Why we all need to take a breather from our hectic schedules

I take on various responsibilities simultaneously, resulting in the proud embodiment of my father’s admonition of having “too many irons in the fire.” Being able to multitask, to have plates spinning like a Disney World side-show, fills me with this sense of pride and excitement that leaves me feeling fully alive, fully like myself.

Until suddenly it doesn’t anymore.

My current plates include grad school, freelancing, editing, parenting three kids (newborn included), making attempts at keeping up with laundry, dishes and meals — you know the drill. We are all sort of conditioned to do it all, that if you can’t do it all you are somehow less-than, that you just must not have what it takes.

This, like most everything else I’ve written in the last four weeks, is being written while my tiny new baby sleeps on my chest, as I recline on the bed I suddenly rarely leave. I’d vowed to do more and get more done once the baby was born, once I was suddenly able to move again after a trying third trimester.

At first after baby three, I tried to do a good bit more. After about a week, I began to feel a little more like myself. My anemia began to clear up, I had energy again, I could walk from the bedroom to the kitchen without feeling as though I may keel over and then I could even walk downstairs.

I took on the proud responsibility of wrapping my baby while I did the dishes or laundry, I nursed with baby girl on a boppy while I typed out emails at my desk. I began scheduling meetings and decided it was a great time to start walking again, the goal being to work my way back up to running and weight-lifting by the time the six-week check-up hit. I could start being social again and reconnecting with friends that had been in my periphery for the last few months. It was all coming back together.

Then the other day, I caught a good case of mastitis. For those of you who have not had it, the Lord bless you and keep you. For those who have or your partners have, you feel me. It is arguably worse than childbirth and leaves you feeling as though you’ve wrestled with the arms of death.

After reaching out to my midwife, who seems to know me so well, she asked if I thought that maybe I was doing too much. While my first inclination was to deny it with a nice “No, of course not, I can do all this and then some,” I knew she’d see through it so I admitted that I may have taken on too much too soon. Maybe.

My self-imposed hectic schedule had in a roundabout way affected my health, which, it turns out, is pretty important. I’d had it in my head that the way to live, to parent, was to go from sun-up to sun-down, squeezing as much into my daytime hours as (in)humanly possible. You too?

It’s time to see the light.

I’ve postponed my appointments. I’m giving myself space to rest. And as soon as I finish this up, I’m going to dive deep into some Netflix. I’m kicking my pride to the curb and giving myself some breathing room.  For now, at least.

Photo: Liz Logan

This story was originally published February 13, 2017 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Why we all need to take a breather from our hectic schedules."