TWO THINGS I'VE LEARNED SINCE BECOMING A MOM

I've been a parent for all of six months now. and it has been an incredibly eye opening experience. I have several younger siblings so a lot of the things that babies do weren't new to me, I knew about the crying, the pooping, the lack of sleep etc, those were the things that I felt somewhat prepared for. Overall I thought that I had a pretty good grasp of what it took to parent a newborn but there were two things that I've learned that I never thought that I needed to know, and that I could not imagine not knowing now. Number One: Sticking to a routine I cannot remember a single point in my life that I have stuck to routine for chunk of time longer then say a week. I wouldn't say that I'm a easy going person, but I have also never been the one to have a set bedtime (or wake up either). Meals have always been whenever I felt like it or had time, days would go by that I would forget to eat (or be too lazy to get out of bed) until four in the evening. I would go to bed at two, three, or four in the morning and get up around twenty minutes before my classes started. Probably the only two things that I've ever been able to do consistently was shower and brushing my teeth, washing my face and removing my make up however had always been optional.  Fast forward to now, having a baby has taught me a lot about the importance of a routine, when your options are to do things at a certain time of day (and keep doing it) or  having baby cry and fuss constantly you learn how to adapt to a routine pretty quickly. Now we wake up, eat (him first, then me), nap, play, eat again, nap (I eat here), play, eat, play, bath, eat and sleep (and my dinner follows). I have my designated shower times and for the first time I'm even getting in washing my face in the mornings and evenings Our routine is easy especially because it only revolves around us two but I know that if Bean is getting difficult in the evening that it is because of disruptions in our routine...which brings me to my second thing. Number Two: How to be more adaptable Routines are great, they provide consistency and comfort, but since they are so great it means most people have one, and chances are it does not line up exactly with yours. At first when I was getting Bean first settled into a routine I kept trying to force us both into routines that didn't work for us, the first was the "no routine" routine of feeding on demand, staying up until we both fell asleep, carrying him around constantly and that was exhausting for me to say the least. As the weeks went by though I started to learn more about my baby and myself which helped with establishing a routine...but then he got sick and we were back to square one. Within the last six months, Bean has had two colds, I've had one, we traveled internationally, we've had out of town guests, a few parties, he started teething as well as many other little bumps and disruptions to our daily lives and guess what, we have survived. It is frustrating when things change unexpectedly, but as my mother enjoys reminding me this is all still new, and we are only human so sometimes you have to throw your routine out the window and just work with what life has handed you in this moment.
D.