When you hear the term “work-life balance”, what comes to your mind?
The term ” work-life balance” is made up of 3 terms: work, life, and balance. Work entails those activities that one does to earn a living. Life entails everything else aside from work. Balance is being able to reach a middle ground between things.
Balance is often seen as a 50-50 ground. It is seen as being able to reach a middle ground between both of them, although, in this case, it is not so. Balance in this context means being able to handle each side in a manner that one feels fulfilled and not overwhelmed.
A nursing mother is a woman who is breastfeeding a child. A nursing mother can either be a housewife or a career woman. Work-life balance for nursing mothers differs in each category.
This article will explore the work-life balance of nursing mothers and share some health care tips for nursing mothers.
Categories of Nursing Mothers
Nursing mothers are of two categories, which are:
- Housewife
- Career Wife
Housewife Nursing Mother
A housewife is a woman whose work is running or managing her home, caring for her children; buying goods that the family needs for everyday life; cooking, storing food for the family, housekeeping, and maintaining the home; also, buying and/or mending clothes for the family. She is not employed outside of the home as defined by Wikipedia.
All these duties revolve around the house. That means that she has enough duties to keep her occupied all day. Having a baby and caring for that baby will demand a lot of attention and can be a huge workload on her.
Her work is taking care of her home and her life here entails her well-being. For a housewife, attending to the baby and maintaining the home can be a lot of work and would require balance to avoid her being choked up or worn out.
Work-Life Balance Guide For A Nursing House Wife
- Listening to her body: caring for a baby takes a lot from the mother. Milk production takes a lot of nutrients from her body as well. It requires that she rests well and feeds well as that will help for milk production and produce more food for the nourishment of the baby. Therefore, she needs to observe and care for her body. By resting, when tired and eating adequately. This will help her not be used up in the process of nourishing the child. It’s important she listens to her body and gives it what it wants.
- Learning to ask for help: don’t try to be a superhero mum. Breastfeeding and caring for a child is tasking. She shouldn’t keep quiet while everything chokes her up. She should come to terms with the fact that the things she did before and the frequency she did it will change and that’s ok. Ask for help when in need of it.
- Delegating: delegation is good especially when there are people to whom you can give the work. At this stage, she can ask for a relative to come to stay with her or get a house help to come live with her and help her in the house at least till the baby is weaned.
Being a nursing mother can be demanding and would require lots of love and understanding plus assistance from the people around her, especially her husband.
Career Nursing Mother
A career wife is a woman who is married and is part of a working group. This means she juggles being employed at an office and her life (family). Employers have made some policies in their companies that support breastfeeding mums to take some time off work for some months with pay. This has helped career wives to be able to have their jobs and still care for their families.
Managing your work and your life is already a lot to handle. With the addition of a baby, it makes it a lot more difficult to handle and without proper balance, could pose a threat to the sanity of the woman. Hence, the importance of balance.
Work-Life Balance Guide For A Career Nursing Mother
A career wife can balance her life by:
- Work-Life Integration: after some months of staying at home after giving birth, work resumes. The fact that work resumes don’t mean that breastfeeding will stop too. Therefore, there has to be a level of integration between her work and life. It means that she can work at home when she is free. She can also take breaks at the office to breastfeed or rest herself. There has to be a level of integration.
- Get Assistance: it is not easy to handle everything yourself. It is important to get help, either by employing an assistant at work or getting help at home. That would help her concentrate on herself and her baby in addition to other child(ren) she may have.
These are the few guides that I could address. You can add yours to the list. You know where you are lacking and need help.
Healthcare Tips For Nursing Mothers
According to an article written and published by Mustela, the following are tips to help you in your breastfeeding:
- Anticipate your baby’s desire
- Allow the baby to determine when and how long to nurse
- Leaking is natural. Do not be alarmed.
- Take care of your skin
- Avoid enforcement.
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