Beware! The Mummy Monster

Something happened to me this week, I don’t know what it was, but I suddenly just crashed and burned. I could feel it in myself and I just didn’t feel like me. You know when you look down at the dashboard of your car and see the arrow on Empty? Well that’s what I felt like – that my little pointy arrow was on empty. I spent a good portion of the last week feeling like a zombie and an

empty shell. I couldn’t put my finger on what was causing it but even friends who only know me through this virtual reality I half live in noticed that I wasn’t myself. It had gotten so bad that I actually contemplated going to the doctors as I thought I must have some sort of virus or maybe I was in fact just morbidly depressed.

However, after the most horrific day, the worst of the entire week and doing battle with my 9 month old who was just in “one of THOSE moods,” I went to bed, was up a couple of times in the night but awoke in the morning and suddenly felt myself again. What had happened over night to suddenly change me? Well for the first time in nearly a week, despite being up several times I actually felt like I had had some sleep. I had cried off joining in with my beloved #tribalchat the night before because I couldn’t focus and was in too much pain from my ongoing shoulder injury and instead was in bed by 9pm and didn’t get up properly until 8am the next morning – apparently both Alyssa and I had needed some sleep after having battled with teething for nearly a week..  It was so peculiar, less than twenty four hours ago, I would have sworn blind that I had some sort of virus and that this was getting me down. However, 8 hours sleep and I won’t say I felt like a new woman… but pretty darn close!

Without sleep it appears I really do turn into the mummy monster. Everything is an effort including lifting my own limbs which feel like they have suddenly become made of lead let alone carrying my little bubba round. I was resorting to cramming everything I could possibly need onto my bedside table so that I wouldn’t actually have to move for a really long time. I don’t like it when I become the mummy monster because I don’t think I am a very nice version of myself when I am. I don’t do anything horrific or bad, but poor little bubba must often wonder where my smile has gone when the monster in me appears… though granted if anyone is going to get a smile out of me it will be her. Through my whole dieting journey, I have talked about working on my mental health as well as my physical health and I think for me and probably many mums out there sleep is a huge factor in our mental health. I mean it had gotten so bad the other day, that I couldn’t even be bothered to blog!!!! I mean WTF!!! That does not happen to me, but it did me good shutting down for the night and putting the phone down. I don’t think I was ever going to do great on lack of sleep as I have always needed it and been more of a morning person than a night owl. I think I am getting better though as the ugly face of

the mummy monster doesn’t appear to often!

I have realised that whether I sleep or don’t sleep it is important to take some time out for myself and sit in the garden or go for a walk or in some way switch off and just give myself a break. It doesn’t need to be for long but I think by doing this, then if I don’t manage to get any sleep, at least I can battle against my own hulk/Jekyll&Hyde syndrome and maybe keep that inner monster at bay.

What presses your buttons? Do you have an inner parent monster? What do you do put that monster back in it’s box?