Our First Year doing the Balancing Act

The following is the sixth post in a series of posts about our first year as new parents. I am writing through the lens of the Seven Baby B's of Attachment Parenting, by Dr. Sears. (Thanks to Blogger's recent "issues" I ended up erasing my post on breastfeeding. So if you're looking for it and you can't find it, that's why it's gone)

This is what Dr. Sears has to say about the Balance:

In your zeal to give so much to your baby, it's easy to neglect the needs of yourself and your marriage. As you will learn the key to putting balance in your parenting is being appropriately responsive to your baby – knowing when to say "yes" and when to say "no," and having the wisdom to say "yes" to yourself when you need help.

I can easily tell you how difficult it is to maintain balance as new parents.

Bianca's Exhibit A: I haven't gone to Yoga in months and my idea of "exercise" is running around school making copies or dodging students trying to get to class on time.

Keith's Exhibit B: He would say he barely got to snowboard this past season. Also it's May and he hasn't even gone mountain biking yet, let alone on the road. (He has - in past years - started in March and April.)

I guess, though, if that's the most we have to complain about, then balance can't be that bad for us to manage, right? I think it's a learning process. We learned by mid-winter that we needed alone time, so we reached out to Keith's mom and she was thrilled to babysit. (Keith's sister has also offered - thanks Lauren! We promise to take you up on it soon!) So now we have date nights once or twice a month. And as I've mentioned in a previous post, it makes a world of difference for our marriage.

Back to Exhibit A: I was going to yoga in the winter almost every weekend for a few weeks in a row. But more and more, I'd plan to go then feel like I was needed at home either to be with Cole, or to get work done (grading, planning, etc). And as far as Keith's Exhibit B goes, he would probably tell you that if his wife LET him go, he'd probably have gone more often. And, of course, he would have forgotten his birthday weekend we spent in Lake Placid just so he could snowboard on Whiteface Mountain. Thankfully, he has me to remind him.

The point of all of this "evidence" is to illustrate this fact: we don't always get to do what we want to do. I don't get to read or practice yoga freely like I once did before Cole was born. Keith doesn't get to ride his bicycle or snowboard as freely as he did before Cole was born. It's just a part of parenting that some of the things you enjoy are put on the back burner so that you can focus on the needs of your child and the needs of the whole family. But we do try hard to do some of what we want to do. As mentioned before, we carve out time when we know it's important. Hence, the date nights, the snowboarding weekend, my birthday spa experience, etc. It's not frequent, but when we do it, we do it up nice.

The balancing act we are constantly refining is not limited to our marriage or ourselves as individuals, but also between parenting and other factors of our lives. For instance, work and parenting has been a struggle for both of us. Pumping during my free time at work leaves me with, well, no free time at work. And that leaves me with less time to spend with Cole on the weekends. When I finally realized I got more work done at work AFTER SCHOOL, Keith arranged to leave early one day a week so he could pick up Cole by 4:30, and I could stay at work until 5 or 6. This has only happened a few times, but it's amazing how much I can get done in my quiet classroom in a couple of hours. For Keith, balancing work and parenting means he's found it a challenge to follow up with potential wedding clients, nor has it been easy to schedule photo shoots at his studio.

Balancing friendships and parenting is another challenge. There have been many times when friends called me, but I either forgot to call them back or called them back several weeks later. It's really a lack of time and exhaustion. I'd love to catch up on my phone calls over the weekend or on weeknights once Cole is sleeping, but we don't have the time. On weeknights, we're too busy cooking dinner, eating dinner, cleaning up dinner, and making tomorrow's lunch, cleaning pump parts, preparing tomorrow's pump bag, etc. By the time we're done, it's 8 or 8:30 and we are pooped. Since I have to wake up at 5 a.m.,  by 8:30 I just want to collapse in bed and sleep (which of course never happens because 9 times out of 10, Cole wakes up just as I'm drifting off to la la land). On weekends, it's go go go and we're trying to get done around the house what we couldn't get done during the week.  I wish I could call friends and catch up, but Cole requires my constant attention, especially that he's so mobile. And if he's napping, then I'm either a) doing housework b) doing work work c) writing a quick post on this here blog or d) playing some other form of catch up with my own life.

Weekends are yet another balancing act. It's a constant struggle to "get things done" and spend quality time with each other. We are constantly trying to balance housework with family time. And then there's the weekly food shopping that needs to be done and that needs to somehow be worked around Cole's naps. We've been trying to balance those friendships by getting together with friends over the weekends. This has not been easy, but over the past five months we've seen a number of friends we can't always talk to on the phone. Granted, we don't see these people often, but when most of our friends with kids live at least an hour away, then that's the best we all can do.

And that's really what it comes down to. We are doing the best that we can do. Cole comes first, no matter what. If that means canceling last minute to go to a wedding (which is what we had to do in September when Cole caught his first cold), then we do it. Yes, someone might get mad and maybe they won't understand (especially if they don't have kids), but we can only hope that someday, they will go through the same thing we are, and then they'll think - ah, I get it.  If it means not going to yoga or snowboarding frequently, but finding time only every once in a while, then yes, that's what we have to do. We are realizing how fast time goes by and we know that these years will fly by. Already, one year has almost passed, and it feels like yesterday that we had our first sleepless night.