ ‘Because you ruined me, sweetie.’)

The time for self-care comes late at night when no one can ask you for a snack. Can I get an AMEN?

The time for self-care may come in the middle of the day on a weekend, after shelling out astronomical amounts of money to a babysitter. Or trading time with your spouse. And if y’all both work, this is a constant argument, and I’m sorry, but I have no answers for you. My husband and I have the same fight about who ‘deserves’ a break on repeat.

But other than those stolen moments, the rest of the day is for kids, and it feels wrong to complain because we chose this life. We chose to be teachers. We chose to be mamas. I’ve chosen to stay home this year and thought that I might have more time to myself, but I was very, very incorrect. 😂 All of this is the path we forged, and we feel like we don’t have the right to say we’re tired.

Let me be the one to say it for you: We are REALLY tired. We love our kids and our students, but we are tired. You can absolutely love your life and be exhausted by it.

So, as I attempt this new adventure of working inside the home instead of outside of it, I decided that I wanted to record the morning routine of my dreams. The one that makes me ultra-productive when I stick to it. The one that makes me feel like I’m killing it. I’m not telling you that I do this every day, but even doing it 2-3 times a week makes a difference in what I accomplish. And hey, maybe writing it all out will help me stick to it more often?

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A Morning Routine for Working Moms

5:15: Wake Up, Drink Water while my Coffee is Brewing, Empty the Dishwasher (because why not get ahead on one chore?)

5:30: Sit down with my hot coffee, in a silent house, and read my bible. This could be replaced with meditation, gratitude journaling, whatever. Choose the thing that calms your mind and makes you feel zen.

5:50: By now my coffee/water/reading/prayer time is done. I try to move a little. A quick jog before my husband leaves for the day, a yoga video on youtube, fill-in-the-blank with your movement of choice. Sometimes I go to Barre at 5:30, and all of this is reversed. I get up at 4:45 on those days, and I’m home by 6:15 and start my bible reading/coffee drinking then.

*A note about fitness during this season: I have learned that for me, personally, a fitness regimen is not my thing. If I am beholden to a program or a schedule, I will be derailed time after time and mentally beat myself up for not ‘sticking with it’. Babies are so unpredictable, and so is teaching. When you’re the sounding board for little people’s feelings and behavior all day long, your mood will be drastically different from one day to the next. I decided recently that movement is key, and that’s it. Sometimes I’ll write ‘go for a run’ on my list, and wake up in the morning just NOT feeling it. I have learned that if I try to tell myself that I will go for that run this afternoon, I 1000% of the time will not. I am choosing in that moment what kind of movement sounds good, and I’m doing that instead. Sometimes it’s yoga. Sometimes it’s just a long walk with a podcast. I just want some level of movement every day, and that’s all I’m holding myself to for now.

Ok, stepping off the soapbox.

6:30: Get myself dressed. Because if I wait until the kids are up, J is underfoot trying to pull every bottle out of my bathroom cabinet. It’s cute and all until she smashes a bottle of retinol...

After all of this, I feel put together and ready to greet my babies with a smile. I’m ready to knock out a little work if they’re still sleeping, make their breakfast, etc. When I was in the classroom, I needed to leave the house around 7:30 to get to school with a few minutes to myself before the kids walked in the door. Now that I’m home, it’s invaluable to me that I have done something to take care of my mind, body, and spirit before they are awake. They may be small, but they are very needy, y’all.

Now, just to bring you back to reality real quick: I will most-assuredly sleep in until the kids wake up sometimes. Probably more often than I want y’all to know. But here’s a fact for you: my business has grown over 200% in the past calendar year. That’s sales, pins, traffic to my store, readers on this little blog here…and it didn’t grow on the days where I slept in and let kids dictate the direction of my day. Their little hearts and minds are not focused on my goals or my intentions-they are simply thinking ‘what is mom going to feed me today, and how often?’. That’s it. If your’e teaching in the classroom, that is 7+ hours that you can not dedicate to yourself. It just is what it is. Teaching may be rewarding in lots of ways, but it is a self-sacrificing gig. The time to improve yourself has to be carved out of what’s left over, which is hard, but I promise you is worth it.

You may notice that I don’t wake up and plan my day. I highly recommend figuring out what you need to get done in a day, before that day actually comes. I’ve included a free little checklist template here, so you can set your intentions for the next day before you go to sleep and maximize your mornings! Click the image to download for free from Google Drive.

I’m always curious…what does your morning routine look like? Do you prioritize time for yourself? Do you think you would get more done if you started to? Connect with me on Instagram to chat about all things morning routine!

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