This post was originally posted on http://www.beforeiwasyourmum.com in Mar 2018

I had a list a mile long of all the things I was going to do with the ’luxury’ of a whole year off work (#rofl at my old self, she had #noclue). Now I am back at work I am absolutely kicking myself that I didn’t put on my big girl pants and get that shit done, but some things were just more important.

Things I didn’t do on maternity leave:…

• Lose the baby weight. I’m almost there, 2kgs to go. My hopes (dreams) that breastfeeding would miraculously make it ‘fall off’ me were all in vain. Typical.
• Lose the other 10kgs I wanted to lose even before I got pregnant.
• Go for a walk every day. Probably why the above two didn’t eventuate. I surely did more walking than the previous two years, but not every day and not of the kind that would lead to me achieving the weight loss I planned.
• Cook dinner every night. Like seriously how the hell did our grandmothers do it? Mine had four kids under six and she managed to feed, cloth and keep clean all four kids and husband without any help from anyone. I was just lucky to feed the baby, occasionally myself and remember to put clean pants on to leave the house.
• Change the name on my passport to my married name. You have to make an appointment for that and that is just way too much pressure for something that doesn’t involve coffee and cake. Plus, I ain’t going anywhere anytime soon.
• Learn to play the guitar. I own a pretty cool Taylor, figured with all my spare time I’d be virtually Taylor Swift by now… HA! #theswiftytag
• Read all the books on my bedside table – and organise our bookclub catch up from December… oops sorry girls I am gonna get onto that soon!
• Sort out our finances, getting a better deal on our utilities and health insurance… too much waiting on hold #aintnobodygottimeforthat #stillgettingrippedoff

This is what I did do…

• Drank a shit load of coffee – most of it decaf (blerg) because #breastfeeding #mmmcoffee
• About 50 million loads of washing.
• Took about 15,000 photos and videos (no really… literally 15,000)
• Did some writing and drawing and painting – this was while he still had two daytime naps. I think I’ve got a snowballs chance in hell of doing much more of that for a while.
• Spent about 4 hours a night on Instagram or Pinterest because my brain was fried from thinking about when and what to feed my gutsy baby next.
• Moved my body more doing things that were fun to do with my baby like swimming, and playing on the grass in our backyard looking up to the planes in the sky with wonder. Although not actually exercise all of that was much better than sitting at my desk for 12 hours a day and wondering why my body ached so much.
• Learned to love my body more. I don’t hate it. It’s not perfect but the marks show where it grew beyond its limits to grow my baby boy. Beyond that it has fed and comforted him for a whole year earthside and I have more respect for it now than ever before. I’m actually a hot mess (if I do say so myself) and am gonna try remember that more often.

Lastly, and most importantly, I snuggled and cuddled my baby whenever he needed it and I wouldn’t change that for the world. I miss those little naps together when he couldn’t roll away from me… or slap me in the face just to get to the iPad.

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