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What does self-care really look like when you’re a working mama?

For me, it definitely doesn’t look like it used to pre-babies. (Honestly, it doesn’t even look like it did a year ago when I just had one!)

But even though self-care may look different in this season of life, that doesn’t mean it can’t still be nurturing, soulful, and even pleasurable.

In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on what self-care looks like for me right now — in the thick of raising babies, running a business, and navigating this beautiful, full, family-oriented phase of life.

Tune in to learn how I microdose self-care in the mornings, what I do before the kids wake up, the Ayurvedic ritual that grounds me, the small things that help me stay connected to myself, and why I believe that being of service can be a powerful form of self-care.

So if you’re craving real, doable inspiration to take care of yourself during this delightfully full season of life, then press play now… this one’s for you.

In this episode we chat about:

• Why I’ve swapped long morning routines for microdoses of self-care (1:39)
• What I do before the kids wake up, including breathwork, meditation, journaling — and the power of just a few moments of stillness (2:03)
• The Ayurvedic detox ritual I swear by every morning (3:17)
• How I incorporate sauna, gentle movement, and nature time into every day (4:03)
• The life-changing magic of a full-body aura cleanse (aka ocean swim!) (5:46)
• The underrated 2-minute ritual that makes me *instantly* feel more alive (6:14)
• My go-to essential oils, my favourite tea, and the ritual that ties it all together (6:41)
• How to make your skincare routine feel more like a self-love practice than a chore (7:39)
• Why I’ve made space for pleasure reading and yes, even TV, with zero guilt (8:10)
• How I use Time Magic habit-stacking to get double the bang for my buck (9:40)
• The foot soak that melts away tension and helps me wind down (10:56)
• Why I’m a stickler for making time for friends (11:42)
• How I’m learning to say no with love — and why being clear on your priorities is a radical act of self-care (12:20)
• Bonus: Why being of service to my kids is one of the most soul-nourishing things I do (13:45)

Episode resources:

• SheLaunch (join here)
• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)
• The Wholy Mama Journal (website)
• Heal Your Hormones with Alisa Vitti (podcast)

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The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

[00:00:00] The Melissa Ambrosini Show. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa bestselling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, open, wide, comparisonitis and Time Magic. And I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. Each week I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change.

Your own life and become the best version of yourself possible. Are you ready? Beautiful. Beautiful.

Hey, beautiful. Welcome back to the show. I’m so excited about this episode because I’m gonna be sharing with you some self-love or self-care things that I do each day that really move the needle as a working mama for this season in my life. [00:01:00] Now, before I had children, I would do a three hour morning routine, and it was delicious.

Not gonna lie, it was delicious. However, I have two children now, multiple businesses, and that is just not possible. Well, it could be possible if I chose to get someone to look after my children for three hours, but it is a priority for me to be with my children. However, I. Wanna take care of myself, I still want to fill myself up and look after myself.

So I like to do what I call microdose self-care throughout my day for this season in my life. So I’m gonna share some things that I do each day. I want you to write them down and I want you to take whichever ones resonate with you, implement them, and then let me know how you go. Okay? So grab a pen and paper or open the notes section in your phone.

Create a new note and [00:02:00] title it Microdose Self-Care. Okay, so I’ll start with the beginning of the day. One of the first things I do if I’m not getting woken up by my children is if I wake up before them, I lay there and I do some deep breathing. I. Literally maybe 10 seconds or however long I’ve got, and I might just do a couple rounds of box breathing, which is where you breathe in for five, hold for five and breathe out for five.

So I’ll do that. Then if I still have time and my children haven’t woken me up, I might sit up and do a 20 minute meditation. If I don’t do it, then I’ll do it later in the day, which I’ll explain soon. But if I still have time, I’ll do that. Then if I still have time and they’re not awake yet. I will grab my Holy Mama journal and I’ll do a little bit of journaling, a little bit of gratitude, or a little bit of intention setting for the day.

So that is what I do first thing in the morning. Does that happen every morning? Absolutely not. Is my alarm clock most mornings? My children? Yes. For this season in my life, yes [00:03:00] it is. So I will do things later when I can, but that is always my intention to start my day like that. And if it doesn’t happen, I don’t beat myself up.

I am kind and compassionate to myself, and I just fit it in later. I microdose later. Okay. I. Then one of the next things I always do is I go and scrape my tongue. It is an Ayurvedic detox ritual that I absolutely love. I’ve done it for probably 15 years now, and I love it. So I’ll scrape my tongue, brush my teeth, wash my face.

Then I will go and have a glass of warm filtered water with a little pinch of salt and maybe a little bit of lime or lemon juice, and I drink it through a stainless steel straw so that it doesn’t ruin the enamel on my teeth. So you wanna do that? And I drink it out of a glass. So I will always have a warm glass of water first thing in the morning before I have anything else.

So these are just little things that I do [00:04:00] that are microdosed self-care throughout my day. Then I may have a sauna a couple mornings a week. I might have a sauna when I wake up. I’ll turn the sauna on and let it heat up so that when I get in there, it’s really hot and I only need 10 minutes in there before I’m fully sweating.

And then I get out. I have asked my doctor, Dr. Steven Cabral, if this is okay whilst I am breastfeeding and he has a okayed it, which is great. He doesn’t want me in there too long. And he said, just go in there, you know, until you get a sweat and then you can get out. So you’re getting all of those benefits.

So that is what I do. Also try and do a bit of movement every single day. So that might be a walk with Prince on me when he has his third little nap in the day, or each morning after we’ve had our breakfast and before Prince goes down for his first sleep at nine o’clock, I will put both children in the pram.

Bambi has like a little scooter thing that goes on the back of the pram. So I will take both children and I will go for a walk and I have to push that pram. With both of them [00:05:00] in it, up a huge hill, and that is a workout for me. We do a little morning walk, which is so beautiful. I love it. We get fresh air and I find both children absolutely love getting out of the house at eight o’clock and having that time in nature with me and we get that little connection time, which is really beautiful.

And we’re getting nature, which is another one of my microdose self-care rituals, getting out into nature as much as possible. We eat outside when we can. We are outside as much as possible unless it is raining. We are outside, so we will eat our lunch outside. We are usually all nude, getting some sun, and we just love it.

So then we’re getting that beautiful vitamin D. We’re getting those negative ions from nature. It is amazing. Then we always try and have a dip in the ocean, what I call an aura cleanse, and I just love it so much. So even if it is just quickly, we live very, very close to the beach like. I could be on the [00:06:00] sand in I think 30 seconds.

So I will run down to the beach and just dip in if that’s all I’ve got. Or we will all go down as a family at some point in the day. So that is another thing that we do. Something else that I do in the morning is dry body brush. So I don’t do this every day, but when I do, ugh, it feels so good. So just doing some dry body brushing and it doesn’t have to take long and you can watch a video on YouTube on how to do it.

You wanna brush upwards and toward your heart, and it is one of those things. It’s like tongue scraping. I’ve been dry body brushing for like 15 years and I absolutely love it so much. Another beautiful self-care or self-love ritual that you can do is use essential oils so you can diffuse them. I just find taking 30 seconds to pick an oil, put it in a diffuser, and diffuse it whilst you are moving around the house or working.

It’s just such a beautiful little [00:07:00] act of reverence for yourself. I just love it. It makes such a difference. Another thing that I love to do is I have a cup of tea each day. And I usually have a breastfeeding tea and I just love it and I sip it and that to me, and I have it with like a loco love chocolate, and I dip the chocolate in.

It’s a raw, organic, vegan chocolate, and I’ll dip it in my tea and Oh mm, full on pleasure. I don’t drink coffee. I don’t drink alcohol. Like that to me is pure pleasure. Pure pleasure, and I love it so much. So I’ll sip my tea, have my little loco love chocolate. Mm. If you’ve had one. You know what I mean?

Okay. Another one that I’m trying to do a bit more, which I’m gonna be honest with you, I’m not amazing at it, is taking a little bit more time with my skincare. I usually just whack it on and go, but that time when I do take the time to really, you know, exfoliate and moisturize and just take that [00:08:00] time to rub and really love on my face, take an extra, you know, 20 seconds or whatever it is.

Delicious. So you could try that. Another little Microdosed self-love ritual is reading for pleasure. I recently interviewed Alyssa Vietti. The episode hasn’t come out yet, but she’s already been on the podcast, so you can go and listen to my other episode with her. But the new episode hasn’t come out yet and we were talking about oxytocin boosters, and she was saying reading for pleasure.

Like when women read romance novels, it boosts oxytocin in their body. So. And I know that for me, whenever I am reading an amazing romance novel, oh, it’s just, again, it is pleasure. So I’m all for reading personal development and spiritual books and entrepreneurial books, and sometimes a romance novel is exactly what you need, exactly what you need.

And also watching something for pleasure. You know, we don’t have a TV in this house and we [00:09:00] very, very rarely watch something, but. If we’re not exhausted, we will watch something like Chef’s Table or something like that. And it’s just a little time for us together, and I really enjoy it. It brings me a lot of joy.

We hold hands and we cuddle, and it’s just so nice to have that moment. And now I must preface this by saying literally, I last probably 15 minutes before I’m asleep and I’m like, go in bed, babe. I’m, I’m out. And he’s like, you are the worst to watch something with, because. You just don’t last long, but that is a nice, pleasurable thing to do.

If it is something enjoyable and that you like doing, you could try that. Another thing I do before I get into bed is I roll my back. So because I am carrying prints most of the day and I’m breastfeeding, I’ve been getting a tight and sore upper back. And the same thing happened with Bambi. I actually got a shoulder injury from breastfeeding Bambi, and not having good posture.

It took me like [00:10:00] two and a half years to rehab that shoulder. So I have been a lot better with my posture with Prince. However, I still get quite a tight upper back, so I have a roller that I roll on every night just to kind of roll out those kinks in my back and it really works. So you could do some foam rolling or stretching again whilst you’re talking to your partner or whilst you’re watching something.

That’s what I do, and it’s like. A time magic habit stack, and a lot of these things that I’ve shared with you can be time, magic, habit stacked. So you can do multiple of these at once, and I recommend you do that. So if you have a sauna, you can listen to something inspiring like a podcast or an audio book, or you could read your romance novel, or that’s when you could do your dry body brushing, or that’s when you could do some journaling in your Holy Mama Journal.

Whatever it is. But make sure you tie Magic Habit Stack because then you can get multiple of these in at one time. Another thing I love doing is a Epsom salt [00:11:00] foot bath. And I usually do this with Bambi, so we will get some filtered water, we’ll put some Epson salts in there, and then we’ll put rose petals, lavender, and chamal, and we do that together and she absolutely loves it.

And this mama loves it as well. So that’s another little thing you can do. And all of these things, get your children involved if you want to, like, you can get them journaling, you can get them moving their body, you can get them, you know, diving in the ocean and just little things. Whatever you can get the children to do with you, invite them.

And they’re also then seeing a mother who is embodying, taking care of herself, loving herself. And that is what we wanna teach our children. Right. So that’s another one that I love. Dancing. I absolutely love dancing, and again, this is something that I do with Bambi. So after dinner we will put on one song and we will have a little dance, and we absolutely love doing that.

Another thing I love doing is having a phone call with a friend, which doesn’t happen much these days. [00:12:00] More so voice messages back and forth or catching up with a friend, which again, doesn’t happen every day. But when I do, I absolutely love it. And it fills me up. And again, you could catch up with friends who have children of the same age, and then all the kids can play.

Then you are getting full and also your kids are getting that connection as well. And then the last one that I wanted to leave you with is saying no with love and getting really clear on what your priorities are for this season in your life. Like make a list of what your priorities are and stick to those for this season of your life.

And say no to the things that are not. A priority that are not in alignment with what is important to you right now, saying no thank you with love is one of the most loving things that you can do for yourself. Yeah, because we come from generations of people pleasers, but we need to break that and it starts with us.

So they are a couple of [00:13:00] things that you can do each day to fill yourself up, to take care of your beautiful self because. If you are a working mama like me, we can default to never doing nice things for ourself, but you are worthy of it, and we wanna embody that and teach it to our children. And a lot of these things can be done in a couple of minutes.

You don’t have to take hours, but they really do make you feel great, make you feel full, so that you then show up as the best version of yourself. And. Also, sometimes one of the most loving things you can do for yourself is give and be of service as well. And something that I’m really realizing now in my life is another microdose self-love thing is being of service to my children.

Like not from a depleted place, but from a place of devotion and love. So [00:14:00] I want you to take this list, take a couple of things each day, do them for yourself. And fill yourself up, microdose your self love and your self care each day because you are worth it. And I want you to show up as the best version of yourself.

And I want your children to see you honoring yourself because then they will learn that and honor themselves as well. So I hope you got a lot out of this, and if you did. Please subscribe to the show and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts because that means that we can inspire and educate even more people together.

And if you send me a screenshot of your review to hello@melissaambrosini.com, I will send you my wildly wealthy guided meditation as a thank you gift for taking the time to leave me a review. Now come and tell me on Instagram at Melissa Ambrosini, what is your favorite one of these that I have mentioned and.

Do you have another one that I could try out? That I could add to my [00:15:00] list? And before I go, I just wanted to say thank you so much for being here, for wanting to be the best, the healthiest, and the happiest version of yourself, and for showing up today for you. You rock. Now, if there’s someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode.

Please share it with them right now. You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them, do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears. And until next time, don’t forget that love is sexy. Healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

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Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

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P.P.S. Please seek advice from a qualified holistic practitioner before starting any new health practice.