thinkythink

Baby Improves Executive Function

It's a little bit hard to quantify how my functioning is since the baby came along, partly because no one expects you to see straight when you've just given birth, or when you're waking up every hour with the little one.
But I'll say this: I am completely flabbergasted with the total vacuum of ability to choose when I do have a moment to, well, choose. When baby is fast asleep in the middle of the day for a little while, for example, and I wasn't in the middle of cleaning up a disaster or already out on an errand. This is actually the point: Baby dictates most of my waking moments.
I don't have to choose what I do, or what I focus on. I've got this creature who chooses my focus for me- time to feed/change/feed/change/entertain/change. It don't gotta focus on nothing. Except. What is right in front of me.

Then in the quiet moments, I truly stare into the ether in front of me. Until the little one peeps.

What to post about

I guess you could say I have the same brain I always did- I'm wondering which of a few dozen things to post about. Because I'm sleep-deprived in a deep way, I forget the ends of my ideas before I finish thinking them through. That is, I forget the ends of my mental sentences.

I read recently that sleep deprivation can look like mental illness. While I'm lucky enough at this point not to have to worry about, say, how closely related postpartum depression is to an acute or chronic lack of sleep, I have noticed how the quality of my reactions and feelings, the quality of my self, changes when I dip beneath a certain threshold of rest.

And yes, at the same time I'm startled as to how well I can function on new-parent sleep. I'm also startled as to how easily I can forget how bad the sleep is; hey, the little one doesn't wake up to nurse hourly any more, so it feels GREAT! Except that I couldn't remember how to drive to the grocery store for a minute there and wished I had a gps with me. I shudder to think of how many of us get "used to" operating at this fatigue level.

Good thing it's a cold day, because I think I left those groceries in the trunk, and the baby is asleep in my lap.

I don't really know how to come back to my blog after becoming a mommy. I keep being concerned about how mommy-related it will be! So here's you're warning. I'm a mommy now, and I probably write like one. We'll find out what that means.