Low Expectations

As a gal that generally prides herself on how much she can get accomplished in one day, I am certainly in new territory! Dylan's truly an "easy" baby and, with Mike and I both able to care for him, we are feeling a little bit spoiled of having an "easy" time with this parenthood stuff.

However, the easy in quotation marks means, as all of you parents out there will understand, that caring for a newborn is still very, very time consuming. As a mother who has chosen to breastfeed, giving this child food is, literally, a full time job. Sitting down for feedings that take 30 minutes to 1 hour about 8 times a day, with diaper changes before and after and burping alongside that....well you do the math. That's a HUGE part of my day! And, it's not like those full time hours come at one time. They're spread across 24 hours so it's not like I have tons of time to get things done in between feedings. During those times though, I try to hang out with him while he's awake as much as possible, comfort him when he's upset, have tons of diaper changes and try to catch some zzz's here and there....doesn't leave a lot of "me" time. I know, I know...that's what parenthood is all about, right? Fine and dandy...I'm ok with that. It's just that, as I said, not accomplishing much during my day is new for me and a bit of an adjustment.

Thus, my daily expectations are pretty low. Here's what I try to get done on a daily basis:

1) Eat 3 meals

2) Shower

3) Take a walk

I haven't taken an inventory of how many days I've actually been able to check all of these off my to do list, but I think I'm probably hitting 50% of days where I get all three of those done. All in all, not bad for a new parent!

Oddly enough, the one of those that gets accomplished the least is fitting in the 3 meals. Nap time seems to always occur around the time when lunch would be eaten. So, more often than not, I get in two meals a day and keep lots of snacks bedside to eat while I'm up in the middle of the night, starving, feeding Dylan. I'm sure these things will come easier with time, but for now, I'm pretty proud of being able to accomplish my low expectations of myself on a semi regular basis.