Last year my husband and I welcomed our first baby, our daughter, to this world and life hasn’t been the same ever since. We’ve had sleepless nights, swollen eyes, abrupt arguments, quick patch ups, sudden hospital visit, long walks with baby in the evening, frozen food days, you name it and we’ve been through it. The best part, we’ve loved it, few things when they were actually happening and few afterwards looking in the past. I’m a strong believer that everything in life either teaches you a lesson or gives you an experience or sometimes both.

For me, my past months being a mother taught me numerous things about myself, my life, my attitude towards life, my patience, how I deal with kids, my work ethics, and many more things. 5 of the crucial ones are:

1. One Thing at a Time: I always believed multi-tasking is an amazing feature to possess. It’s a quality not everyone can have, but if you have it, it’s a blessing. If you don’t know, multi-tasking in humans doesn’t mean doing or performing more than one task at a time, instead, it is the ability to switch between tasks quickly, back and forth. I used to be proud of myself being able to switch between tasks. However, being a mother I realized it is a trait that is not only draining my energy, but is also not letting me focus on any specific task. When I was changing the diaper, I switched to cleaning her nose, then quickly to combing her hair, then dropped her in the bouncer and went to cook, then started to feed, then I ate and went to cook again. My ToDo list pretty much didn’t end. Like a lot of us, I was also in the dilemma that this is how it is supposed to be when you’re a mother. But that’s not actually right, it’s not how it is supposed to be, you are not supposed to be distracted in each and every task, rather you’re supposed to take your time for each task you do so that it’s done nicely and with love and interest. I know new born can be hard on you, but you’re harder and definitely smart enough to manage it well. I learned it the hard way that instead of falling in to the trap of I should/must do it all because that’s what mothers do, I should follow the Motto of I will do everything that I can and rest I don’t care.

2. Self-care Is A Must: An evident aftermath of becoming a mother is that our lives drift into a particular direction to take the rhythm of the baby and we shape our lives, habits and other aspects accordingly. To an extent it’s necessary to let the new born get accustomed to this World, but when this entire begins to take a toll on your self-care, it becomes apparently vicious. I, like many other mothers, thought that in order to become the best mother, I must be able to take care of each and everything related to my baby. In certain aspects I was right, breastfeeding could only be done by me, but in other aspects I was wrong, like taking baby out for a walk or making it sleep or changing its diaper. Since my mother went back to India 4 weeks postpartum and my husband resumed his job, I was left all alone with the baby at home. I cooked, cleaned, showered, fed the baby, cleaned the baby, brought her to sleep, fed her again, massaged her, did the clothes, cooked again, ate, slept and repeated the cycle the next day. It wasn’t too late when I saw that I wasn’t literally doing anything for my own self and had stopped paying attention to my body and its needs to rest, take a break, sleep and relax. Naturally, I slowly became anxious, lost my calm often and quick enough, I experienced insomnia and felt lathargic throughout the day. It was then I realized that if u continue like this, I’m never going to be able to enjoy Motherhood, rather I’d begin to despise it and will soon turn into a desperate mother. I decided to take out Time-outs for myself, watch movies in the couch, sleep when the baby slept, ordered food online or took my husband’s offer to cook and relax whenever I could.

3. No Parenting Is Ideal: Each parent tries to do his/her best for the kid. Their decisions, actions or plannings are in the best interests of their children. No parents want their kid to grow up into a bad unsympathetic human being. So they do everything that they can, that they think and consider is correct for the upbringing. Judging them because you do not share their opinion and above their shoes, is absolutely mean and insensitive at my part. Of course it is so easy to judge others when their doing something differently than how I would have done it and making an opinion that they’re “not so good parents” is absolutely a normal human tendency. I did it too, pretty much frequently until I myself became a parent. When I started to do things how they’d suit me the best, of course also taking into consideration the pedagogical point of view, I understood that no parenting ideal, just like two kids are the same. One particular decision can be a good decision for one kid and not suitable for the other. So instead of judging other parents, talking to them and asking them or helping them with your efforts is far more productive and useful.

4. Quality over Quantity: I kind of knew this, but I had to become a mother to realize and implement it in my life. Most of us watch – binge watch (if I may say) – series or movies in our free time. Be it a weekend or an evening during the week, holidays or not, home or at parents place, we tend to watch anything and everything that comes our way, or on our Netflix or Amazon! I did the same. If I would hear there’s a new series, I’d begin watching it the same evening. I’d watch movies until late night, go to bed looking a zombie only to wake up looking like one and the cycle would repeat. I’m not sure if it’s only Motherhood alone or it’s my age playing a role together with being a mother, I now watch 2 or maximum 3 movies a month, that too if the trailer is really convincing. For some of you it might sound absurd because what possibly can this have something to do with Motherhood as some of you might be filtering out your content since forever (good for you 🙂 ) , and some of you still don’t care what goes into your watch list. For me it is a huge difference, since what goes in my mind and how it goes inside influences my being a mother. My time that I put into watching random movies late nights can be put into relaxing and sleeping on time so that I can wake up fresh next morning to spend an amazing day with my kid. Soon my kid will grow up and watch me watching anything and would learn the same from me. And since I know, kids don’t learn what you teach, but what they see, I think this tiny change will have huge impact on myself, my kid and us as a family.

5. Enjoy Tiny Bits as Time Flies: In the pursue of becoming an adult and being a responsible person, I somehow forgot to relish the moments I am living. I always planned for the future, looked in the future and desired things for future without taking a pause, sit back, relax and enjoy the current things. Few months back, I was still pregnant, I had just begun my maternity and now I’m a mother of almost a year old girl. My growing daughter brought me to the reality I had long forgotten, that we’re all mortals and sooner or later we will have to leave this place. I now try spend more time looking at my daughter playing, crawling, eating and sometimes just cuddling with her because I know this time won’t ever come again. I have to enjoy and make the best of there tiniest of moments since once she grows up she won’t be the same again. Each day brings new things in her and she learns new activities. Her mind will never grow this fast ever again in her life. Each and every smile or tantrum she has has to be appreciated as kids grow faster than the time flies.