What Rest looks like as a Mum of 3 Girls under 5 | Introduction to the founder of Smell the Roses Australia

My name is Hannah, and I live along the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. I have three beautiful girls aged 4, 2 and 1. I am a stay-at-home mum and founder of Smell the Roses Australia. My husband, Jack, and I met in high school and have been together since year 12. We got married in 2020 and spent the COVID times together, unemployed in a little cottage in the Adelaide Hills, where we had our first daughter.  And once the babies came, they kept coming. Dad always told me it happens like that often enough (don't tell him he was right). Ever since, motherhood has been something no one could have ever prepared me for.

Many told me that since I grew up as the eldest of 6 kids, I'd had plenty of practice. But mothering is certainly a different kettle of fish. Sure, I could change a nappy and cook, but let's be real, that’s the easy stuff. I have many (and I mean many) parenting stories, but the most memorable was when we were at the end of the toilet training era with our second. She was pretty good at using the potty and would tell us when she had done something so we could help her clean up. But this one time, she decided she was more than capable. My whole home was in what we call "rest time," when everyone heads to their own space and spends just over an hour by themselves, playing quietly. At this time, everyone uses the toilet like clockwork, so I should've known when I wasn't called to do some butt-wiping. I came out of my rest space, and what do I find? Brown smears all over the carpet from her bedroom, through the hallway and into the bathroom. To clean up, she rubbed tiny pieces of toilet paper into the carpet and spilled the whole bottle of vinegar in one spot. With brown smears on her dress, hands and potty, there she was cleaning it up all alone. That week, I had already been peed on, used my bare hands to unblock the toilet, and had a child lick the toilet brush, so as you could imagine, my first thought was, "What is wrong with my kids!?" I took a moment, and like a dutiful mum, cleaned it all up with less grace than I would've liked. Scrubbed a few layers of skin off my hands and moved on with the day.  My kids have certainly taught me to roll with the punches.

Before kids, rest looked a lot less intentional than it does now in motherhood. It used to look like a Netflix and chill evening with Jack or heading out for lunch with a friend whenever I felt like. I knew I could push and push myself through the hard times because a time of pause and rest was always around the corner somewhere. But this pattern was what brought me to the point in motherhood where I found myself lying in bed with movies on repeat for the kids until Jack got home from a few nights away for work; feeling like 'warmed up death' as my mum would say. In my season of little ones, motherhood feels incredibly hard. Every. Single. Day. And while pre-baby me would just wait out the hard times, holding onto the hope of rest, the mum version of me needs more. I can’t just hope for rest, I need to make it happen. The challenge? Carving out time. I try planning ahead and putting it into the calendar, only to get to the day and have something booked over it. And the GUILT! Why do I feel guilty about taking some time to recharge and refresh? I've had to start intentionally pushing past the guilt and fighting for the time. If that looks like telling the kids they can't head to the playground or telling my husband that he can't get busy in the shed or repair the car, then so be it. Honestly, it still makes me feel uncomfortable, but I need rest so I can continue to love on my family. And I can love them best when I get to choose to serve my family, not when I’m driven crazy exhausted by it.

If a tired, exhausted mum is reading my story right now, I want you to know that you are so precious to your family, and you need to take precious care of yourself too;  taking time to rest is not optional. Everyone needs it, including our kids, our husbands, and ourselves. When I look back on this season, I want my kids to remember me as a fun, light and inspiring mum. One that took life step by step beside them, not a mum who was always too tired to play and struggled to find joy in the small moments of everyday life. Hard times are inevitable, I know that for a fact. Running away from our family to get 'me time' constantly isn't healthy either, but setting sustainable rhythms of rest as mums allows us to remain present, tender-hearted towards the ones we love, and always in a position of being able to give generously of ourselves. And that is reason enough for me to continue to work hard to fight for spaces of rest in my life.