Three Things I'll Do Differently This Year...

Looking for The Lactivist? She's retired. But you CAN still find Jen blogging. These days, she's runs A Flexible Life. Join her for life, recipes, projects and the occasional rant.

Sunday, December 31, 2006

Yep, it's that time of year. When we all sit down and make up a huge list of unachievable goals that leaves us feeling bad about ourselves and ready to wipe those resolutions from our memories come the first of February. That's one reason that I don't typically make "New Year's Resolutions." That said, this month's Blog Carnival with the "booby brigade" is all about New Year's Resolutions, so I've got to find a way to work it in. ;)

So instead of hard and fast "resolutions" I've decided to write about three things that I've already started working on to do differently this year.

1.) Drinking. No, I'm not going to give up alcohol...I don't drink it anyway. But as any nursing mom knows, breastfeeding a child on demand leaves you as dry as the City of Westerville. Having never been a big fan of water, that leaves me guzzling tea, juice, milk, and whatever other non-water beverage that I can get my hands on. I did the math a few weeks ago and realized that on average, I'm consuming about 400-600 calories a day in liquids. YIKES! (No wonder I stopped loosing weight) In fact, I was drinking about 1.5 gallons of milk a week. (at least it was skim!) So I've decided to limit myself to ONE calorie containing beverage per day. Everything else is tea (unsweet, decaf) or water (with lemon or lime). Thankfully I've found water with lemon or lime to be pretty palatable and we've recently switched to organic milk for the adults in the household (Nora has had organic milk since she weaned) so I really can't afford to buy myself a gallon and a half of milk each week. ;) I'm not going to do the whole "must drink x ounces of water a day" thing, but I find that I'm thirsty enough that I probably drink about 80 ounces of fluid anyway. Since I already eat fairly healthy, I'm hoping that this change in what I drink will help jump start a bit more weight loss. (The pounds just melted off when I was pumping for Nora, I was kinda hoping for the same this time around.)

2.) Volunteering. Before I had kids, I did a lot of volunteering. In fact, there was many a Sunday that I got to church at 7am and didn't leave to go home until nearly 3pm because there were so many ministries going on that I was involved in. I also found myself heading out at least one night a week to help out with something. Having two kids and not many babysitters makes that a lot more difficult. That's one area that the Internet is super handy for. Volunteering doesn't have to mean getting out and doing things physically...sometimes it simply requires time. To that end, I'm going to "volunteer" more actively as a home birth and breastfeeding activist. I'm going to get involved with my local LLL group to make some more contacts in the community and I'm going to devote more time to building out the content side of the Lactivist with articles, tips, resource guides and more on topics like breastfeeding, pumping, milk banking and childbirth issues. I'm also in talks to work on setting up an Ohio resource site that helps women connect with doulas, midwives and other childbirth and breastfeeding related professionals.

3.) Over-Extension. This may seem ironic in respect to number two above, but I'm going to work to try not to overextend myself so much this year. While my "real job" really only takes about 15-20 hours a day worth of work, I've added in The Lactivist, two kids, some discussion forum hosting and a slew of extra consulting work. Somehow I keep finding myself committed to a speaking gig or a teaching seminar or something else that only takes a few hours to do, but that requires many hours of prep work. My brain says "oh, that will just take an hour or two on X day" and my mouth then says "yes" before I really get a chance to think through what I'm committing to. I never realized this until 3 weeks post-partum when I realized I had two teleseminars scheduled that I hadn't prepared for. (Who agrees to do a training seminar 3 weeks post-partum??) So now I'm working to think things through a little more before committing myself to extra "work." After all, if I'm going to spend more time volunteering, that time has to get taken away from somewhere. I think "extra projects" are what's going to lose out.

Will I manage to pull them all off? Well, number three is kinda doubtful, but I'm feeling pretty confident about one and two, since they're more about gradual changes than massive, unattainable goals.

Wondering what other breastfeeding moms are determined to do this year? Check out the rest of the posts in this month's carnival of breastfeeding...

Sinead over at Breastfeeding Mums writes about wanting to better schedule her time so that she can spend more time enjoying her kids and less time hacking away at her computer.

Tanya at the Motherwear Blog offers up 10 great ways to promote breastfeeding in the coming year and asks everyone to pledge to fulfill at least three of them. (It's only January 1st, but I've already knocked out 4, 5, 7 and 8 and FULLY plan on doing 9 by the end of the week. ;) I'll get to the others soon. (Oh yeah, you can also sign up for a change at a $100 Motherwear shopping spree as well.)

Angela over at Breastfeeding 1-2-3 shares her decision to get serious about exercise once again and features some great information about starting up an exercise program after birth and how it might (or might not) impact your nursing relationship.

Andi at Mama Knows Breast says it's time to get organized! From clearing out the sock drawer to donating used toys, Andi has some great ideas for removing some of the disorder from your life.

We're also joined this month by two guests to the carnival. Carrie over at Natural Moms Talk Radio (hey Carrie!) and Momma's Little Angel.

Labels: Life as a Mom, Pumping Milk

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