Happy New Year.
Here’s how its going so far, a list:
My husband woke me up for the countdown to midnight -I had been asleep since 10pm - with a shot of whiskey to celebrate the new year. This is NOT something I recommend, drinking whiskey immediately upon waking is a new level of unpleasant. So if it’s true that the New Year continues as it began… I’m in for one throat burning time of a year.
I had chocolate cake on New Year’s day, then finding pieces of chocolate in the folds of my new born’s neck DAYS later when we gave her a bath.
In a pediatrician appointment for my new born just a couple of days into the new year, I was told I might be depressed, according to the postpartum survey they had me take. The big question on my mind is if this is due to postpartum depression, or the chaos of the holidays? (during which time my daughter rolled off our bed, dropping two feet to the floor. we all, of course, panicked. luckily, however, there was by chance a discarded pillow on the floor and she is fine.)
We are trying to get my 10 week old daughter on a sleep schedule and, so far, she is ‘winning’ . As it happens when both you and your partner are stubborn mules this trait is also passed down to your progeny. We will be facing an uphill bedtime battle and January will likely be lost to the fog of sleep deprivation because of it.
I’ve made myself two goals this year: Write more & move my body more. To help me get started, I signed up to Jill Filipovic’s Writing Practice, 31 days of prompts for January, and Yoga With Adriene’s 30 days of yoga. I have, as of the 10th of January, completed just two writing practices and three days of Yoga. It turns out, having a baby who cries when you are not looking at her or holding her makes it challenging to get things done.
However, while it is challenging to get things done with an awake infant, I have a newly discovered power of efficiency within the 10, 20, 30 minutes at a time my baby is sleeping. I have been a procrastinator my entire life (often up till early morning hours in high school and college to get projects done the night before they were due), but motherhood has bestowed on me a new power of time management. I can get more done in a free 30 minutes than I likely could have in several hours pre-motherhood. My hyper focus kicks in the second my baby’s eyes are closed.
Finally, a note on January. I like to think of January as the time between the years. The time to get resettled and recalibrated post holidays before the real new year begins. A time to be cozy and maybe, yes, set some goals, or simply used as a time to relax and set yourself up for the new year. Which if you allow January to be the ‘in-between’, doesn’t start until February.
Happy 2024 folks. Hope it’s a great one for you.
Heather xx