Motherhood and routines

One of those phrases constantly repeated to those who have babies and young children is "Create a routine", create a routine for sleep, for feeding. It is a fact that babies and children benefit a lot from a routine, from predictability. This gives them security about what will happen next, giving them comfort and helping to organize them psychically and emotionally, especially considering that at this early stage of life they are far from being integrated. Parents also benefit from this repetition, as a minimum of planning (which can be broken at any time) can take place on a daily basis.

Precisely due to the baby's lack of integration, especially in the first months of life, it can be very difficult to establish such a routine. The baby's functioning changes radically, since it was inside the mother's belly and is now outside, where the "Normal Conditions of Temperature and Pressure" are quite different. And we could add luminosity, the way oxygen and food arrive, the environment in which it is immersed, etc. For those who already lived outside the belly, there is also a real revolution when the baby arrives next to us. Everyone involved make a simultaneous and reciprocal effort to adapt and adjust, which makes the construction of the routine challenging .

But little by little, the repetition of care and activities takes place, oscillating between the natural and the thoughtful. It is then that a new challenge comes, the break from routine. As much as we try to establish predictability, rules, breaks and ruptures constantly happen, either because of the baby's own development, or because we are not dealing with small robots. Sometimes it may require an unrealistic repetition, forgetting that we adults ourselves do not behave in the same way every day. On the contrary, we are constantly oscillating, sometimes we are hungrier than the day before, we have less sleep, we want to sleep later, we are moody, or we are willing and full of energy. The truth is that we fluctuate, we are not the same nor do we want to do the same things in the same way every day.

Once there is an established routine, such as lunch time, napping, changing this can be extremely laborious. It's Saturday, you didn't even see the time, lunch isn't ready, when you realize, your daughter is already irritable, hungry and sleepy! That explosive mix of hunger and sleep! What now?

Maintaining strict schedules for activities increases predictability, organizes the day and night, avoids stress, but can also stiffen. Weekends, for example, tend to be days when we get out of the routine, when we eat meals later, we do different programs from weekdays, there is no school, etc. As a result, schedules change and sometimes the price of this change can be high, children and parents stressed and angry. The balance is broken when the routine is broken. On the other hand, maintaining the routine very strictly every day can also be tiring and deprive parents and children of interesting, fun and relaxing experiences.

Life with young children usually leaves little room for the time and desires of parents. One becomes very little master of one's own time. This newcomer needs care 24 hours a day, as it is not possible to press the "mom/dad" button and put it off to gain a break of a day or a few hours. To do any activity that does not involve the baby, it is necessary to involve other people, grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends, nannies, etc.

Faced with the dilemmas of routines and their respective breaks, it is important to evaluate what cost it is possible to afford. Give up a fun program to maintain the usual balance of the house? Enjoy the program and face all the consequences that come from the schedule changes?

I think of the idea of "possible motherhood", or rather, possible motherhoods. Which motherhood is possible for you? Sometimes, one can idealize a way of being a mother, the construction of a certain routine and discover that she, or they, are not possible, or may even be, but at such a high cost that it is probably not worth paying it.