Please Secure Your Oxygen Mask

Before attempting to assist anyone else.

I know we've all heard this when we took a flight somewhere as part of the pre-flight safety instructions given to us by the flight attendants. As a mom, it would be my natural reaction to get an oxygen mask on my kids first and worry about myself later. But the fact is, doing so would probably cost me my life and possibly their lives as well. Here is the science behind that safety tid-bit. When a plane has a decompression problem and the oxygen masks drop, its because the oxygen level in the plane has gotten too low. And without oxygen you will become confused, disoriented, and eventually pass out. You basically have 15 to 20 seconds before you'll become too disoriented to be able to figure out how to put your oxygen mask on. So lets say you grab a mask and put it on your kid, your kid struggles a bit because "WHAT IS MOMMY DOING?" and it takes you 15 seconds to get it on your child. Now you are becoming confused. What was I doing? Why? Why is everyone wearing those masks? Who put that mask on my child? Lets take it off.

And Boom Goes the Dynamite. You and your child will soon pass out and eventually, without enough oxygen, the brain shuts down completely.

So um, what does this have to do with today? Because I'm certainly not on a plane. The fact is, that we too often try to do everything for everybody else and forget to take care of ourselves. Especially as a mom. We work hard to make sure everyone has healthy meals, enough sleep, proper clothing, a good education, quality time with us, time outside in the sun, a bath, hair brushed, at church, safe car seats, creative outlets, play time with friends, the openess to ask us questions, the love to feel secure.

And that is just for our kids. Then we try to help our spouses, our friends, our non-immediate family and we run out of time before we are done helping everyone. We find ourselves at the end of the day disoriented, confused, exhausted and shutting down.

The fact is we NEED "me time". Time to do nothing, time to do something that is important to you. Time to recharge, collect our thoughts and calm our spirits. "BUT THERE ISN'T TIME!" we all wail. I'm too busy, too tired, too. . .whatever. The fact is there is time. We just have have to learn to adjust our schedules to put ourselves in there. First. I know there is a part of the mommy in me recoiling at the selfishness of it all. I'm clutching my pearls in shock that someone would ever advise a mother to put herself first, in front of her kids. But the truth is - we have to. Without that metaphorical oxygen mask on, we aren't the mothers we are supposed to be. We begin running around in a tizzy trying to do too much to help others when we would be much more efficient, focused, high quality super moms if we could just figure out how to breathe.