Establishing New Rhythms (When You Enter a New Season)

Having a baby certainly begins a new season of life. So does getting married, or moving to a new city, or starting a new job, or any other number of transitions.

Many things might stay the same, but I personally have experienced a number of transitions requiring me to adjust my expectations and my rhythms to align with a new “normal.”

If you had a baby, it’s not fair to expect yourself (or others around you) to adhere to your previous routine and rhythms. If you got married, you have to work out new rhythms with your spouse. If you moved, you have to find new places to go to (doctor, dentist, favorite coffee shop, etc.). You might mostly be the same person with the same priorities, but you still have some new things to work out.

I’m almost two months postpartum, and while I’m still learning plenty on a daily basis, there are a few things I feel like I’ve learned enough to talk about. One of those things is adjusting routines and rhythms.

I’ve always been a structured, scheduled, by-the-book person. I love having a plan and sticking to it. If you’re intuitive enough, you know where this is going— that personality makes it difficult for me to adjust to new situations that don’t neatly fit inside the box I’ve built. And having a baby most definitely broke that box to pieces.

I couldn’t sleep like (or when) I previously had. I quit my job and began life as a stay-at-home mom. I started tracking baby sleep and feeding patterns, becoming dependent on when she needed to sleep and eat so that my life revolved around her rhythms instead of my own. And guess what? Even those rhythms and patterns aren’t very reliable. As she gets older, she’s changing, and her needs are following suit. I’m learning to take it a week or so at a time and not making too many demands on my time for this present season.

So, you’re probably wondering, how do you establish these new rhythms? Especially if you’re like me and struggle to let go of previous ones you’d gotten really comfortable with. And if they continue changing with the growing precious baby you might have just welcomed (or might be preparing to welcome) into your life.

Have Realistic Expectations

It’s going to take some time to adjust. Every time we’ve changed major things in our lives, there’s been an adjustment period. We need to give ourselves sufficient grace to acclimate to new conditions.

It’s not fair to try to hold too tightly to the bar we set for ourselves in our previous season when things have substantially changed. If you’re trying to live like a single person now that you’re married, that’s probably going to cause some tension in your marriage. If you’re forgetting that you have a longer commute from your new city or to your new job, you’re going to be late to things and frustrate yourself (and likely others).

Give yourself some time. Both in terms of establishing a few months’ adjustment period to work out the kinks AND giving yourself extra transportation time. I think that’s important in every season of life. New baby? Add at least 15 minutes to the time it normally takes you to get out of the house and to your destination in case your precious little squish vomits up his or her bottle or has a major blowout as soon as they’re in their car seat. It happens. Just got married? Add 15 minutes for the inevitable conversations about whose car you’re going to take or where you’re going to dinner later or where the keys are. Even functioning adults need extra time.

Be okay with learning and learning curves. It might take a bit for you to get used to the new traffic patterns on your new commute, make backup plans in the event of a crash or construction, and manage to not miss any of your turns. Learning to communicate with your new spouse without criticizing, being too sarcastic, or responding in anger will likely take some practice and require grace on both sides. Figuring out how to parent a new little human who is entirely dependent on you for survival has a big learning curve that takes time to navigate. If you expect these things to take time and practice, you’ve already given yourself a leg up on actually doing the learning simply because you’re carving out time and space for it.

Communicate, and then communicate some more

Make sure to communicate your expectations with the people around you, too. Talk about what time you need to start getting ready to leave the house. Talk about when you want to get the baby to bed or when the next feeding is. Talk to your boss about exactly what your role is, what the workplace culture is, what the group dynamics are, what routines you’ll be a part of, what you’ll be in charge of, and what other opportunities there might be for you. The more you know for sure, the less you’ll assume, the fewer misunderstandings you’ll have, and the more confident you’ll be.

Consider getting an app to track all the important things (a baby tracker app, a to do list app, a shared grocery list app) to save information so you’re not relying on memory. These also serve to reduce conflict because you can share the responsibility for inputting the information (like when you’re out of ketchup), and nobody is solely responsible for remembering it (and therefore at fault when it’s forgotten or missed).

Talk about the priorities in this season. Talk about what you’re willing to set aside or let go of in this season. It doesn’t mean it isn’t important at all; it just means some things have to take a backseat in order to make room for the most important things.

Talk about what’s going well, where there’s room for improvement, and what might need to change. It’s helpful to talk about this in stages— before the transition as you predict what you’ll need, toward the beginning of the transition, and once you’ve transitioned a bit to check back in and reconnect. It’s not a one-and-done approach.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. That means from anyone and everyone— your spouse, your kids, your neighbors, your parents, your friends, your in-laws… you get it. I’m not great at asking for help by nature, but in the first weeks postpartum, I adopted a more flexible and gracious attitude toward help. I still had to bite my tongue to keep myself from correcting the way people folded blankets or t-shirts or put dishes away in the wrong cupboards, but do you know what happened? My laundry and dishes got done by people who weren’t me, nothing fell apart just because it wasn’t done the way I do it, and I got a little bit more rest and more time to devote to being mom (a job I can’t delegate).

Take baby steps

Whether your transition is bringing home a baby or something different, take it in manageable steps. You’re probably not going to be very productive right away, but you’ll get there, so work up to it piece by piece. Add in one task and work on it until it seems manageable before you add another one whenever possible.

For me, this looked like managing my laundry and not worrying about my dishes or food prep (after the first few weeks when I was delegating all household chores). I let friends and family put my dishes away. I took anyone and everyone up on their offers to bring us food, even when we had a fully stocked freezer, because I knew we would eat it all eventually, and any time I could buy myself before having to make dinner on a regular basis was a gift to my future self.

Set new, lower goals. I used to get a lot more done in a day than I can manage right now. My goals for this season are a lot simpler, and I’m working up to bigger ones. On days when I don’t have time to clean the whole house, I might try to tackle the part that’s driving me crazy the most (which is usually sweeping the kitchen floor). If I can’t record a whole video with the production required to edit it and post it, I might take a couple of pictures or jot down notes for ideas for posts I can work on later. Even this post has been written over the course of three whole days when it would have previously taken me about an hour.

Know that this season isn’t permanent. You might not be able to do everything you want to be doing, and that’s okay. It’s not forever; it’s just for now.

Adopt whatever routines and habits work for you

I’m a huge fan of combining habits and tasks. I put away dishes while my breakfast heats up. I tidy up while I brush my teeth. While my baby does tummy time, I can pump, do my hair, wash my breakfast dishes, and/or make my bed. I’m currently able to work out and get in enough time to read my Bible while eating my breakfast before my baby wakes up for the day, and I have a little bit of time if and when I manage to get her down for a morning nap. That time goes to a variety of things depending on the day, which brings me to…

Consider setting aside each day for a bigger focus. For instance, Fridays are for laundry and cleaning around here. Mondays are largely for planning (meal planning, setting goals for the week, making sure my clothes and vitamins are set/portioned out for the week, etc). Tuesdays are typically grocery shopping days, and therefore sometimes become errand days in general if I can get errands done in a batch (one trip with multiple stops) before my daughter loses her mind or needs to eat again. Wednesdays and Thursdays are for whatever I need them to be— extra loads of laundry, extra errands, writing blog posts or emails, etc. Saturdays are often days for visitors, and Sundays are rest days (no housework apart from just picking up after ourselves, no errands; focus on rest and worship).

One thing I heard when looking into routines and schedules for babies before I actually had my daughter was to opt for a routine rather than a schedule, at least early on. Babies aren’t known for their predictability, and they’re not the only ones. We are guilty of that as adults, too. And nothing brings that out of us quite like transitions and changes, whether they’re within our control or not. So when you’re trying to adjust to new circumstances, whenever possible, focus on routines more than schedules. What does that mean? A follows B follows C instead of we do A at 9:00, B at 10:00, and C at 11:00. If one thing (A) gets thrown off, the rest of the series are automatically “late.” If, however, they simply follow one another, you can move forward without so much stress. In our current season, this looks like trying to orient baby naps and meals at intervals. It’s truly a very imperfect system, and some things are tied to the clock a bit, but they all have some margin for wiggle room.

Above all, embrace this new season for the joys it can bring you if you choose to look for them. Every new set of circumstances has its challenges and its blessings, even if it seems like one is overshadowing the other. I encourage you to take small steps, to communicate well and frequently, to set realistic expectations for yourself and others, and to adopt whatever routines work for you. And remember to give yourself and those around you an abundance of grace.