Journaling
Journaling – The best part of each day!
I am Lori Jill Isenstadt, IBCLC your host of All About Breastfeeding, the place where the girls hang out. I am just coming off a fabulous weekend where my family and I traveled to Des Moines, Iowa TO CHEER on my son Jesse and his peers as they walked across the podium to collect their certificates after 4 long and hard years of medical school. It was so cool and quite surreal as we heard them call out Dr. Jesse Isenstadt. Could that really be my son?
I know many of you listening to the show are pregnant, about to have a baby and some of you have newborns and small children. In the depths of the newness of it all, of feeling overwhelmed and sleep deprived, I know it can be very hard to imagine your precious baby, all grown up and adult in their own right. For the longest time, I couldn’t either.
I think I began accepting the fact that one day my kids were all going to be adults, by the time they graduated HS! Yeah, I know.. I am slow.. it takes me time to adjust…. I don’t like change.. even when it is a good change….I stay too long in the place of….. ohhhhh my baby! You must be saying: her poor kids, right about now. I get it. But just you wait and see! Your time will come soon enough.
As I watched Jesse walk across the stage in his cap and gown, I was very sentimental, yes, and all the years I spent cuddling with him as a newborn baby and infant came flooding back. I also had feelings of deep pride and joy in the man he has become and the journey he has ahead of him as he continues to follow his bliss and practice medicine, something that gives him much satisfaction and happiness.
I encourage you to take the time every day to jot down a few words in a journal about what your day today was like. Don’t overwhelm yourself and feel like you have to write a novel each time you sit down to write. This is a sample of things I use to write down when the kids were little:
April 2nd – Took kids to the water park. Forgot their lunches & thought I had to go home, but my good friend Lisa came to the rescue and shared her kids lunches. None of the kids really minded cuz they just ate more snacks. Finally had a breather at 9:30 when they were all asleep.
Not much to that entry, right? I do have to say thought that when I read those few sentences 20 something years later, I could remember that exact day. I could see myself sitting on the bench and frantically looking for the lunch bag I would usually hang from the stroller handle. I remember being incredibly pissed at myself realizing I would now have to pack up the kids and take them home, just to have lunch. And I definitely remember the kindness of my friend Lisa and the fact that the kids totally did not care because they filled up on potato chips.
Now highlighting Bad Mommy is not my intent!! Highlighting the need to only write a few sentences each day and how this can be more than enough. Don’t get bogged down in feeling you need to write a whole story. Just a very, very, oh so very brief synopsis of the day is more than good enough! The point is: Just do it!