High Maintenance Mom

After B was born I realized there were many new things I could not control. The change in my life was both amazing, I had a son, and frustrating, my son didn't always do what I wanted him to do. Six months after B's birth, as I was learning to deal with the constant change in my life, my father became ill. I focused on organizing and it helped. Having B learn to feed himself also helped. However, when my father died three days before the birth of our second son, I knew I needed more than periodic organizing to help me face the challenges. I came up with a simple plan that has worked for me...

Feeling in control gives me the security to take risks. Many of these risks may not seem very big but when you're overwhelmed, small things can appear greatly out of proportion. By regaining control over some areas of my life, I started to relax. It's funny how we can become more controlling when we feel out of control.

In order to feel in control, I chose two things to focus on every day. The first was making my bed. I wish I could have the whole house clean all the time, but I can't. Making the bed is something I can do quickly that makes me feel like my bedroom is clean. And if one room in the house feels clean, then I have control over one area and I can remind myself that I really am in control of something. It also helps me to laugh at myself.

The second focus for the day is to drink water. Drinking water makes me feel healthy and it's something I can do throughout the day. So now when I begin to feel out of control, I remind myself to drink water while I think about my clean bed. It's not perfect but it generally changes my attitude, which is a large part of the battle.

When I was coming up with my plan I was originally going to include exercise instead of drinking water. Unfortunately, I couldn't exercise every day and found that having something like drinking water made me happier because it was easy to multitask.