New Year's Resolutions for New Parents
We are in the last couple of days of 2018! Can you believe how fast it’s gone by?
Friends are posting their intentions and resolutions for 2019, maybe they have goals to lose weight or travel or build healthier relationships. All of these are good goals! But maybe as a new parent, you’re feeling a bit like these things either don’t matter or are very unrealistic for you in this season of life. Having a baby changes your outlook, perception and priorities!
So here are a few ideas for resolutions as a new parent to set or implement that are realistic and healthy:
Drink more water.
You may have noticed that your caffeine intake has taken a sharp turn upward since your baby arrived. I’m definitely not the person who is going to tell you to quit coffee, but caffeine is very dehydrating. For every 1 cup of coffee you drink, you have to drink 4 cups of water to re-hydrate. If you are breastfeeding, hydration is important. If you are low on sleep, hydration is important. If you are a human being, hydration is important! Make a goal to be hydrated in 2019.
Make your time on social media more purposeful.
Facebook is an amazing tool for new parents to feel connected to friends, family and make new friends. But in between the connecting, it’s easy to get sucked into the never-ending scrolling vortex where you’re not talking to anybody, you’re not interacting with people, you’re just watching it all go by and before you know it, you’ve lost an hour. There’s no right or wrong way to be purposeful in your social media usage. Find what feels right to you and what serves you. If it means using your settings to help you limit your time on one particular app, great. If it means, mentally setting a time and place for checking it, great. If it means logging out for a full month, great! You do you! And that brings me to my next intention…
Let go of other people’s parenting expectations.
Don’t try to fit yourself in other people’s boxes or compare your parenting journey to someone else’s. What you see on social media is everybody’s highlight reel. How they came to be where they are is not your story, the choices they make are not your responsibility, and the judgments they pass on to you don’t matter. Parent how it works for you and your baby. Everyone will have opinions, you are not obligated to everybody’s advice.
Love on your body.
Your postpartum body is not broken or lost. You do not owe anybody a pre-baby body. But you deserve to feel good! Treat your body well, whether that means starting a workout routine, going to bed earlier, adding more vegetables to your diet and limiting junk food. Or maybe it means buying new jeans that fit your new body well and accepting that everything is as it should be and you are not on a time restraint to lose the baby weight. Do what makes you feel good inside and out, again, don’t compare your journey to anybody else’s and learn to appreciate how your body has served you to bring this new life into the world and grow your family! You did that! You are amazing!
I hope that 2019 will be the year that you discover how strong you are, how capable you are, how loved you are and how you - just the way you are - changes the lives of so many people!