Having a Baby? Time to Fill Up Your Tank

August 15, 2017 By Sara M. 15 Comments

And no, I don’t mean your gas tank (although that’s probably a good idea as well).

I mean, it’s time to fill up your personal tank. I should know, I’ve been through this a time or two – I’m 10 weeks away from delivering my third baby. For those of you who’ve had a baby, you’re probably pretty aware of what happens. For those of you having your first baby, here’s how it goes.

When you have a baby, you can fall into a little bit of a black hole. And it can last for quite some time. For me, it always seems to last about a year. During that first year after childbirth, the first 3-6 months are straight up exhausting due to the lack of sleep. Beyond the delirium, there’s trying to figure out how to manage with a very new, very disruptive person in your household. And depending on whether you nurse, or for how long, this can be an additional drain on your resources. A child from age 0-1 needs so much time and attention (not begrudging – just realistically, this is how it is): diapers, entertainment, holding, snuggling, rocking, feeding, etc. And if you have any other little people running around, your workload is doubled.

I am sure it is different for everyone, but when I’m in that new baby black hole, time stands still. I don’t have the mental or physical energy to make plans with friends, be an active partner to my spouse, or even spend time doing the things I usually love.

So, with all this in mind – I am working very hard to fill up my tank now before my little bundle of joy arrives.

Friends

This week alone, I’ve hung out with two friends in person and made plans with one other. Most of these friends are long term, and I know that we can make it through a one year new baby lapse, but it would be difficult to stretch it any longer than that. Plus, it is so good for me. At a recent playdate, my girlfriend and I swapped funny parenting stories, laughing so hard it brought tears to our eyes.

Partners & Spouses

This summer we were so lucky to have found a great babysitter, which enabled my husband and I to devote regular time to our relationship. We’ve enjoyed going out to dinner, getting massages, or hitting the movie theater. Between the date nights and our babymoon in May, we have been stockpiling the good times to help get us through those especially hard months when the baby is born.

Family Time

Spending as much time with family has been on my mind as well. I have visited my dad once already this summer, and will be heading down again on Monday with the kids. I haven’t seen my mom that much because she lives pretty far away, so I am trying to figure out how I can schedule a trip in to her before I’m cut off from flying…

We’ve seen my husband’s folks many times already this year, and are scheduling at least one more time each before the year’s out. We even spent a couple days with my husband’s cousins during our trip to Chicago earlier this summer. Depending on the circumstances, we’ll still get family time in after the baby is born, but ultimately it will be more difficult for us to travel to them.

Personal

This is going to completely depend on the person. For me, reading has been a lifelong pleasure. And boy, have I been catching up. In July, I read 3 books: Drop the Ball, Unbound, and Into the Water. And I’ve started at least 5 more…

Beyond reading, I am taking care of my health – learning more about my thyroid condition (Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis), getting regular chiropractic care, and even a couple prenatal massages.

*****

I can tell my tank is getting full, but what about the children? My stepdaughter at 14, my daughter at 4, and my son at 2, will all be affected by the newborn taking up so much more of mom and dad’s time. I have made an effort to be extra available to all of them now. This week, I took my daughter to my ultrasound so that she could see the baby growing inside me and then we went out for lunch. It is a little harder to take my son out for those kinds of activities, but I’ve been extra aware of creating special one-on-one times by playing his favorite games and giving him my undivided attention. Even time with my stepdaughter is important, but for her, I really like to encourage my husband to spend some alone time with her while I take care of the little ones. It really makes a difference to set aside special time for her because the youngest children usually take up such a big portion of our day.

Time is really starting to speed up now and there is so much I want to get done before the little man arrives. I am trying to keep my to-do list to a minimum and focus on top priorities. Hopefully, these efforts will help build up my energy and resilience to sustain me throughout the baby’s first year.

How full is your tank today?

If you are pregnant, what can you do now to help you prepare for the time required to tend and nourish a brand new baby?

*****

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One Mental Trick that Helps Me Make Hard Decisions

July 17, 2017 By Sara M. 7 Comments

As long as I can remember, I have had a difficult time making decisions. I go back and forth, weigh the pros and cons, and sometimes even spend exhaustive amounts of time discussing my thought process with loved ones. My husband, who can make decisions in a split second, is easily irritated by my incessant rumination.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I am this way and I think it comes down to part personality and part upbringing. Growing up, my father placed a high emphasis on thinking before you act and making the right decisions. When I messed up, I heard about it. As for my personality, being Type-A and a subsequent perfectionist, I worry very much about making the wrong choices. As a result, I tend to awfulize whatever negative impact I imagine will result from my decisions.

These factors create the perfect pressure cooker scenario where my anxiety runs so high that I try to think even harder to prevent something bad from happening. The kicker is, there are lots of decisions to make in life, and even the smaller ones will bog me down if I get stuck in this cyclical thinking.

Luckily, I’ve learned a few tricks in my 30 plus years and this one has been especially helpful in easing the pressure I feel when I comes to decision making.

I remember this one thing:

**Very few decisions in life are permanent.**

There, think about that for a moment.

It’s actually very simple.

What can you do in this life that cannot be undone? I can only think of a handful –

Having children, committing crimes, committing suicide…

But what can you “undo?” Almost everything.

Choose a major in college you no longer like? Change it.

Hate your job? Get a different one.

Regret deciding to stay home with the kids? Go back to work.

Even a marriage to the wrong person can be dissolved (not that I advocate taking marriage lightly).

I could go on.

When my sister was really stressed about making the very hard decision of whether to move across the country or not, I asked her to consider what would happen if she hated the place she chose. She realized that all she would have to do was move back. That’s not to say that it would be easy, there’s a ton of work and expense involved with relocating. But she could. Moving does not have to be permanent. And she did end up making that move.

Just knowing that I can unwind almost any decision makes it so much easier for me to drop all the back and forth and do it already. Sure, there are opportunity costs and potentially costs to change direction, but I know it can be done. Of course, I don’t recommend going to the other extreme, making rash decisions simply because you can always correct them later. I imagine this would lead to a very messy life.

But for me, knowing that I can always change my mind gives me the freedom to set my anxiety aside and move forward.

What about you? Do you get bogged down in trying to make the “perfect” decision? How do you get yourself unstuck?

Why I Became a Snowbird in My 30’s

January 26, 2017 By Sara M. 22 Comments

If you had told me even 5 years ago that I would become a snowbird in my 30’s, I would have laughed. I have never particularly been fond of Florida because of the intense summer heat. And yet, here I am in Florida for our 3^rd extended winter trip with my entire family of 5.

We didn’t plan to become snowbirds, we stumbled our way into it. The choice was mostly driven by my husband, whose moods were majorly impacted by the characteristically cold and dreary winters of the Northeast. He craved sunshine and warm weather to help him feel better.

With this in mind, we began planning vacations to sunny locales at the peak of winter in an effort to combat some of his melancholy. This would work, but we realized that just one week or even 10 days was not enough time to truly relax and recharge. It took several days to be able to wind down from our busy schedules and lives back home, and before we knew it we were headed back into the cold. Not to mention the incredible expense of taking our whole family on vacation to tropical destinations.

Finally, we realized that because we both held remote work positions, there was nothing stopping us from working from anywhere we pleased. I can still remember the day our discussion led us to this idea, standing in the kitchen discussing the possibilities and saying “why not?”

At first, we researched rentals in the Caribbean, but eliminated them because of the incredible expense to fly there and rent a car, in addition to paying inflated prices for meals and entertainment. We were also concerned about reliable internet connectivity.

That’s how we landed in Florida. It was as far south as we could go on the East Coast and still remain in the US. We could drive our own vehicle and bring some of our own belongings. We would remain in somewhat familiar territory with US based systems and routines.

Identifying ourselves as snowbirds came from our very first trip. The amount of teasing we received was not small. Eyebrows were raised. It was the topic de jour. “So, y’all are snowbirds?” became a familiar line. It was pretty much unheard for a young family to spend an extended period of time in Florida during the winter. The snowbird title typically belonged to retired folks, not newly married folks with toddlers in tow.

I have to admit I was pretty reluctant at first. I was worried about being able to maintain my job remotely (even more remotely, no longer within driving distance of my office) while juggling the children. It was a little harder, but doable because my husband jumped in to help me balance. My husband’s consultancy, while Northeast based, was surprisingly portable. He could easily return home for business meetings or tradeshows, but every other aspect of his business could be handled via phone, email, or fax (forwarded to email).

It turns out that I didn’t need to worry about work for our subsequent trips, as I was part of a mass layoff while pregnant with my son. That year we came down right after I delivered him, and I was able to recover with our newborn in the warmer climate.

The benefits for our family are immeasurable. The sunshine lifted all of our spirits incredibly (even mine, and I hadn’t considered myself affected by the bleak winters). The warm weather helped us get more active, as opposed to being holed up inside due to the cold. Our bodies reset to a more summer styled appetite, allowing us to eat lighter and healthier. More typically seasonal foods were available like avocados and oranges, and being close to the water increased the availability of fish to eat.

The most surprising element of all? We were more productive. We got more done during those periods than we would typically do at home during the winter. We’ve spent some time trying to narrow down the exact cause, but mostly attribute it to an overall increase in health and wellness, with a better balance of work and play. We took time every day to swim or hit the park or find an adventure. When we sat down to work in shorter bursts, we were more focused and successful.

I realize this is not an option for everyone, and yes, we feel very fortunate. It’s expensive, but probably not as much as you might think. Renting a house is often less expensive per night than a hotel, and we don’t have to take the time off from work because we bring our work with us. We’re willing to forego traditional vacations because this kind of hybrid vacation has done more for us in terms of lasting benefits. But we didn’t always think it could be a reality for us, either. We evaluated our scenario, and dared to push past traditional boundaries in order to find a solution that worked for our Sanity Plan.

Does My Anxiety Make Me a Weak Person?

December 29, 2016 By Sara M. 8 Comments

I am 36 years old. Looking back at my adult life, I can see these cycles I’ve gone through. The peaks and valleys of a roller coaster, without the speed or the rush.

I don’t live with anxiety every day. Instead, it seems to come and go, ultimately triggered by times when I am under a lot of pressure.
I can remember the panic attack that finally forced me to get help. Ten years ago, I was sitting in traffic leaving New York on a beautiful, fall day. The windows were down and I can still see the warm glow of sunlight illuminating the brightly colored fall leaves. Everything about it should have been wonderful, except it was anything but. I wasn’t in a particular hurry, yet my hands gripped the steering wheel. My chest was tight and it was hard to breathe. I felt my heart tighten and I was scared there was something wrong with it. It felt as though there were little worms crawling around inside my heart. It seemed so real that I couldn’t be sure that the worms weren’t really inside me. I was terrified.

I don’t remember anything else about that day. I don’t remember how I was able to drive home. But right after that, I researched local therapists and made an appointment to see one that specialized in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It was this therapist that helped me see that I’d had a panic attack and was also suffering from mild depression.

Looking back at that stressful time, it’s easy for me to see the events that led to my attack. I was working for a Big 4 accounting firm with high demands on all employees. I was in my first semester of a prestigious MBA program that I felt thoroughly unprepared for. I had been house hunting, trying to find the perfect first home. I was fostering two feral kittens that had been infested with roundworms (hence the worms hallucination).

Most of the things were just life, both good and bad. So many questions run through my mind: Why couldn’t I handle it? Am I so weak that I dissolve under pressure? Do I simply bite off more than I can chew?

Why can’t I handle things that other people seem to take in stride?

Looking back now, I can see how I have a tendency to go-go-go and push myself too hard, ending up crippled by sheer anxiety. Like the time when I was working at a bank as a head teller of a million-dollar branch and going to college full time. The day to day stress wore me down to the point that I had a panic attack at work and a coworker had to hold my hands and calm me down because I couldn’t breathe. I was only 22.

Or, during the second year of motherhood, I found myself unraveling. My daughter was entering a difficult stage of toddlerhood, I was pregnant with my son, and I was still working full time in Finance. It was a long drawn out period of feeling like I just couldn’t handle anything. I couldn’t handle being at home with my daughter, but I couldn’t handle the pressure at work either. Every ounce of me felt divided, pulled in endless different directions.

Some days it feels like the anxiety has really broken my spirit. I’ve become scared of change. I often feel weak and incompetent to handle the stressors of normal, everyday life. I wonder what is wrong with me that I cannot handle a normal career and be a mother? Why can’t I function like I see the rest of the world do every day?

Even as I write this, I know that the anxiety is not my fault. My anxiety is my reaction to the sum of the experiences in my life. Certain experiences have made me fragile. People have hurt me, with and without intention. I bear the scars of a troubled childhood.

I am trying to learn where my balance is. What am I capable of taking on before it becomes too much to bear? How can I structure my life in a way that includes the right amount of family and work and relaxation in order to keep myself in that healthy range?

I’m scared and I certainly don’t have all the answers. But, I am committed to this journey called life. I will look at this disease straight in the eye when it rears its ugly head. And maybe that fight is what makes me strong, after all.

A Family in Crisis

December 5, 2016 By Sara M. 12 Comments

Do you know what a family in crisis looks like? Would you be able to tell? I am not talking about the crises that are apparent to an outsider, such as a death or an accident or a family being displaced from their home. I am talking about the subtler kinds of crises, the ones that are less evident, impacting the family by eroding the structure from within. Perhaps caused by sickness or mental illness or even financial troubles.

I am not sure that people could really see how much we were struggling. From the outside, we seemed like such a typical family. A working dad and a stay at home mom. Enough money to be comfortable. Two little ones and a well-behaved teenager.

The people we’d see regularly would dote on our family. That we were so kind and so happy and always put together. “Your kids are so good; they are so smart!” “You guys are really amazing.” “Such great parents.”

But no amount of weariness on our faces or even our light-hearted complaints could key people in to our struggles, our burdens. Sure, they noticed when we declined invitations to come out. Maybe they did hear us when we explained that we were tired and stressed and overwhelmed. Perhaps everyone just wrote it off to the stage of parenting two little ones. Or, people saw it but didn’t know how to help.

But I don’t think they really knew.

It’s been a three-year long struggle. And I think I can really only see it now that we are beginning to emerge from the worst of it now.

Our Crisis

Going back three years, I was having a miserable pregnancy with my son. Working full time, I battled with exhaustion and vomiting throughout most of the pregnancy. My daughter, just 2 at the time, was really struggling socially. Screaming if other children came anywhere near her and having a complete breakdown every day on the way to daycare. She wouldn’t allow anyone else other than my husband or I to pick her up or do anything for her. Her over-stimulation led to daily tantrums.

When my son was born, it only compounded our troubles. He was the loudest, most unhappy baby. He screamed every day for his first year. We tried everything, but our only true fix was time, and we would have to wait it out.

The final straw was my stepdaughter coming to live with us when the little man was 6 months old. While it had always been a possibility, and it was absolutely necessary at the time, it was still very difficult to incorporate her into our already strained household.

I was falling apart. I most likely had postpartum depression. I was struggling to keep up with even basic tasks, feeling overwhelmed and helpless most days. I couldn’t understand why I was struggling so much with the kids.

My husband responded by withdrawing emotionally. The kids were too loud: a combination of rowdiness, screaming, and tantrums. And he felt torn between my needs and his daughter’s needs. Our marriage suffered.

Our Healing Process

What saved us is that we are fighters. We got up every day and did what needed to be done. We were careful with our words and tried our best to understand where each other was coming from. When we married, we decided that divorce was not an option after what we’d both been through. So, we picked ourselves up and sought help.

We got family counseling with my stepdaughter to open the lines of communication. We saw a marriage counselor to remind us how to get back on the same page. We discovered our youngest daughter’s Sensory Processing Disorder.

We set a course for healing and integrating our unique family closer together. And slowly, we’ve been emerging. Like a groundhog poking it’s head up above the cold earth in the early spring light. We’ve come up to the surface to see that the ground is beginning to thaw and the fog is lifting.

I look around with new eyes now. I know we were not particularly ashamed or trying to hide our struggles. The crisis actually turns you incredibly inward facing. I barely remember being aware of what was going on outside of our little nucleus. We were so focused, desperately searching for solutions and trying everything we could.

Would you have seen our struggles? The distant look in our eyes? Would you have known that we were a family trying every day just to survive? Muscling through the roughest patches, waiting for time to make things better.

It’s a gift I have now, though. Now I can see. As I take this hard time, pack it in a box and put it away on a shelf, I can look around me now and see a little deeper into people’s lives. I am more aware to read between the lines, to look past what people say and look at their faces. I might reach down in there and offer a hand. And I’ll tell them that I know it’s hard, we’ve been there too.

Setting Up My Exercise Routine

October 27, 2016 By Sara M. 9 Comments

I haven’t gotten to the goal setting part of the Sanity Plan, but I just wanted to write a quick note about one of my goals. If you’ve been reading, you may have heard me say how much I hate exercise. In fact, I often refer to exercise as an allergy of mine (along with cleaning).

But recently, it has come to a point where I simply have to address my sedentary nature. For my health, both physical and mental.

Ever since my son was born almost two years ago, I have been in significant back pain. I had a strange stabbing pain in my hip for the better part of a year from misalignment. And my upper neck and shoulders are rock hard from stress, on top of a long term injury.

I’ve done all the passive treatments I can do including chiropractic and massage, both with a therapeutic bent. This works for a short period, a couple weeks at best, before the symptoms recur.

The truth is that I am not doing any of the work needed to physical maintain any of the repairs they make.

As for my sanity, I am being constantly reminded by my reading or my therapist about the benefits of physical activity. How good it is for your brain. How good it is for being present. How good it is for balancing your hormones. Add those benefits to the fact that if regular exercise keeps me out of physical pain, it will be a winning combination.

I am not getting any younger, and I am finally ready to make a commitment to exercise. This was partially prompted by my brilliant therapist who suggested that I not enroll in a coveted writing class until I had accomplished this.

So, I’ve laid some groundwork. I have chosen two low impact activities based on what I’ve described above: yoga and swimming. I’ve decided to take classes because, knowing myself, I will be much more likely to stay committed if there is accountability.

I picked out a yoga studio very close by, reviewed the schedule, and spoke with a manager about my skill level and potential classes to take. As for swimming, my timing couldn’t be better as registration is open this week for a series that begins next week.

So there it is, my goal is out there in the world. I am going to exercise two times per week. Monday mornings for swim, and Tuesday nights for yoga.

Now I can go sign up for that writing class.

Do you incorporate exercise into your Sanity Plan? What is the biggest benefit you see?

Having a Baby? Time to Fill Up Your Tank

Friends

Partners & Spouses

Family Time

Personal

One Mental Trick that Helps Me Make Hard Decisions

**Very few decisions in life are permanent.**

Why I Became a Snowbird in My 30’s

Does My Anxiety Make Me a Weak Person?

A Family in Crisis

Our Crisis

Our Healing Process

Setting Up My Exercise Routine

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Follow the Sanity on Instagram

Friends

Partners & Spouses

Family Time

Personal

Very few decisions in life are permanent.

Our Crisis

Our Healing Process

Categories

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Follow the Sanity on Instagram

**Very few decisions in life are permanent.**