Routine

I am a creature of routine. I appreciate predictability as a touchstone amidst the chaos of the everyday. When my routine gets disrupted, I sometimes get tense or easily annoyed. I am kind of like an old lady in that respect.

When you have a baby, the greatest of all routine-disruptors, everyone talks about getting her on a routine. The magazines write articles on the "ideal routine" for a newborn and well-meaning old aunts ask you when her nap times are. Friends gasp when you tell them she goes to bed for the night whenever she's tired enough.

When Ella was first born, I was happy to take on the challenge of developing a routine for us. Ella was an easy baby from the start and Routine! Structure! Planning! - these are things that make me happier than most. I worked hard at developing a regular pattern for her days, a routine in which we would both feel at ease.

My finely tuned routine worked wonderfully for the first few months. Then everything changed. She became more active and mobile and slept a lot less. So we adapted our routine.

A few months later, she started eating solid foods and waking up in the middle of the night, so we adapted again.

And now we are in a process of re-adaptation, again. Her nap times are predictable for a few days, and I am lured into thinking we have found our new groove. But once I start trusting that she will sleep for a certain number of hours, it is almost guaranteed that she will sleep for half that time. So then by late afternoon, she will crash for a longer chunk of time than normal which pushes her bedtime ahead an hour. And all these screwy sleep times put a real limit on what I can accomplish for myself while she is sleeping (because you know, that's the only time anything gets done).

It is slightly maddening for me, this constant flux. Maddening, I tell you. But as the months forge ahead and I have no other choice, I adapt. This is the one thing I have really learned as a new mother: Adapt, because change is the only constant in this new life.