Excerpt from The Guilt-Free Guide to Your New Life as a Mom
Practical ways to take care of yourself, your life & your baby - all
the the same time.
Do you want to be a great mom and have time for yourself?
It can be done. You can have life balance and personal satisfaction
while being a terrific mom. The Guilt-free Guide to Your New Life as
a Mom is the only book that helps you pursue your personal and
professional goals, take care of your body, and maintain a sense of
identity while still doing a great job of baby care.
Chapter 3 - Getting Things Done
Managing During the First Weeks at Home
Most new mothers plan to spend at least a few weeks at home,
primarily taking care of the baby and recuperating. Expectations for
this period, whether or not it's a formal maternity leave, tend to
run high. It's important to give yourself permission to take it easy
and enjoy this short break so you can create realistic, achievable
expectations for now and the future. Then you'll be able to
transition back into the rest of your life more easily when this
special phase of motherhood is over.
* Clearly communicate your desires and expectations to people
helping you during the first few days or weeks at home. Do you want
help with the housework so you can concentrate on the baby? If so,
what housework would you like them to do? How would you like them to
do it? Do you prefer to have someone diaper, dress and check on the
baby so you can rest and recuperate? Or do you prefer to have
someone with you while you care for the baby? If they want to assist
you, they most likely won't mind some suggestions on how they can be
most helpful. It won't do anyone any good to criticize or resent
their efforts after the fact.
* A common frustration of new moms is that time during the
first six weeks of motherhood seems to slow to a crawl. Now this may
seem like a good thing if you only have six weeks of maternity leave
and you want to drag it out, but it can get frustrating when it seems
like changing diapers, doing laundry and feeding the baby are the
only things you're doing-and you're going to be doing them around the
clock forever. The reason new moms feel this way is that life is now
taking place in increments of two or three hours instead of four or
eight hours. That can make each day feel like several. Six weeks
can feel like six months. Don't worry. As your baby starts
lengthening the time in between feedings as well as the time she
sleeps at night, your perception of time will return to normal.
* Did you used to wonder what people who were home with a baby
did all day long? Now that you have six weeks or so, do you think
that you're going to read all the best-selling novels, organize all
your closets, thoroughly clean your house, plant flowers, train the
dog and purge your files? Think again. During those first few
weeks, your days are anything but free time. Sure, the baby sleeps a
lot, but you also need extra naps to recover from nighttime feedings.
Yes, the only other thing that the baby does is eat, but that can
take up to an hour per session. Furthermore, an unpredictable
schedule that revolves around three hour time segments doesn't leave
you with much energy to accomplish miracles. Be realistic about how
much of your "to do" list you can complete.
Back when I was working and hadn't had a baby yet, I was somewhat
judgmental about friends who were staying home with their babies, yet
complaining that they were so busy with baby care that they couldn't
get anything else done. There seemed to be so much time during the
day that I just couldn't understand it-until I had Ryan, that is!
Then I realized that it is easy to get everything done when you can
be scheduled and organized. When you're at the baby's beck and call,
it's a lot different. (Stefanie)
* It may not be enough to just reduce the number of things you
want to get done in a certain day or week. You might also need to
adjust your expectations about the pace you can maintain while you do
them. You're giving a lot of time and attention to your baby, he
causes lots of interruptions and you're exhausted. As a result, each
activity might take longer than it used to. Patience with yourself
is definitely a virtue.
* If you find yourself obsessed with how often your baby is
eating, how long it takes her to eat, how much she's sleeping and how
many times you wake up in the middle of the night, I recommend that
you live without a clock for a few days or weeks. It doesn't really
matter what time it is. When the baby is hungry you feed her, when
she's wet you change her and when she needs to sleep, she will. It's
more important that you pay attention to the signals she's giving you
than to what the clock says.
* If you plan on going back to work, continue to use your
appointment book, even if you're just scheduling lunch with a friend.
Call your boss, co-workers and clients to tell them about your baby.
Call in to work occasionally to find out what's going on. Just don't
get too involved-you're at home for a good reason.
* Many mothers who previously couldn't imagine wanting to stay
at home with their babies are shocked when they find the thought of
returning to work horrifying. If at all possible, don't lock
yourself into anything right now. Explore your options. Maybe your
employer will be willing to discuss flex time, part-time or a home
office as options. An extended maternity leave is another option.
Other career strategies are described in Section Seven.
* Many new moms look forward to returning to work and resuming
their non-mommy activities. These feelings aren't anything to feel
guilty about, either. Make sure to fully appreciate your maternity
leave, make appropriate plans to handle the logistics of going to
work and enjoy the variety of pleasures in your life.
Balancing Your Responsibilities
It's very hard to predict what you will and won't do when you're a
mother until you actually are one. If you made "I would never . . ."
or "I will always . . ." statements when you were pregnant, you may
have to eat your words now that you realize how much motherhood
affects what you want to do, what you can do, how much you do and how
well you can do it. As important as your personal activities, plants
and pets are, for example, the baby becomes the number one
priority-as it should be.
The challenge becomes one of managing all your
responsibilities and interests to make sure that each gets the time
and attention it deserves. Many of the tasks that need to be
performed, such as feeding and diapering, aren't optional. There are
choices about who will do them and how they're going to get done, but
not whether or not to do them at all. So, you have to continually
make choices about the relative importance of everything else.
* Before you had a baby, you probably found that if you
couldn't get something done immediately, you could find time to do it
later. Now you might find that if you don't get something done when
you planned on doing it, it never gets done. To help minimize the
feeling that you're always running behind, give yourself longer
deadlines. Instead of planning on doing something today, for
example, make your goal to get it done this week.
* You are not the only one who became a parent. Just because a
certain responsibility used to be yours doesn't necessarily mean that
it should continue to be yours. Every so often, you and your partner
should reassign the responsibilities involved in running a home,
caring for a baby, working and doing everything else that needs to
get done.
I used to take the laundry to the dry cleaner because it was on my
way to work. Once Kevin was born, though, it was really difficult to
carry him and the laundry at the same time. At first my husband
resisted taking over this responsibility because the dry cleaner was
out of the way for him. After wasting a few minutes trying to figure
out how and when he could get there, we realized there was an easier
way. We could just find a new dry cleaner that was on his way to
work! (Chloe)
* Many new mothers experience forgetfulness. In reality, it's
not that you're forgetting more than you used to, it's just that you
have so much more to remember and think about. The non-mommy-related
details of your life may be overlooked. Try making lists. Just be
sure to write things down as soon as you think of them (otherwise,
you may forget!) and put your lists in places where they can easily
be seen so you won't get too busy to look at them.
I found that it helped me keep track of my "to-do" list if I kept
pads of sticky notes all over the house and in the car. Whenever I
thought of something important, I jotted it down. I put notes for
things that had to be done outside the house onto Ari's diaper bag.
Notes about things at home got posted on the refrigerator. I
couldn't help but see them. (Becky)
* As you complete the items on your "to-do" list, check them
off or cross them out. Not only will this help you see what's left
to do, but it will help you see tangible evidence that you really
have accomplished something.
* Adding a baby to your life is a wonderful, but complicated
process. Sometimes you have to recognize that it's not enough to try
to find the time and energy to do everything. You also have to
realize that maybe you can't do everything. Often the best solution
to the dilemma of how to juggle all your responsibilities is to
eliminate some of them. Wait a few weeks or months, until you've
settled into a comfortable pattern of motherhood, then focus on your
life as a whole. What continues to be important to you? What no
longer matters as much? Be willing to change how you handle the
non-mommy aspects of your life so you can eliminate some stress and
get more enjoyment out of everything you do.
* In addition to eliminating some of your "to do" items, you
may also have to change how you do the things you keep on your list.
Evaluate the various aspects of your life, including everything from
your volunteer duties to the way you clean house to how you get your
errands done. What can someone else do? What can be done less
intensely or more efficiently?
* Try not to get so busy with all the responsibilities that
have to be handled that you forget to relax and have fun. If
necessary, schedule regular times in your day or week to sit down and
play with your baby, have fun with your friends, spend special time
with your partner and enjoy time by yourself.
* Committing to do things or meet people at a specific time can
cause a lot of frustration. Instead, I suggest you commit to a
certain period of time, such as between 12:00 and 12:30 (instead of
at 12:15). That way, you can still make the target time even if the
baby has a dirty diaper or needs to nurse just as you're about to
walk out the door.
* Even if your pet used to be your pride and joy, your "baby,"
you might find that it's getting much less attention from you than it
used to. Don't feel bad that your pet has moved down on your list of
priorities. Just make sure to take care of its basic needs and give
it some attention. Also remember that your baby will soon be old
enough to give the pet some additional attention and interaction.
* Don't be surprised to find that your plants occasionally get
a bit wilted. With everything else you're doing, watering plants is
something that's easy to put off until you have more time. That
isn't in your plants' best interests, of course, but at least they
aren't screaming to be fed. You might even want to consider silk
plants instead of real ones.
* Don't feel guilty if your house-cleaning standards aren't as
high as they used to be. Housework is a responsibility that often
gets neglected when there's a baby in the house. Prioritize which
aspects of house cleaning are the most important to you.
* If your expectations about the cleanliness of your house
remain high, that's fine. Just be sure you and your partner adjust
your schedules so you'll have time to take care yourselves as well as
your baby and your house. Either plan a regular time to clean, make
an effort to clean one or two areas a day or consider hiring someone
else to help on a permanent or short-term basis.
Before I had a baby, I swore that I'd never let my house get as messy
as some I had seen. My husband even made me promise that our house
would never be covered with toys. Having a clean and neat house had
always been extremely important to both of us. Since Caitlyn was
born, though, we've had to redefine our concept of "neat and clean."
When it comes down to cleaning the house or being with the baby,
Caitlyn wins. The surprising thing is that the added mess in the
house doesn't seem to bother us as much as we had thought it would.
(Julie)
* If work is one of the responsibilities you need to juggle,
please see Chapter 21. This topic deserves a whole chapter of its
own.
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