Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Can't sleep at night I just toss and turn

I realized this morning that in the past 3.5 months, I've only had about 5 nights of uninterrupted sleep (7 hours or more). And I'm not a complete mess, surprisingly. I think it's the combination of the Vitamin D supplements I'm taking and the fact that BabyT does sleep in until about 8:30 or 9am, though she gets up 2-4 times to eat through the night.

It also helps that My Awesome Husband(tm) takes the night feeding on Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights so at least I don't have to do anything when BabyT wakes, and I can get back to sleep relatively quickly. (Because I have not yet developed the ability to sleep through baby crying.)

I suppose this is karma and the universe righting itself after giving us a baby who slept through the night (12 hours!) around 9 weeks, and who slept 4-6 hour stretches from the very beginning. I'm still very grateful for that because it allowed me to recover from the birth and sort out the breastfeeding business without being too much of a zombie. Plus I got a LOT of Etsy orders made last Christmas, thanks to our baby's amazing sleep schedule.

Now, not so much. I was starting to get that crazy stressed feeling, and realized it was the combo of work + broken sleep + Etsy orders (more work!) + trying to keep our house in reasonable shape + being a good mama to BabyT when she was awake. Something had to give, and sadly it was Etsy. I didn't want to feel like my craft was becoming an obligation so I've decided to just stick with selling things I've already got made, until I'm getting better sleep and work is less crazy.

And work. Sigh. I do love my team and my job, but my awesome friend Michelle who was doing my job while I was out on maternity leave, then sharing my job when I came back part-time, is away for 100 days (!) on a mandatory break as part of my company's rules for contract workers. So I'm trying to do a roughly 50-60 hour a week job in 25 hours.

As you can imagine, that's not really going well, because I don't have a Time Extending Device. I'm also a Type A perfectionist about work, so it's hard for me to not do *everything* at 110%. Which isn't exactly possible in half-time. So I'm learning to prioritize and really figure out what needs to be done NOW, and what could possibly wait until I have some breathing room.

I'm also learning how to compartmentalize so that I'm not doing work all day on my days off, in between taking care of BabyT. Sure, while she's down for a 2 hour nap, I can squeeze in a glance at my email or get a few short tasks done, but I don't want to plunk her down with her toys while I spend hours on conference calls, etc. Obviously, at times that's unavoidable, but in general it defeats the purpose of me staying home with her.

So of course, it's a work in progress, but I'm learning. As per ZenHabits, I've started making a "Most Important Tasks" list each day with only 3 items on it, and I make sure I get those done. Anything else is gravy. But getting those three tasks done makes me feel like I've accomplished *something* on these crazy fragmented days.

Other mamas out there, how do you deal with those competing priorities? What are your time management/sanity tips?

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