After 10 years of parenting her two children, journalist Kathryn Jezer-Morton had a realisation about the stage of life she had just emerged from and she even had a name for it: 'Camel Mode.'
"I define it as a period of life when your kids are young but it can last for years," she explains on Mamamia's No Filter podcast.
"I knew it wasn't depression, it wasn't particularly physiological, but my kids were older and yet I was still stuck in this mental space of 'they're young and we just have to get through this'."
Listen: No Filter with Kathryn Jezer-Morton. Post continues below.
When she spoke to other mums about this feeling of being in camel mode, Jezer-Morton says that the term resonated with them.
As a mum of two boys ages twelve and six, camel mode resonated with me too.
Out at dinner recently with my husband and kids, I clocked another family on a neighbouring table having quite a different Friday night.
The dad was sitting and entertaining a young toddler, cajoling her to eat some more food, while mum and baby were walking back and forth to their car to grab toys, change nappies and keep the baby moving.
As my family continued to eat our pizza and chat about our different days, the busy young family were up and they were gone. Their 40-odd minutes of dining time with little kids had maxed out, just as the baby began to cry.
With the epiphany, I realised that my days of being in that intense motherhood phase or camel mode were thankfully at an end.
And while I miss the cuddles and sweet chubby cheeks of my little boys, I do not miss those frantic dinners when everyone else's needs trumped my own and I almost always ended up with indigestion.
Jezer-Morton says for her, camel mode was about forgetting who she was as a person.
"Your sense of self recedes into the background and you're really just dealing with other people's needs to the point where you lose sight of your own desires, or what you want.
"And the longer you are in camel mode, the harder it is to come out."
An identity crisis.
Camel mode is a time Jezer-Morton explains when many of your own needs go out the window and you are in a permanent state of crisis management and making sure everyone else is okay.
I remember that phase of motherhood like it was only five minutes ago.
A phase of being on constant alert: alert for when one of my kids woke up, alert to them falling over, alert to one of them running off into a crowd or alert to when one of them finishes eating and we have to move before they get bored and start to cry.
I remember our occasional family dinners out of that era because I had a sort of lump in my throat the whole time while being worried about drama and secretly wincing when another customer gave us a side-eye as we all sat down.
While I don't think my entire sense of self was completely wrapped up in motherhood, or that I was ever in full camel mode, there were several years when I felt a huge amount of anxiety about 'mum life'.
I was not sure about who I was anymore or what I enjoyed outside of being a mum. My identity was muffled.
My husband always encouraged me to get out and do something I enjoyed alone, and I knew theoretically that taking time to myself would be good for me. But I felt emotionally tethered to my house and my babies, long after the breastfeeding stage, and I also felt guilty about taking 'time off'.
Jezer-Morton explains how for her, listening to music she loved was a way she could find herself again, even if only briefly.
"I would put on my earbuds and just listen to my Spotify playlists even if I was going for a four-minute walk to get milk on the corner. Listening to music was where I revisited a version of myself that I had lost touch with and I think I was trying to sort of reanimate somehow."
I too would start by going for a walk or catching up with a friend for a quick coffee and eventually, my time away from home got longer as I slowly emerged from the early motherhood fog or in this case, the desert.
I returned to work, and I gradually came back to myself, but it wasn't as straightforward or as quick as I had imagined. That relaxing family dinner was a reminder of just how far I had come.
During those little-kid camel mode years of sleep deprivation, there was an overwhelming amount of my brain space dedicated to worrying about my boys' developmental milestones, regressions, 'leaps', daycare naps, germs and their bedroom temperature.
In winter I would stress about sleep suits and their thickness or 'togs' and whether to place their hands in or out of the suits. In summer, it was all about if the air con was too cold, pesky mosquitoes, or whether they had drunk enough fluids.
And with all that constant worrying and heavy-duty child care, Jezer-Morton explains that at the end of a long day in camel mode, you just want some peace and time to do nothing.
"I wanted everyone to be quiet and kind of handled so I could just veg out and watch my TV shows. The last thing I would want to do would be to leave the house and like go meet a friend. All I wanted then was for everyone else to be happy and my happiness would come from that."
Reconnection after camel mode.
For Jezer-Morton, the lockdowns and the worry around COVID exacerbated her experience of being in camel mode.
"There's this fatigue of having to take a risk and thinking, I'm going to go out with my friends but then tomorrow I might be tired dealing with the kids as they wake up so early. So, you think, it just might not be worth it.
"It was easier to stay home and to deal with my immediate responsibilities."
While the days were long, it turns out that the years were also short and Jezer-Morton says that now she is free of camel mode, and just parenting and working, she has reconnected with herself, her emotional life and identity again.
"For me, it was very gradual, but I started being interested in getting dressed up again! I was going thrift shopping again, going out for dinner alone, going to the bar alone, reading my book or going to the movies alone.
"I wanted to spend time with my friends, and not always with our kids. Also with my husband, we can go away for the weekend now and always feel like we have to fit in these little tight bits of time here and there."
Now that I too have freed my brain space up from the minutiae of managing little kids' demands, I can see life outside of 'camel mode' and boy do I prefer it.
I am still a mum, but now I have an interesting job and a sense of being a rounded human being with ideas, interests and discussion threads that extend beyond my boys' nap schedules.
For anyone currently stuck in camel mode who doesn't want to be, I see you and I hope you have a supportive partner, family member or friend to help you through the hardest, most intense times. There is a whole life waiting for you.
It's tough to emerge from, but one day soon you might have a family dinner and be chatting to your kids while looking at someone desperately shushing their baby and it will hit you too.
Your inner camel will be fully hydrated and long gone, and damn, it will feel good.
Laura Jackel is Mamamia's Family Writer. For links to her articles and to see photos of her outfits and kids, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.
Feature Image: Supplied / Canva.
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