Remembering why I am here

At times I find myself getting very frustrated with being at home with a baby.

If I looked at myself as an outside observer I would be asking the following question: What happened to the career focused young woman who was constantly striving for something better? Now she's at home being a house wife while trying to look after a baby, keep the flat clean and write a best seller. Not to mention trying to stay abreast of what's happening in the world so conversation doesn't have to revolve just around babies. Then there are all the books she wants to read, clutter to clear, meals she wants to cook and friends to keep up with. Has she mentioned the new business she wants to start and the exercise she's not doing and what about spending time with her husband?

Reading this report back it's no wonder I am now feeling stressed. I suddenly have all this time and I feel like I'm wasting it and not achieving any goals like I should be. And there is the key word 'should' who is telling me I 'should' be doing things. No one.  It is just my own perception of what a successful person looks like or 'should' be doing.

Super mum syndrome popped into my head and then into my search engine. Sure enough it exists at least in America anyway with several women suffering from it. So I am not alone. Whole armies of women are out there trying to multitask until they drop to their still-jam-stained floors with exhaustion. Looks like I could be heading to supermums anonymous some time soon.

It all comes back to my current favourite word focus. The point of having a child in the first place is to enjoy the experience of having a baby. So why are we women running around trying to do everything but concentrate on the most wonderful thing in our lives  - our babies? So what if there's a bit of dust on the windowsill or I don't know whose written the latest best seller?
These things do not matter as much as the little baby over there trying to get mummy's attention.

So yes I do have all this time but this time is for Ava. It's important to identify a list of priorities. She is number one, husband is number 2 and writing/exploring creativity is number three. Yes I don't want to live in a pigsty, but there are steps I can do to reduce that, it's not the most import thing.

As I wrote in my previous post the key is cultivating good habits every day. Doing little things to keep life ticking over which allows more time to be spent on priorities. Well here goes...

Saying no to sugar

I am trying to give up sugar. After the elation of losing my baby weight I began to notice it creeping back on, pound by insidious pound. Hey, but breast feeding burns up to 500 calories right? Great in itself until you remember how many calories are in my new summer ice cream habit and my summer evening chocolate habit and all those ladies lunches....

Giving up sugar, you'd think would be relatively straightforward. I can recognise the obvious culprits in front of me - Biscuits, cakes, mini magnums - easy right? Wrong! A sift through my cupboard shows me that virtually every item of prepackaged food contains sugar! What the bleep is it doing in sausages? My bread is full of the stuff and don't get me started on yogurts, cereal all the so called healthy stuff - full of it.

And it's not just food. There are calls for coffee shops to modify their drinks after its found that a Costa Coffee drink the toffee creamy cooler contains 20 teaspoons of sugar the same as four doughnuts. In fact drinks are some of the worst culprits especially the fizzy ones as Dr Robert Lustig points out in his excellent lecture Sugar: the Bitter Truth. Watch this no frills lecture and you will think twice about sugar.

Giving up sugar was going to be hard, so I needed a plan. Here are the steps I am taking:

1. Cut out the sweet stuff.
This is straight forward but needs a lot of will power. Amazingly I find it easier after using a technique on http://zenhabits.net/floss/ to get flossing my teeth. Eg start small. Floss one tooth the first day and that's it. On day two I only had to floss two teeth then stop. Day three, only three teeth and so on. I also had to mark on a calendar each day flossed. Most days I manage to floss virtually the whole mouth and days when I was tempted to skip I get through it by thinking I've only got to do 7 teeth today as its day 7 or whatever.

By discovering I can do one challenge I was ready to take on another and suddenly my willpower emerged! I managed to say no to ice cream despite being a hot day. This gut was going to be busted!

2. Replace bad foods with good.
Fruit is good gives a sugar fix but contains fibre to combat the bad stuff.

3. Read the label and avoid anything labelled fructose, sucrose, dextrose and sugars.
Honey counts as sugar too unfortunately so there go my crumpets which of course contained sugar.

4. I decided to eat some processed food containing sugar provided it was a savoury food.
With a four month old baby at the moment it way too unrealistic to think I was going to cook everything from scratch. One step at a time.

5. When I avoided sugary food for the day I drew a smiley face on my calendar. : )
Call it simple but it motivated me.

6. I decide not to see the changes as a 'diet' rather I was making healthier choices.
This meant I could still indulge in occasional bad summer foods - sausage roll anyone? Strawberries and cream (without sugar yum!) I didn't feel guilty as I was bring good otherwise but at the same time I was conscious not to eat them everyday. 'Party foods should be for parties not everyday consumption' was a good adage I learnt recently.

7. Drink more water - we all know this one - more water less food. Especially as I was breast feeding.

8. Adopt the rule - Don't buy it, can't eat it!
Not having sweet stuff in the cupboard helped. So did shopping without the influence of Paul and the kids whose grocery shopping appeared to be sponsored by Willy Wonka!

A couple of days in I wasn't exactly craving sugar, more suffering from sugar withdrawal symptoms. I felt knackered and I had a headache. This disappeared after a few days and yet more water. I also noticed that when I had a slightly forbidden food like dried fruit it now tasted overly sweet and I didn't enjoy it as much as I used to. The biggest revelation was going without tomato sauce. I suddenly noticed how good the food tasted without a huge blob of it dominating all the flavours. Admittedly I had yet to try chips without it though.

A week in I was doing ok. Stomach still there it but at least I feel I am working on it.

Embracing laziness

Finally I seem to be able to do it to embrace laziness and to lie in bed until 11am; sit on the sofa reading magazines and not have the urge to tidy up! This is good and I'm not feeling guilty - well not too much... There are still emails to catch up, books to read, phone calls to make but they will always be there in some form or another. There are still goals to define and achieve but for now I have to focus on one goal...having a baby.

Went to my first baby sale today. It was weird queuing up with all the other mums and dads with offspring in various shapes and sizes. Once inside it was like a glorified jumble sale only worse as there were no old ladies, just mums with pushchairs. One mum was walking around ramming the wheels into people's feet, apologising and then doing the same thing all over again. The stuff on sale was quite expensive considering it was second hand. There were some nice clothes but then I couldn't help thinking 'how many times has that been washed or been sick on?' The same for most of it really. If babies weren't such messy things it would be alright. I also saw the odd book like 'The Pregnancy Bible but I'm almost done with that. It's what comes next and the NHS website seemed quite good for advice. I think I need 'The New mums Bible' but not sure anyone has written that!

What was strangest of all about the sale though was I felt I was entering into a new hitherto unknown world and I'm not sure I liked it very much. A works of pushy women and kids lying on the floor. Of strange clothes and equipment.  I began to see where my life was going and it was hard to focus on the positives when I walked past bars of people sitting drinking and relaxing on a Saturday - would I ever be able to join the world again? 

And suddenly I felt selfish for dragging my husband back into that world when he was just about to leave it behind. But then I had been left alone when he spent time with his kids when I could have chosen someone with no kids and spent all the time with them and enjoyed a lot more financial  stability, I guess these are the compromises you make when you fall in love.

Getting rid of clutter

Another bag of clutter went off to the charity shop today. Well two actually, both highly breakable and rather heavy - but gone - purged! Yet it is still surprisingly hard, this letting go of objects. Will it be needed at a later date? Maybe the twee photo album isn't really that bad? Things I've put into the charity bag are calling to me " take me out - you can't do this to me."

I'm finding the guilt increasing too. All those gifts I didn't want or ask for eg non Christmas or Birthday related 'presents' that were not to my taste at all. Did I act blasé when I received them?How much of a fuss did I make of the at the time? Where was my gratitude? I remember my mum making a fuss over everything I gave her as if they were gifts from the gods. Why didn't I act like her? Was my ungratefulness obvious?

Yet I was lucky. I did not need to receive gifts to know that I was loved. And so I console myself with the fact that although a gift can be seen as an expression of love, if I give it away it does not mean I love my mother less. I think that's why giving things to charity feel less guilty than if I were to sell the gift (although the act of selling is also a hassle).

Seeing my possessions disappear does feel good though. If feel lighter. I feel I have created space and order in my living space and that feels good. And I realise that keeping on top of the chores means I don't spend the weekend cleaning. I'm tackling it bit by bit, creating small wins rather than exhausting myself. This 'not working for a living' feels good for now but with less than three weeks before I give birth it may just be the calm before the storm....

Minimalist in the making

Spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about minimalism and how to achieve it. Also one of my goals before the baby comes slots very neatly into this theme in the sense of needing to clear the clutter.

I read a great blog called The Happiness Project http://www.happiness-project.com/ which gave me lots of tips and also read a book on simple living by Tammy Strobel called "You can buy happiness and it's cheap: how one woman radically simplified her life and how you can too." Basically the same message was coming through...nobody needs that much stuff to be happy.

So I tackled my kitchen cupboards. What become clear was my clutter wasn't all created by me! I had  3 tea sets given to me by relatives not to mention numerous cake stands and large plates that had been gifted. Other gifts I had chosen myself so I had only myself to blame there. Plus I had things left to me by the previous owner of the flat as a favour. (A.K.A I can't be bothered to pack up my flat properly.) There was even had a large mixer I had won in a raffle. I knew it was time to sort out the cupboard as whenever I opened the door I was confronted by an avalanche of Tupperware.

Gifts then seemed to be my problem. Family things that had either been past on or in some cases cheap tat, but gifts all the same that were  just taking up space. I had to learn to stop feeling sentimental and ungrateful and just get rid. I also remembered that the giving away items to family, my own relatives must have been tinged with relief that the item was gone from their shelves!

Of course the real problems are lurking in the clutter in the bedroom. I am procrastinating like mad as a lot of it is small, insignificant clutter - only worth chucking and that is when the guilt would inevitably return. But it is a matter of reclaiming space and order and piece of mind. So enough of excuses - it must be faced. My job for tomorrow!

Home alone

36 weeks pregnant and the second day of my holiday. It's not officially maternity leave until next week so technically I can just doss about. It's not really in my nature, but I must admit I am now seeing signs of it. Yesterday I wrote a long to do list of jobs that need to be done before the baby and then there are things like housework on top of that and necessary tasks like getting washed and dressed. To be honest I'm not feeling motivated enough to do the latter. It doesn't I feel guilty just very odd. help that the sky is grey and drizzling - not very inspirational. Suddenly the birth seems a long way away again. I don't really have a desire to do anything or see anyone. This is bad!

So what to do next? Finish my cup of tea get off my ass and get in the shower. The only consolation I have is that morning tv is truly dire. Maybe they do it on purpose to motivate the unemployed to get out of the house. It's certainly an incentive not to sit here all day. I guess I need a plan and some structure to my day which the purpose of the list. I hate it when I don't feel I've achieved anything. I had plans for scoping out a new business. Day two and I'm settling for being an earth mother type wearing flowing skirts and sitting around with crystals.

What being pregnant has taught me to appreciate the most is the nature of energy. I realise I had an abundance. I was always on the go and found it hard to sit still. Multi-tasking was my middle name and I did manage to achieve and do a lot of things and visit lots of places. And then it was gone. A small growing baby nicked it and left me sitting like a lump on a sofa realising how fortunate i was to be in this position yet struggling to adjust to the new set of circumstances. Seeing so many things that needed to be done but little inclination to do them. Is this what burn-out feels like? I can't say I feel guilty, just very odd. Will this energy ever come back? I suspect also I'm eating too much sugar so will cut down on that and see if it helps.

Getting rid of the blues

I wake up feeling like a great big blob and in a bad mood. It's 9am and a Saturday. Normally I would get out of bed and start doing things. Tidying, making breakfast planning where I was going to do and who I was going to meet. Today I lie there like some creature that has washed up on the beach and is able to move sufficiently fast enough to drag itself back in the water.

There are only two cures for this state of lethargy which are go back to sleep or reluctantly move my legs until they are hanging over the edge of the bed and my two feet make contact with the floor. Slowly I get dressed now realising that the tips that once covered my expanding belly are now leaving an unsightly gap at the bottom. I have breakfast, sit in front of the tv and then give up and go back to my bed.

The lesson here - if you are pregnant and tired don't bother to fight it. You aren't going to win and it won't be forever. If you are used to being super active accept that for a short period in your life you are going to be lazy. It probably grates against everything you've ever read in terms of making the most of the time you have but if your body says rest you just have to deal with. I have to remember its not forever and hopefully I will have another day tomorrow when I feel better. The willpower I have to muster today is to ignore all the crap in front of me that makes me feel like a prime candidate for a hoarder programme!

The first step to optimism

This blog is about how to be optimistic at a time when life is full uncertainty. It's about trying new things and remaining positive in the face of new challenges. It's written from a woman's perspective as a lot of the self-help gurus I have followed in the past have been men with very different problems and views on life.

I am seven weeks away from giving birth to my first child and am taking a break from my career at the age of 39 without feeling that I have ever achieved a meteoric rise to fame or riches. So now what? What direction shall I go in? Will having a child change me beyond recognition and what happens next? Anything that is unknown is scary at first, it's about finding the courage to keep on in the face of adversity.

So what do I have to help me on this journey? I have a new blog to teach me discipline, commitment and self reflection. I have a list of barely formed, vague goals; a smattering of Neuro linguistic programming and a shelf full of self-help books promising me that I can make my first million and change my life in seven days....

So here goes....