Lessons for a new parent

After finishing my first week of being a mother and a law student, I can say that some things are easier than I expected, and some things are harder. Leaving him with my mom to go to school, concentrating on school while I am there, dropping pregnancy weight and resuming my "normal" life so soon after having a baby were all surprisingly easy. The hard part?

Having to be awake and productive at a set time of the day. I used to wake up every day at 6am, so classes starting at 8:40am didn't seem bad at all. But it IS when you can't control what time you go to sleep (if you do), and when your baby will be hungry (probably RIGHT before you need to walk out the door). I have slept in until 11am a few days and felt exhausted because I still only got about 6 or 7 hours of sleep total.

Not being able to nurse or pump while I'm gone, and making a conscious effort to not touch my boobs constantly in class to make sure that I'm not leaking through to my shirt.

Learning to relax. Honestly. The hardest part of becoming a mother in general, besides the physical exhaustion from lack of sleep, is forcing yourself to let go of your mental to-do list. I thrived on making lists, on crossing things off of them and making new lists. One of my favorite January purchases is always a planner. But now, if I even have time to write something down on that list, I definitely don't have time to do it. It sends me into a panic when I think of how quickly that list is growing. Some things are really not important, like writing thank you notes and ordering birth announcements. School work and starting my moral character application seem important, but I know that if I don't get to it this week, I can catch up at some point. Responding to emails from friends and family or uploading pictures to send out would be nice, but it won't come before sleep. Laundry and cleaning drive me crazy when they're not done, and I usually get that done in my few minutes of free time, but even that has started to get out of control.
The other day, I found myself staring at a crying Timmy and trying to wish him to sleep. Not because I couldn't stand his cries or because I knew he needed it, but because I really wanted to get some chores done. And then it hit me: I'm not letting myself just enjoy my time with my new baby, I'm trying to squeeze it in to my life along with so many less important things! Don't get me wrong, it would be great if newborns slept 10 hours straight in a night so that you could play with them all day, get stuff done AND sleep. But obviously that's not how it works. And I do know that I have to take care of myself too. I sometimes act like I will never burn out and that I have a higher stress tolerance than other people, but I just don't. Since I didn't make a new years resolution, I'm resolving now to do less. Take care of my baby, my husband and myself. And sleep when I can. I have the rest of my life to get "stuff" done, but I only have newborn time with my first child once, so I don't want to look back someday and wonder why I read for class instead of snuggling with him.

Of course, that isn't to say I don't fully appreciate the value of the swing: