Reading Time: 6 minutes

Time Flies: 12 Truths I Learned in Year One of Motherhood

My little girl, Camilla, turned one last week. As you can imagine – my life has changed in the past year in ways I couldn’t have predicted. In this episode, I candidly share my first year in motherhood: what’s changed, what’s stayed the same and how adding a new job title to my resume – Mom – has affected how I think about and manage my time.

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In Episode 13, I’m looking back on the last year of becoming a mom and how it’s affected the way I manage my time, and pretty much my whole approach to work, life and balance.

Some things have definitely changed in BIG ways, and others are pretty much the same. Some things I couldn’t have predicted, and others were pretty much what I expected.  All in all – it’s been a transformational year, and I know this is only the beginning. 

I’m sharing 12 truths – even if they’re just personal truths – I’ve learned in my first 12 months of motherhood.

• Three things that have changed

• Three things that have stayed the same

• Three things I’ve learned about myself

• Three things I’m grateful for

If you’re a mom, you might find yourself relating to some of the things i’ve experienced in the last year. It’s amazing how both quickly and slowly time passes, and those early days of the motherhood trenches sometimes feel lightyears away.

If you’re not a mom – maybe you hope to be someday, and maybe you don’t – I hope you’ll still give this episode a listen. It might help you better understand some of what your friends and colleagues experience in their first year and can help you be more compassionate and helpful through such a major transition.

Transitions can be tough on all of us, whether you’re welcoming a new baby into the family, changing jobs, moving cities or getting a new puppy. We’re learning, we’re growing, we’re making mistakes and learning some more. And we can learn from each other and take bits and pieces and use them in our own experiences.

My hope with this episode is that there are bits and pieces of my story that you can take and apply in your own life, or use to support others.

My 12 Truths from Year One

1. Managing your time without a baby looks a lot different from managing your time with a baby. So I’ve learned that I have to be more flexible and more nimble with how I schedule my time.

2. I’ve become a much more compassionate and selfless person. There’s nothing – no book, no YouTube video, no story from a friend – that fully prepares you for becoming a parent.

3. My priorities shifted. It’s not like one day I went from “family” being low on the totem pole to it being the ultimate most important thing. It was more like a small shift, or a ripple. Like that song by Rachel Platten – Like a small boat, on the ocean, setting big waves, into motion. The small ripple of a priority shift turned into big waves that played out into making some pretty major decisions.

4. There are still 24 hours in a day. And the same exact strategies I used to manage my time pre-baby – like time blocking, task batching, designing my ideal week and month and others – work the same exact way they did before.

5. Routines and checklists are also more important than ever. After we got home from the hospital and learned about baby schedules, I typed up Camilla’s schedule and posted it on the wall in her room. I also typed up her bath time routine so I wouldn’t forget a single step, and typed up and posted a diaper bag checklist so we wouldn’t forget anything.

6. If I don’t write something down – like immediately – it’s gone. Forever. So I’ve had to become even more disciplined with how I’m capturing things, from groceries we’re out of, to ideas for podcast episodes, to upcoming birthday parties. Everything I need to remember either goes directly into my calendar, if it’s a date – or it goes on my Trello Board where I manage all of my projects and to-do’s. That’s it. All I can handle is two places – and it makes life easier knowing that everything I need to remember is out of my head and captured in Trello.

7. Sometimes resting is the most productive thing that I can do. I’d even write “Take a Nap” in my Simplified planner so I’d feel like I had to take one and check it off the list. It was a way of tricking myself into napping. I also learned how important it is to have time to daydream as a method of resting our brains.

8. Even on the days when I felt like I was getting zero things done, I was actually getting way more accomplished than I realized. In the early days, I stopped writing to-do lists and wrote “ta-da” lists instead. Capturing what I did after I did it helped me see that I was doing more than I gave myself credit for.

9. I learned that I place my personal value and worth in what I can accomplish, and what I can do. That I measured the success of each day on how many things I crossed off a to-do list, and that I was only as good as what I could achieve. And that’s not okay. I know – I understand – that my worth is not tied to my accomplishments, even though I have to remind myself of that every single day and work hard to keep myself in check. I can just be.

10. I’m grateful for Camilla herself, and that God chose to bless us with taking care her.

11. I’m grateful that I started making the transition to a more flexible work schedule a few years ago before I’d even had a second thought about children.

12. I’m grateful for the encouragement and love and advice and grace and hand-me-downs from family and friends.

This past year has been one of intense transition, learning, growth and being shaped.

I am NOT the same person I was a year ago, but at the same time, I’m still me.

And honestly, I kinda feel like I can do anything now. That’s often what we learn when we go through life-changing event.

That we’re strong.

That we’re capable, and that we can handle anything life throws our way.

LISTENER SPOTLIGHT

Please user – Thank you so much for such a kind review! Liquid gold – That means the world! I’m so glad that you found so many great take aways in Episode 1, and I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed and learned from each of the following episodes. I appreciate you and am so thankful to have you as a listener.

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LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• The FREE workbook + coaching video that will walk you through the EXACT steps I use to plan my year and set SMART goals. Grab it before it’s goes away on January 31st!

• Lovevery Baby Playkits – Save $10 on on your first order!

• Episode 2 featuring Lauren Barbalich

• Trello – My go-to tool for capturing all the things I don’t want to forget.

• Moms on Call – our go-to resource for all things baby care.

• Simplified Planner – Where I literally wrote “take a nap” so I could check it off my list.

• One Line A Day Journal – The exact journal I have, and one of my most prized possessions.

• Free Enneagram Assessment – This is the one I took, but you really nail your type by continuing to learn more about each type’s motivations.

• The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile

• The Path Between Us: An Enneagram Journey to Healthy Relationships by Suzanne Stabile

• Join the It’s About Time Academy!