Its a New Year, a New Life

It's been six weeks since our life changed forever. We welcomed our bundle of joy, a gorgeous baby girl on December 7.  The last six weeks have flown by with Christmas, holidays and family. It has been such a blessing. But as the New Year approached I began to feel more anxious. Worry set in. As I am a natural worrier this has become an issue. It is clouding the line between knowing if postpartum is setting in or if I am just having extensions of my normal issues. I am hoping for the later.

Parenting so far has been very stressful at times. The first four weeks were very difficult, not because of the sleepless nights and issues directly related to having a baby. Those I was prepared for. I knew it would be hard, I knew I would have to do the majority of it on my own and I knew there would be an adjustment. It was the worries of - am I holding the baby too much, what should we be doing when she is awake, is she feeding often enough, should I rock her to sleep, am I setting horrible patterns for later in her life, does it matter?  Those are the worries that kept me up with Dr. Google many nights. But since New Year’s, when my family went back to school and work I have been trying to follow my gut but in the sleepless night days my gut gets lost. And so the confusion and scared part of me comes out. The part I like least about myself.

So I have a quest to figure out how to keep my worries at bay. I should have started learning these tools years ago, how to not let the worries overwhelm you. Every morning I wake up and try and remind myself that it will be ok in the end. That the years of worrying about stuff has just caused acne and stress, not actually changed the outcome. That one of the worst things that can happen to a person has happened, followed by a pretty horrific sight and situation and I survived. It was hard but I survived.  

I need to not worry about the future, 6 months, 12 months, 5 years because I have no idea what that will look like. All I can do is treasure every moment of the now, be grateful for my husband, our healthy daughters and our life.