The Power of Positive Affirmations for Mothers

Using the Power of Positive Statements to Motivate Mothers

Just like moms, every person’s breastfeeding journey is unique. Some will exclusively nurse. For others breastfeeding will be a combination of nursing and pumping. And others have totally different experiences. Whatever the breastfeeding journey looks like, it can be a full time job. This article from Inc claims that nursing equates to about 1,800 hours. A full time job is around 1,960 hours per year. We did the math for exclusive pumping people and found that the hours still add up. 

An exclusive pumper will pump on average for 120 minutes over the course of 24 hours. That adds up to 730 hours per year. If you conservatively estimate that a feeding takes about 15 minutes including bottle prep, that’s about 547 hours per year. We estimated that cleaning up after each pump takes about ten minutes. If you average the pump sessions out to about nine per day, that equals another 547 hours per year. Add all that up and these moms spend roughly 1,824 hours per year pumping!

Using Affirmations to Stay Motivated

The numbers don’t lie. Whether you nurse or pump, or a combination thereof, feeding your baby is a full time job. Now you have to add in all of the other roles a parent fills, like cleaning, cooking, working, etc. It gets daunting. Positive affirmations can go a long way to helping us reach our goals. 

What is an Affirmation? 

Simply put, an affirmation is a positive phrase like “I am worthy.” or “I am capable.” These phrases carry meaning and instill intrinsic value within ourselves. When we doubt ourselves, or question our abilities as mothers, we can start to manifest negative thought patterns or affirm negative beliefs. Take a moment and think about when the last time you said “I can’t do this.” was. Was it recently? 

How do I Find the Right Affirmation for Me?

Positivity for the sake of positivity can waste your energy and have a compounding effect. To benefit from using positive affirmations, we need to use the right ones, ones that impart the value or the meaning we need in our lives. So that can leave us with the question, which affirmation is right for me? How do we find out what the best affirmation is? 

The best way to find out which affirmation or affirmations are right for you is to take a little bit of time and examine your current situation. Where are you experiencing doubt, fear, or worry? Once we find these areas, we can start to explore affirmations and whether they feel right or a bit off for us. 

Forming Your Affirmation:

Let’s take breastfeeding as an example. If you are worried about your ability to reach your goals in breastfeeding this year, this is a great area in which you can use an affirmation. Now that you have identified an area in which you doubt your abilities, listen to those statements and really hear what you are saying to yourself. Are you saying “I’m not good at this.” or maybe “This just isn’t working for me”. 

Now we can flip the script. Take those negative, doubt filled statements and then speak the opposite. “I can do this.”, “Today, I did it.”, or even, “We are making this work.”.  As you speak these phrases, you’ll land on one or ones that really feel right. 

Repetition Is Key

Now that you’ve found an affirmation that speaks to you, that fills your heart so that there is no more room for negativity, the key is to keep speaking it. You can say it out loud, write it down, draw it on a photo of your kid or kids. Depending on where you want to use this affirmation in your life, you can find artwork that you can display in your room, or your baby’s nursery. There are cards that you can keep in your pump bag or diaper bag. You can find jewelry, card decks and more with powerful positive affirmations that are designed for mothers just like you. You can even make your own art, and other trinkets to help keep your affirmation top of mind. The key is to keep using this phrase again and again. The more you do, the more you will begin to realize that it is true.