[blparent] finding time

[Leslie Hamric]

Hi Nikki and all.  Finding time is something I struggle with.  I've had Michael for almost 16 months but I had the life before motherhood for roughly 34 years.  So the transition has been hard for me.  I often wish I could go back to that other lifestyle.  However, like everyone has said, your life is changed when you have a child so here are some things I do to make sure I find time for myself or for my husband and me as a couple.  We have a list of people in our community we trust to babysit; they're all from our church so if we need an evening or afternoon out, we can just call and set something up with one of them.  One thing to do is take one night get-aways if you can afford it.  We started doing them once a month but found it to be expensive so we don't do them as often.  It's to your advantage to have a strong support system.  Sometimes, I have my parents take Michael for a whole weekend and we won't go anywhere, we'll just stay home.  If getting away isn't an option, one thing you can do is get stuff done while the baby's asleep.  Michael takes 4 hour naps in the afternoon so that's time for me to do stuff around the house, read, watch a movie, or whatever.  When Michael goes down for the night, that's the time that my husband and I spend together.  Of course, that works because Michael sleeps through the night.  I'd also say steal whatever moments you can.  It's tough, but doable.  I do have to commend all the single moms and dads out there.  I don't know how you all do it but as they say, you gotta do what you gotta do.  Hope some of this helps.
Leslie
-----Original Message-----
From: Nikki [mailto:daizies304 at comcast.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 3:29 PM
To: blparent at nfbnet.org
Subject: [blparent] finding time

        For the single moms or dads, how do you find the time to do things for yourself? Do you have to give, sacrifice every moment of the day to your children? For the new parents, is it hard to give up your freedom, if it was unplanned? How do you compensate and are still able to get things done or do things for you as if the children didn’t exist, like life beforehand? How do you make life easier?