I thought about y’all a few times during my maternity leave from blogging, because when I reached out to you in October and asked you how I should spend my last few weeks of pregnancy, most of you responded with “go to a movie!” or “sleep in!” or “enjoy a lazy morning!” because once the baby arrives, all of that free time goes out the window. Haha. SO TRUE.
The first 6 weeks with Milo were a bizarre mixture of nonstop craziness mixed with…well, silence. It’s so weird to have so much to do, yet so much empty headspace at the same time. Babies are all-consuming, yet I often found myself getting to the end of the day and thinking, what in the world did I even do today?
I hate thinking that my entire day escaped me without knowing where it went. Now, some of you are probably really good at enjoying a full day with a baby and you think I’m insane for needing to check things off a list. But I know for sure that there are at least a few of you out there who will agree with me, that life with a newborn simultaneously feels like the most productive and the least productive time of your life.
So, I did what any sane enneagram 3 would do: I made a checklist. 🙂
Ok, a few things about this checklist:
1. It included really basic things. Basic things are hard to get done during those first few hectic weeks with a newborn. Just finding the time to brush my teeth or make a cup of coffee felt like a huge win for the morning, so I put that on the list. I found two minutes to brush my teeth this morning? SWEET! Check it off.
2. Milo needed to feed about 8 times a day. I put all 8 of those feedings on the checklist. Sometimes I’d get to the end of the day and think “what did I even do today?” and then I’d look at my checklist and realize that I fed him 8 times, and each of those took at least 30 minutes. Dang, I’m feeling good!
3. Yep, “snuggle” was on my checklist. Again, this list was just to help me check off the things that I was doing anyway and remind me of their importance. Skin-to-skin snuggle time is so important for a newborn, and it helped me to get to the end of my day and realize that I had completed the most important thing in the world: snuggle my babe.
4. “Barre” meant a 10 minute barre workout. This item on the checklist actually started out saying “5 push-ups,” and then a few days later it said “7 push-ups” and then “10 push-ups” and finally I changed it to a ten-minute barre video that I did on the living room floor.
You’re either laughing at me or you’re furiously nodding your head in agreement right now. Either one is fine; you do you, boo! But this checklist was seriously helpful for me as I was starting to get so frustrated at being so busy, yet somehow “getting nothing done.”
Ok, so the checklist above was my standard one, and then at the bottom of the list I had a “bonus” section:
I put those 7 things in a “bonus” category because they were really, really hard to get done on a daily basis, but if I had enough time I felt better getting them done. Making my bed, taking a shower, and going on a walk happened on most days, but the other four were just occasional.
See how basic this is? I mean, I got a check mark for taking a freaking shower! Life with a newborn is the oddest thing.
If you have a similar personality to me and this rings true for you, let me know! Haha…and if you’re just thinking I’m a crazy person, you can let me know that, too. 😉 Thanks for stopping by today, friends!
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