{"id":230,"date":"2007-01-14T21:27:01","date_gmt":"2007-01-15T02:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/wordpress\/?p=230"},"modified":"2011-05-28T21:18:23","modified_gmt":"2011-05-28T20:18:23","slug":"energy-and-pride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2007\/01\/14\/energy-and-pride\/","title":{"rendered":"Energy and pride"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nAfter my two-week Christmas holiday with Eric at home, I started this year rested and with lots of energy. (Relatively speaking.) I was determined to get more done – to get out more, to have more fun during the days, and generally just try to avoid getting stuck in a rut.\n<\/p>\n

\nIt is very easy for me to get worn down by the endless repetition of small stuff, and lose all ability to take initiative. After a few rounds of breastfeeding, nappy changes, and slinging Ingrid to sleep, my brain just slowly shuts down and I let the rest of the day pass by without doing anything much. Even though I like to read, I can’t be bothered to pick up a book. Even though we have lots of good movies at home, it’s easier to simply surf the web for an hour.\n<\/p>\n

\nOne of the changes I’ve made – probably the most important one – is to go out for a long walk every afternoon, as long as the weather isn’t atrocious. This one change alone has worked wonders on my energy level, and that in turn has led to more good changes. Mental energy, unlike the physical variety, generates itself like a perpetuum mobile<\/i> – you really can get more energy out of an activity than you put in.\n<\/p>\n

\nI am also trying to find regular activities that I could commit to. It’s easy to skip a walk because it’s drizzling outside, but if I was signed up for a course, for example, I would be more likely to ignore the weather and go anyway. Now that I think about this, the best kind of activity would be something where others depended on me – I have such a strong sense of responsibility that I would make a real effort to do what I have promised. Hmmm… something to ponder.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnyway, I have only found one weekly activity thus far – a local NCT coffee group<\/a>, i.e. a group of local mothers who get together and drink coffee (or pomegranate and raspberry juice) and eat cookies and talk about their babies.\n<\/p>\n

\nI went to a coffee group for the first time last week. Most babies there were older than Ingrid, around 7 to 10 months, but there was one other 3-month baby there. And she was so tiny next to Ingrid! She looked no larger Ingrid did at 1 month. And she also seemed about as strong as Ingrid was then. Ingrid looked like a pro wrestler in comparison, with her ability to lift her head and wave her legs around and all that.\n<\/p>\n

\nI couldn’t help feeling really proud of my baby. I know that most probably very little of her rude health is due to anything I have done, and she would probably look and be as robust if someone else was taking care of her. She happened to be of slightly above-average weight at birth, and happened to be good at eating and growing. The other baby happened to be born small, and possibly grow slower. There’s not much a mum can do about this. But still, I couldn’t help it. I was inordinately proud of my big strong beautiful baby, and still am.\n<\/p>\n

\nLook, world, this is my baby! I created this lovely creature! It came out of my body! And it’s my milk that’s made her so strong!\n<\/p>\n

\nThis is something my hormones do to me, I’m convinced, to make sure that I take good care of her. It’s a bunch of selfish genes wanting to survive and procreate and then in 20 or 30 years’ time they can make her feel the same so the genes get to go another round. And every other mum’s genes do the same to her. Doesn’t matter. I’m still so proud of my baby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After my two-week Christmas holiday with Eric at home, I started this year rested and with lots of energy. (Relatively speaking.) I was determined to get more done – to get out more, to have more fun during the days, and generally just try to avoid getting stuck in a rut. It is very easy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ingrid_johanna","category-observing_the_self","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2915,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/2915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}