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Have you ever been so deep in it that you didn’t even realise you were in it? That was me with postpartum depletion. I didn’t have the language for it. I just knew I was tired in a way sleep wasn’t fixing, and I was holding it all together on the outside while quietly running on empty underneath. And here’s what I’ve come to understand. This is not just a postpartum thing. This is an ambitious woman thing. So many of us have been pouring out for years and calling it normal.

In this episode I’m sharing what that season taught me. Five nuggets of wisdom I wish I’d known sooner. We talk about the truth no one tells you about the basics, why the three-hour morning routine is a fantasy in a depleted season, what to actually do when “sleep when the baby sleeps” isn’t an option, and why being deeply ambitious and deeply well were never meant to be opposites. This one is for the new mama. It is for the mother whose baby is now ten and still hasn’t recovered. And it is for the ambitious woman who isn’t a mother at all but knows exactly what it feels like to give everything and have nothing left for herself.

In this episode we chat about:

• The moment I realised it wasn’t just tiredness (0:55)
• Why the three-hour morning routine is a fantasy in this season and what to do instead (2:27)
• The kind of freedom postpartum forced me to build (9:43)
• What willpower won’t fix (11:35)
• The low-hanging fruit not many people actually do but that really move the needle(14:54)
• Depletion that breaks you vs. depletion that teaches you (20:01)
• The five minute rule (24:35)
• Plus so much more!

Episode resources:

• The Iconic Mastermind (join now)
• 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)
• Dr Stephen Cabral Big 5 Lab Test everyone needs to do (get them)
• Blackout Sleep Mask (use code melissa for 15% off)
• Bon Charge Blue Light Blocking Glasses ON CHARGE Blue Light Blocking Glasses (Use code melissa for 15% off)
• 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)
•  Longevity Secrets From The World’s Healthiest People with Dan Buettner (podcast)
• Overcoming ‘Mama Guilt’, Self-Care After Kids & Navigating ‘Matrescence’ with Amy Taylor-Kabbaz (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 in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible.

Are you ready, beautiful?

For a long time, I thought I was just exhausted. Then I realized I wasn’t tired, I was completely depleted, and there is a very big difference Welcome back to the show. I am so excited that you are here. Today, I wanna talk about something that I didn’t have the language for when [00:01:00] I was in it. Often, that is the case.

I only have the language for it now on the other side, looking back, and that is postpartum depletion. And before you think, like, what I’m about to share with you is just for new moms, or you are not a mom at all, I want you to stay with me because this isn’t just for new moms. If you have had a baby three, five, seven years ago, and you still feel tired in a way that sleep does not fix, this is for you.

One of my best friends is five years in, and she still feels this. Now, postpartum depletion can last years if it is never properly addressed, and it can sit inside any season of your life where you’ve been pouring out for a long stretch without filling yourself back up. So this is for mothers, but it’s also for the carers, the business owners, the women holding a lot, [00:02:00] the women who look capable on the outside and feel completely depleted and empty on the inside.

And here’s what I want you to walk away with today. I’m gonna share five nuggets of wisdom from what postpartum depletion has taught me, five things that I wish I had’ve got onto sooner, and five things that I want every woman to hear. And I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t know I was depleted until I was really, really depleted.

So just to give you a bit of backstory, I had Bambi five years ago, breastfed for two years. Once I finished breastfeeding, I did a full detox. I did Dr. Steven Cabral’s Big 5 full detox, got my body ready for baby number two, got pregnant, had a miscarriage, waited two months, got pregnant again straight away, and that was with Prince.

So for the past six years, I have been pregnant or breastfeeding, and no matter what, no matter how healthy you are or [00:03:00] how young you are, giving birth, being pregnant requires a lot, and you are depleted. It requires so much of your reserves. And so if you have given birth, you are depleted, and we need to fill yourself back up.

And it wasn’t until I was deeply depleted, where I have felt pain in my body that I’ve never felt before, where it was affecting my physical body, it was affecting my mental health. It wasn’t until I was deep in that, that I realized there was an issue and that I needed to fix it. So that is where I’m coming from in this episode, not from a place of having it all figured out, but from a place of having lived it.

And learn from it. I’m wanting to save you of the long way around. So let’s get into it. If you’re not driving, you’re gonna wanna take notes. So here’s the truth that sits underneath [00:04:00] everything that I’m about to share. You can pour from an empty cup, but it is not the ideal situation. You know that saying, you can’t pour from an empty cup.

You actually can, and as mothers, we do. Like, I was so depleted, and I still was pouring into my business and still pouring into my children. So you can actually pour from an empty cup. However, that is not what we wanna do. That is not the ideal situation, and I get it. When you’ve got kids and when you’ve got a business or when you’re caring for elderly parents, you are giving, giving, giving, giving, giving.

You are pouring, you are pouring, you are pouring. But this is the time where we need to fill up as much as we possibly can. Now, you’re not gonna have time with a newborn for a three-hour morning routine solo. That is not realistic. You know, cold plunges, journaling, meditation, breathwork, gym, green juice, like that is all lovely But realistically, it’s [00:05:00] not gonna happen.

And if you wait for the perfect window to take care of yourself, you will be waiting forever. Five minutes counts. Five minutes is enough. I remember with Prince, I was in the early postpartum phase, and I had a Post-it Note stuck on my bathroom mirror, and it had five things that I could do each day that filled me up.

One of them was dry body brush. One was sitting in front of the red light. Another was getting sun on my body. Another was oiling my whole body, and then just hydration. Those five things became my self-love menu, and I stuck them on a Post-it Note, and I stuck it on the bathroom mirror. They were all free.

I could do them in two minutes, and that filled me up in that season. So you don’t need a three-hour morning routine to fill yourself up. Give yourself permission. Let that go, my friend. Let that go. Five minutes counts, and flexibility is the whole game, not perfection, not a perfect [00:06:00] routine, not the version of you who has two free hours.

No. Five minutes. Five minutes. That’s all you need. So if you feel depleted right now, if you are giving so much in your business and so much to your children or so much to an elderly parent, I want you to pull out a Post-it Note right now. Write down five things that are free that you can do in a couple of minutes, and you stick them on your bathroom mirror, and I want you to do those every single day.

Okay? It’s so simple. It’s the little things that are easy to do are also easy not to do, but it is these little things that add up to big results or big consequences. What do you choose? If you wanna live a big life, if you want to have the life of your dreams, you have to do these little things. They add up to big results, okay?

And here’s the other thing I wanna name. This pressure from society to, quote, unquote, [00:07:00] “snap back,” to return to your body or your work or your old life or the world’s timeline. Your body took nine months to build a human. It deserves more than six freaking weeks to recover. You are allowed to take longer than the world says you should, and filling yourself up is not selfish.

It is not indulgent. It is the absolute foundation everything else sits on. Your family, your work, your purpose, your leadership at home and in your business, all of it rests on whether you are full or empty. And you know that Your energy, your nervous system dictates the energy and the nervous system of the home and your business.

So if you are depleted, that is what your children are getting, that is what your business is getting. So give yourself permission [00:08:00] to fill yourself up, five minutes of breathwork, five minutes of red light. Yesterday, I was eating my lunch with my hydrogen health breathing machine on and sitting in front of the red light.

You’ve got to time magic habit stack. You’ve got to. In this season of our life, time magic habit stacking is where it is at. Can you work with your legs up the wall? Can you do your Instagram post whilst your legs are up the wall? Can you sit in the sauna and do some work? How can you time magic habit stack so that you are filling yourself up as much as you possibly can?

And how can you drip feed these throughout your day? Do something in the morning. Can you do something at lunch? And then can you do something when the kids have gone to bed? You know, start your day with a little bit of breathwork, meditation, prayer. Doesn’t have to be long, 20 minutes. Can you eat your lunch with the red light in front of you, if you have one, or a hydrogen breathing machine in, if you have [00:09:00] one, or outside with the sun on your face and no technology.

And then can you lay with your legs up the wall while you talk to your partner or do an ice facial? Nick and I have started doing ice facials once the kids go to bed. It’s really good for your nervous system. So we do an ice facial each. It’s basically where you just dip your face in a bowl of ice. And then if we watch something, we’ll watch something with our legs up the wall.

So easy. It’s the little things. So let’s go deeper into how we can fill ourself back up. I’ve mentioned a couple, but let’s go deeper. I’m gonna share some nuggets with you. Here’s nugget number one. Build a business that holds you, not one that you have to hold up. This is the first one because postpartum made it non-negotiable for me.

If you are in business, I want you to listen very carefully to this, [00:10:00] a business that needs you to show up every single day in order to make money is not freedom. It is not freedom. A business that collapses the moment you stop is not a business, it is a job that you have built for yourself. True freedom Is revenue that comes in when you are not there, when you are sleeping, when you are in postpartum.

True luxury is being able to step away, rest, recover, be with your baby, be with yourself, and the business keeps holding it. This is what I help women build inside the Iconic Mastermind. If you wanna join us, just go to melissaambrosini.com/iconic. You can join the wait list. This is what we do. We create businesses that have the right architecture, businesses that hold the woman instead of needing the woman to hold it up I’ve been there, and it is depleting.

Postpartum will show you very quickly whether your business is built around you or built on top of you. And if [00:11:00] it is built on top of you, that is information. That is not failure. That’s the next thing to fix, my friend. And maybe you don’t wanna have any more babies, so you might think, “Oh, well it’s okay.”

But what if you wanna go to Europe for two months in the summer? What if you wanna take a holiday and literally step back? I want that for you. I want that for you. So if your business is built around you being there, performing, we can fix this. Freedom is not a vibe. It is structural. So that’s nugget number one.

Nugget number two is take your freaking supplements no matter what. I’m gonna be really honest with you. Before I had kids, I didn’t really take many supplements. I didn’t really feel any different if I took them or if I didn’t take them. No different. But holy smokes, postpartum, if I missed my supplements, there was a time where I ran out of pretty much [00:12:00] everything, and I get all of my supplements from the US, and so it took, like, a couple of weeks for them to get here.

I felt the worst I’ve ever felt. After three pregnancies, after giving so much, after still breastfeeding, when I stopped taking my supplements, I felt the worst I’d ever felt. Now, I’m not saying everyone has to be on supplements, I just think that when you are depleted, they can absolutely support you, and after birth, you are depleted.

It doesn’t matter how young, it doesn’t matter how healthy you are, it doesn’t matter how well you ate during pregnancy, your body has given everything to grow a human. Grow a freaking human, and it needs to be rebuilt. So supplement, supplement, supplement. But here’s the important part. Quality absolutely matters.

The cheap stuff from the supermarket is not the same as practitioner grade. That does matter. [00:13:00] The form matters. The bioavailability matters. So I personally love Dr. Steven Cabral’s supplements and his Big 5 tests. I will link to it in the show notes, but you can go to melissaambrosini.com/big, B-I-G, and the number five.

They’re the tests that I do, and they’re the supplements that I take. And don’t guess. Don’t guess what you need. Get your bloods done. I don’t guess. I do not guess I get my tests. I do his full top five tests so I know where I’m at, and I do these a couple of times a year. Ideally, I would do it three times a year, even four.

Every season I would do it, just to make sure I’m on top of things. But I don’t. I do it about twice a year. You know, you need to look at things like iron, B12, vitamin D, a full thyroid panel, hormones, everything. Your thyroid postpartum is one that gets missed all the time. So many women are told that they’re just tired, where [00:14:00] actually their thyroid has tanked.

I’ve had a couple of friends who have had children and then got thyroid issues after that. Postpartum thyroid issues is real, and it’s common, and it is under-diagnosed. So work with a holistic practitioner who tests. No one who guesses. Naturopaths, integrative GPs, integrative doctors, functional medicine doctors.

Find someone who looks at the full picture. And I wanna add a quick honest note here. Like, I am absolutely not a doctor. This is not medical advice. This is what I’ve learned through my own experience and from working with the right practitioners. So find your own. But please, please, please do not skip this step.

You will not get out of depletion on willpower, on mindset. You will get out of it on minerals, vitamins, real food, and the right support. So that is nugget number two. Nugget number three: do the basics. The low-hanging fruit is the whole [00:15:00] orchid. We overcomplicate wellness so much. We really do. We look for these advanced biohacking protocols.

I’ve been biohacking since 2013. I’m like an OG biohacker. We had one of the first sets of the blue light blocking glasses. They were huge. They would like wrap around your face. They were so hilarious. I wish we kept them. But I’ve been biohacking for a long time. I have been in the wellness industry since 2010, and I love it.

I love it. But often we look for these fancy protocols and biohacks and quick fixes, and we skip the basics because they seem too simple to be the answer. But the basics are the answer. Clean, filtered water every single day, not when you remember, every day. Sunshine on your skin, even 10 minutes first thing in the morning if you can.

Movement. It doesn’t have to be a workout, a [00:16:00] walk around the block, that counts. Stretching on the floor while your baby sleeps, that counts. Nature, get outside, feet in the grass, the sand, trees, sky, breathe in. Ah. Breathe in those negative ions. Real food. Real, clean, simple food. Nutrient-dense food, protein, healthy fats, healthy carbs, fiber, vegetables.

Eat real clean food. Make sure your plate is balanced. Every meal should have protein, healthy fats, healthy carbs, fiber. It should have all of those things. And the next one I’m gonna share with you is one that we often forget, and that is socializing. I’m not saying you have to go out for a dinner party every night of the week.

I’m definitely not saying that. I don’t do that. But isolation depletes you faster than almost anything else. I’ve had Dan Buettner, the founder of the Blue [00:17:00] Zones around the world, and the Blue Zones, for those that don’t know, are the areas where they have the most centenarians, and one of the commonalities in these Blue Zones is socialization.

They really prioritize it. And postpartum can be one of the loneliest seasons of a woman’s life, and we don’t talk about it enough. So socializing, very important. Just one catch up with one friend. I’m not saying you have to go to big, long lunches and get dressed up. That’s not what I’m saying. Catch up with your children, but just have a conversation with another adult.

And this brings me to the village part. Like, if you have a partner, this is the season to be honest about what you need. Stop performing fine. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Stop saying, “I’m okay,” when you’re not. Tell him or her, tell them. Ask for the specific thing that you need. “I’m not feeling good right now. I need to go and lay down.”

Just be honest. Stop trying [00:18:00] to perform fine. Speak your truth. If you don’t have built-in support, building a village is part of the work. Mamas groups, friends who will bring you food, a meal train, paying for help if you can, getting other people to do the school drop-off or pick-up, utilizing your parents, the in-laws if you can, aunts, uncles, great-grandparents, postpartum doulas, cleaners, whatever you can put in place, free or paid, whatever you can, ask for help.

Get over trying to think you can do it all on your own. Ask for help at home and in your business. And on the sleep thing, the advice, sleep when your baby sleeps, is often so unrealistic. Like, there is a load of washing, there is a meal to make, there are a million things to do, and maybe there’s another child or two other children or three other children that you have to take care of.

So I wanna offer you this. [00:19:00] Rest without sleep actually still counts. Lying down with your eyes closed, with an eye mask on, I love the Bon Charge blackout eye mask. I put that on in the day, and I sleep with it on at night as well. But doing that for 10 minutes or laying still with your legs up the wall and deep breathing, that still counts.

Saying no to the visitors count. Sitting in the sun for 15 minutes counts. Doing nothing for a small window counts. If you are laying down completely still- That’s still rest. So lower the bar on what restoration looks like, and you will actually get some. There were times in my postpartum depletion phase where I had postpartum insomnia, and I could not sleep, and it was incredibly stressful, but I kept on reminding myself that just laying here and resting was enough.

So don’t put pressure on yourself for it to look a certain way, [00:20:00] which brings me to the next nugget. Nugget number four, mindset is everything. This is so important, and the longest nugget that I wanna share because mindset is the through line of all of this. Sleep matters. Of course, it matters, but your mindset in the sleep-deprived season matters more.

Let that land. Your mindset in the sleep-deprived season matters more. How you talk to yourself when you are running on empty is everything. The thoughts that you let loop become your reality. The story you tell yourself about why you are tired, why you can’t keep up, why everyone else seems to manage, why you feel the way you feel, those thoughts are not neutral.

They either rebuild you and your body, or they break you down further, my friend. So notice the guilt loop, the one that says that you should be doing more, the one that says taking five minutes for yourself is selfish, the one that says other [00:21:00] women have it way harder, so you should not be complaining.

Name that loop, and don’t believe it. That is a nervous system pattern that has been installed from when you were little, and it needs to be rewired. And here’s something else that I wanna say because it doesn’t get talked about enough. Postpartum depletion is not just physical. There is a grief in it.

There is an identity shift. There is a, “Where the did I go?” That feeling that sits alongside the tiredness, and sometimes that’s the part that hurts the freaking most. So you are not just rebuilding your body- You are rebuilding your sense of self. There’s a word for it. It’s called matrescence. I’ve had Amy Taylor Kerbaz on the podcast to talk about matrescence.

I’ll link to the episode in the show notes so you can go and listen to it. It is one of the most profound episodes. Every single [00:22:00] mother needs to listen to that episode, an absolute game changer, and more and more people are talking about it. But basically, matrescence is the evolution that a woman goes through, like adolescence from child to teenager, the upgrades that they have, the hormonal shifts that they have.

Similarly, we go through that when we go from maiden to mother, or even if you’ve already had a kid, the next child, you still go through matrescence every single birth. So you are meeting a new version of you. And my friend, that takes time, and it takes tenderness. It takes love for yourself. It takes permission to grieve who you were before.

And this happens with every child you have, not just the first, when you go from maiden to mother. It happens with all of them. And I’ve gotta be honest with you, didn’t feel this with my first. Only with my [00:23:00] second did I feel this huge shift People would say to me, “Going from one to two is like going from one to 15,” and now I get it.

So let yourself feel that. Don’t push it down. Don’t bypass it with positivity. Sit with it. Talk about it with your partner, with a friend, with a therapist. Move through it. Move through it because it will pass, I promise, and the woman that you were destined to be is on the other side of it, and she’s waiting for you to really claim her.

And the last piece of this nugget is receiving. So many of us are brilliant at giving, and maybe not as brilliant at receiving. That’s not the case for me. I’m great at receiving. I have no issues with receiving. I have no issues with asking for help, and I have no issues receiving, but a lot of women do.

I’ve done a lot of work on it, that I have zero issues with it, but a lot of women are the ones who organize [00:24:00] everything, hold everyone, anticipate everything, and then someone offers to help, and you say, “Oh, no, no, no, it’s okay, I’m fine.” Not just in postpartum but especially in postpartum, you need to learn to receive; meals, help, company, money for support, compliments, care, all of it.

Receiving is not weakness, it is wisdom. It is what makes you sustainable. Your mindset is the difference between depletion that breaks you down and depletion that teaches you. Choose the one that teaches you. And then the last nugget is make it fit your life, not the other way around. Stop waiting for the version of you who has two free hours.

Be the woman who takes the five minutes that she actually has, the glass of warm water with lemon before anything else in the morning, 10 deep box breaths in the car before you walk into the house, sun on your face while the baby naps. Forget the laundry. One supplement [00:25:00] taken consistently beats five taken sporadically.

Small things done often in the time that you actually have, that’s the whole practice. Consistency in small things compounds perfection in big things, it doesn’t. So whatever season you are in, postpartum or just depleted in general or burnt out from work, I want you to build a rhythm that fits the life that you actually have, not the life you wish you had, not the routine you saw on Instagram, the one that works for your real life.

Five minutes every day beats one hour once a week every single time. So here’s what I want you to walk away with. Filling yourself up is not selfish, it is The work, the absolute priority. It is what makes you a better mother, a better partner, a better friend, a better business owner, a better leader. Your family and your business, your purpose, your leadership at home, all of it rests on whether you are full or empty.[00:26:00] 

A depleted woman cannot lead anything well, not even herself. So this is your permission slip. Put yourself on the list, at the top of the list. Not at the bottom, at the top. Take the five minutes. Drink the clean filtered water. Get the tests done. Take the supplements. Ask for help. Sit in the sun. Talk to a friend or a therapist.

Lie down for 10 minutes with your legs up the wall. Build a business that holds you. Build the life that holds you. Build the woman who can hold all of it without breaking. You are allowed to be both deeply ambitious and deeply well. You are allowed to want a big life and a full cup at the same time.

That’s the work. That’s the whole thing.

I hope you got a lot out of this episode. If there are a few things I want you to take away, it’s this. [00:27:00] You can pour from an empty cup. You can. However, filling yourself up is really important. Filling yourself up, it’s not selfish. It is daily work. The basics are not too simple to matter. They are the whole thing, my friend.

The basics are the whole thing. The five minutes done consistently will always beat the perfect routine that you never actually do. So if you love this episode, please subscribe to the show, and if you haven’t already, leave me a review on Apple Podcasts. It means the absolute world to me, and it helps other people find the show.

And come and tell me on Instagram @melissamambrosini what you got from this episode. I love connecting with you and hearing your insights. And please share this episode with anyone that you think it would resonate with. You can send a screenshot of it. You can email it to them, text it to them, DM it to them.

Do whatever you’ve gotta do to get this in their ears. [00:28:00] 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.