I once heard a Vietnamese Buddhist monk say, “Always saying ‘I should, I should’ – that’s just shoulding on yourself! Hahahahahahahahah!”
I love how those Buddhist monks laugh.
I have been worrying about how my baby sleeps, especially during the day, but also how long it takes her to settle at night. (I am always worrying – apparently I have stress levels set at a fairly high threshold, so worry is what I do – what a great look-out I would have been for my tribe, 100,000 years ago!) Anyway, something occurred to me last night. The days when I don’t stress about it too much – when I don’t beat myself up for picking her up and cuddling her for one (or more) of her naps – are the days I feel less exhausted, no matter whether I got more than four hours sleep the night before. Stress and worry are tiring.
The other thing I realised was that, like most things I do, I am probably doing this pretty well. By “this,” I mean the whole, mothering, taking care of the baby thing. I tend to stress and worry about work or other activities, only to find later (sometimes years later) that I actually did better than I thought. It has taken me some time to realise that I am actually quite conscientious, even when I am slacking off. So then naturally, I worry that if I stop worrying, I will no longer do things so well :-).
I don’t want to “should” on my baby. Probably more important to model non-shoulding behaviour than to worry about perfecting feeds, sleeps and whatever else. It’s all going to change anyway (another Buddhist-ism. Hahahahahahahahahah!)