139: When You're Running on 6% Battery and Your Kids Still Need You

Send Jen a Text MessageWhat if the most exhausted you've ever been isn't from the loss itself — but from mothering your living children while grieving the baby you didn't get to bring home?If you've come home from the hospital to a house full of little ones who still need you — needing breakfast, needing rides to school, needing your lap — you already know this kind of tired. The kind sleep doesn't fix. The kind that makes you feel like a zombie reading bedtime stories with your mouth while your brain is somewhere else entirely.In this episode, I'm taking you back to my kitchen — to my five-year-old in his Batman pajamas asking me a question I couldn't even hear. To the moment I realized I had nothing left. And to everything I want you to know if that's where you are right now.What you'll learn:Why the exhaustion of grieving while parenting is its own specific, lonely kind of tired — and why no one warns you about itThe "two jobs" you're doing every single day (and the second one is the one that's really eating you alive)Why snapping at your kids doesn't make you a bad mom — and what it actually means about how much you love themWhat your living children will really remember from this season (it's not what your guilt is telling you)How to drop the bar for what counts as "being a good mom" right now — all the way to the floorA simple practice for when the guilt starts spiraling after a hard moment with your kidsWhy the baby you lost is already part of the way you mother every other child you haveThe truth about whether you're "ruining" your kids by being sad (spoiler: you're not)If guilt is the heaviest thing you're carrying right now, my free workshop Practical Ways to Release Guilt and Navigate Grief After Baby Loss was built for exactly this. You can register at navigatingbabyloss.com/workshop.Read the full blog post here: https://navigatingbabyloss.com/post/parenting-after-stillbirth-exhaustion-guiltDownload my FREE "Guilt and Grief Release Journal" at navigatingbabyloss.com/journalWHERE TO FIND AND FOLLOW ME!Website-  https://www.navigatingbabyloss.comTik Tok-https://www.tiktok.com/@navigatingbabylossInstagram-https://www.instagram.com/navigatingbabyloss/You Tube-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz-2MCEY5PRiF6p6VB_2lxA