It’s not about me anymore…or is it?

“It’s not about me anymore”… those words continue to play through my head each day as I look down at my growing belly filled with a little life. I am 5 months pregnant and life as I know it will be changing very soon. However, when people tell me “It’s not about you anymore”, I can’t help but disagree.

Now more than ever I realize the importance of taking care of my body, physically and mentally. Working as a massage therapist is a physically demanding job, and as the pounds continue to stack on I am truly feeling the effects. After a day’s work, my body is sore in ways that I have never experienced and the fatigue is overwhelming. These aches and pains are serving as my daily reminder that I need to continue to keep my body strong enough to bear the load, because I’m only half way to the finish line, and from what I’ve heard, I don’t even know the meaning of fatigue….wait till the baby comes, they say….

In a few months, my world will shift and my focus will be entirely on the little life that I have been carrying around with me. So I have decided that little life will be the sole reason I cannot forget about taking care of ME. All too often I hear women telling me that they do not have time to eat healthy, exercise, or even have a moment to just breathe because they have children and life is not about them anymore. These women are some of the best, most caring mothers I know. But when they talk like this, I am always puzzled… isn’t having children more of a reason, if not the only reason, to have to take care of ourselves? Motherhood is often called the hardest job in the world, which I happen to agree with, so wouldn’t it make sense to prepare our bodies and minds as such? With a child comes less hours in a day to get things accomplished, especially if there is a career stacked on top of our motherly duties. So if and when we catch those small moments of opportunity to do something healthy for our bodies, we MUST do it. Our little lives depend on us.

In honor of Women’s Health Month, let’s all try to lend a hand to the ladies in our life mothers or not, so that they may catch their own opportunity to do something healthy and rewarding for themselves…. even if all they want to do with that moment is take a nap!

Sarah Murray, LMT, NCTMB