Baby Steps

Throughout this pregnancy I have been using an app on my iPhone called iPregnancy. It’s actually pretty fancy. I can keep track of my appointments, enter my various vitals, keep lists of names and find out whats going on with both me and baby each week. The opening screen always shows what trimester, month and week you are in and how many weeks until your due date, this feature can be switched to show days instead of weeks. Now at the beginning of a pregnancy the number of days can be frightening so I rarely looked at it.

This week I start my first of the “two week” appointments, which of course means that I’m getting closer so I switched it over to days view and holy Moses man! I have less than 70 days until I’m scheduled for my c-section. For some reason that just doesn’t seem like all that long to get to everything on my to-do list.

I had a couple of panic attacks about it over the weekend so I decided to try a new plan. Instead of thinking about my list in terms of big projects I’m going to break everything down into 1 hour (or less) tasks. Suddenly my to-do list goes from this:

1. Organize baby’s closet
2. Assemble furniture
3. Clean carpets
4. Finish shopping

to this:

1. Buy closet organizer
2. Assemble dresser
3. Assemble bookcase
4. Assemble crib
5. Purchase crib mattress and bedding
6. Stock changing table
7. Sort clothes
8. Separate out baby toys
9. Make wish list of other baby items I want

The list may be longer but suddenly it seems much more manageable. I’ve actually been using this thought process on all my tasks lately and I find it so much less stressful when I break down my tasks into little chunks. When I’m trying to clean or get things done around the house I often set a timer for anywhere from 15-30 minutes and work only until the timer goes off. 

You might notice that I left “clean carpets” off of my second list, that’s because my wonderful mom is going to come and do it for me, yay for good moms!