I just finished reading your wonderful book. I loved it and I appreciate your honesty and how real and down to earth you are! I'm 23, married and have a 4 month old who is my first. My husband and I recently moved. Since our move I feel like any sort of discipline and organization in our lives has disappeared. Within a few months we had moved cities, started a new business, had a baby and begun renovating our house. Our move was very haphazard and our stuff ended up in the garage for months. I feel completely overwhelmed with the prospect of getting our house and lives back in order. I'm confused about how to meet the needs of my baby while being able to have some sort of schedule. She does not have a very consistent schedule and nurses a lot. Her nap time gets shorter every day it seems. I feel like I barely have time to shower every day or do the laundry or even make the bed! Not to mention, there are a million other things to do to just get our house back into some sort of order. I feel like I'm starting way behind the race. (not that this is a race but I feel that way sometimes.) Some days I get things done and actually have dinner ready for my husband and other days every time I try and put the baby down she wakes up and I don't have a free hand all day.
Anyways, I am sure you understand my predicament. I guess I feel I need a little more concrete advice on how to begin forming my own rule while I have a nursing baby who is not totally predictable in terms of sleep and eating patterns.
Help With Your Mother's Rule is a forum for women who want trouble-shooting
help with their Mother's Rules or about any aspect of the 5 Ps of
the married vocation.
First off, know your situation is challenging, and your feelings are valid and understandable. Yet there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
ReplyDeleteInitially, I think you need to look at ways to have the baby with you, awake, but not have your hands tied up all the time. It is a good thing to hold your baby, but there are many options for freeing your hands so that you can live the rest of your life, as you are called to do. There are many options for this - using a sling, either a front or on-the-back model, having a car seat beside you, a baby swing, a jolly jumper, a floor jumper, a play pen, and as she can sit up straight, a high chair. All these things can assist you in having the baby get used to being beside you and yet your being able to get some work done.
We are made of body and soul, and touch is not the only sense faculty - babies also respond to the sound of your voice (hearing) , and to seeing you (vision), and so being within her sight and hearing you speak to her as you work, are both valid physical ways of staying close, in addition to holding her. And if you chose a sling (my sore back never could handle this), touch can still be an option too. So, accustoming her to sit beside you while you do dishes, or wipe a table or sort a room, etc... This is the first step to take.
You may feel frightened by this prospect. It is not unusual for new moms to feel that you can't put the baby down for fear of her crying - I suggest the Baby Whisperer book to you, to help you discern what a baby's cries mean and ways to deal with it. Cut & Paste:
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0345479092/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=485327511&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0743488938&pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_r=0P1CJTTC7J05P9S06X86
Secondly, there is no point in working out too much of a routine if the house is not pulled together. Schedules are great for maintaining order in one's home, but a time schedule does not in itself address the physical order - for this you need to de-clutter and/or unpack and pull the home together. You can do this step by step (see the Fly Lady perhaps if a slow small pace suits you) or take the next month max, and make it a goal that, aside from prayer (done while nursing), hubby, supper, laundry and baby, your efforts are to go toward setting up shop in a live-able way.
One thing is to do a room analysis - what do you want to see happen in each room? What things need to be in these rooms? Keep everything simple and de-cluttered and minimalistic. And put everything else in a spare room until you have time to sort it. After you have the main rooms set up with what you need, THEN is the time to work out a basic schedule. .. which will include chore time to keep it in order
For this, watch the baby for a few days and write down her natural schedule - see if there are any patterns for sleep (like every day after the noon feed...) or when she sleeps at night... You can impose some order by doing baths at the same time every night etc. After watching her for a few days, see if there is a way to work around her basic rhythms.
You can also set your own meal times and bed times, and begin to nurse her BEFORE those times, so you have her fed so you can make meals and feed hubby and you. There is nothing wrong with this leading of the child instead of being led by the child.... the goal is to feed her in such a way so that she can physically thrive and you can still fulfill your other responsibilities.
Once your main home is in order and a basic schedule for meals , baby naps and baths is happening, then you can finish off the spare room.
And also remember:
Moving is a very difficult thing to do, and causes a great deal of stress in our lives - our entire personal cultures are out of sorts and this all takes time in getting things under control. Have patience with yourself - take on nothing new except focusing on bringing order. Get enough sleep and prayer and back rubs! and thank God for the wonderful blessings you have!
Great advice from Holly; also wanted to add that lots if not most babies go through a "sleep regression" around 4 to 4.5 months. Google "4-month sleep regression," a lot will come up :) Chances are very good that those naps will steady out and her sleep will improve over time, and this can only help as you attack the issue from the various angles Holly mentioned. Also, my children's sleep and scheduling has become much easier for me since I started waking them up at the same time every day (within like 15-20 min) and waking them up from naps by the same time as well (my children are older though so they are in very predictable nap routines--for your baby, it might be more difficult to discern, but could be something like if you want her to go to bed at night at 7, don't let her do any sleeping after 4 ). I had heard so much "never wake a sleeping baby" and finally realized that was really messing me up, b/c I couldn't truly control what time they fell asleep (I could make conditions right for sleep, but they still might not fall asleep)--I could only control what time they woke up. Once I started doing that, their nap times and bedtime really fell into place. Blessings
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