This past week I read this really crappy book, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg and Melinda Blau. While the majority of the book had vague advice, which it repeated over and over again just to fill in enough pages to make it a full book, I felt, and which was often dubious at best, there was one tidbit that I took from the book that I can’t help but apply to myself.

The book classifies new parents on a sort of spectrum, from very organized and plan-oriented to fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants spontaneous types. The authors recommend the reader gauge where he or she falls on the spectrum in order to be more prepared for what aspects of taking care of a baby will be the most difficult for that person. I definitely recognized myself as being on the far end of the organized planner side of things. I’m a list maker; I wake up in the morning and calculate how much time I should spend on each activity that day and what time I should begin each new task; I keep a running tally of various things in my head at all times (calories eaten that day, time spent exercising, time spent on housework, time spent relaxing, and of course, time spent writing).

The authors suggest that people closer to the planner side of things tend to have a lot of trouble getting into the swing of life with a baby. Babies are spontaneous little creatures. They eat when they want to eat, sleep when they want to sleep, and cry when they want to do anything other than whatever they’re currently doing. Someone like me, who lives by my own self-imposed schedule, understandably has trouble adjusting to the new lifestyle.

For the past several years, I’ve been very focused on building myself up in specific ways. When I was in my MFA program, I spent tons of time and energy establishing good habits as a writer and building up publication credits. After I graduated, I was focused on getting a book published, and after I reached that goal, I was concerned with building up my CV in the hopes of eventually landing a full time job somewhere. I’m goal oriented, and I’m all about plans and dedication and working hard to get where I want to be.

Having a baby, I can see already, is going to force me to sloooooooow down. The first couple of weeks were fine, but now I’m scraping together less and less time to get anything done. Because I’m breastfeeding and Amalie isn’t ready, yet, to be introduced to expressed milk in a bottle, I can’t be away from Amalie for more than an hour or two—I’m the only one who can feed her. On top of that, I’ve had some problems with plugged milk ducts, which can lead to mastitis if I don’t spend a fair amount of my day pumping out whatever milk Amalie didn’t drink and massaging the plugged ducts. I spend probably at least twelve to fifteen hours a day in breastfeeding related tasks. I sleep for maybe six hours, here and there when I can, and the other three to six I have to divvy up between spending time with Amalie while she’s actually awake and bright eyed, and passing her off to someone else, so I can get something non-baby related done.

It’s hard.

And it’s made harder by the fact that I took on way more commitments than I should have for this first few months, back before I knew what I was getting myself in to. I agreed to teach an online class this quarter, which already I’m having a hard time keeping up with. I’m doing it, don’t worry, and I’ll find a way to continue to do it through to the end of the quarter. But it’s difficult. I also volunteered to write a book review for an online journal, which I had intended to finish prior to Amalie’s birth, but being distracted and jumble-headed during the end of the pregnancy, I didn’t get it done. Now I’m still distracted and jumble-headed, but add to that the fact that I have very little time to actually do anything anymore. Plus, my abdominal muscles separated during the pregnancy. This, I’m told, is very common, but it has to be rectified by daily exercises fairly soon after childbirth. Otherwise, the muscles will remain separated, and I’ll have an unsightly pooch between them for the rest of my life. (This may seem like a silly thing to be concerned about right now, but imagine looking back in ten years and knowing there’s something I could have done to get my body back, but I just chose not to do it. I managed to get through the pregnancy with no stretch marks, after all; I’ll regret it if I don’t take care of my tummy while I can.)

And I haven’t even mentioned any writing related projects, though there are a few that I’ve been hoping I would have the energy to work on during these first few months, before Amalie is mobile. But rather than panicking, I’m trying to just take it as a sign that it’s time, really, for me to slow down. It’s time for me to stop trying so hard, to stop obsessing over my career, my writing, to stop worrying about whether or not I’m spending my time efficiently. The transition is going to be difficult, don’t get me wrong, but I think this is going to be good for me. And either way, I have only to look into my baby’s beautiful blue eyes to see that it’s so worth it.