Getting Back To Basics

The last few weeks leading up to the birth of the precious baby that God has blessed us with is not easy for me. In fact, it is down right hard !!! It is hard physically and emotional and spiritually!

This is the time when my nesting instinct turns ugly. Where I want to just withdraw into myself and be quiet and alone. But try doing that with a houseful of children 9 years and below! Of course I didn’t have this issue to grapple with when I had my first nor my second child. Afterall, when you are pregnant with your first, you can basically continue to live life as you had – eat when you want, sleep when you want, be alone when you want.

But when you have many littles who need your attention and help, you will have to learn to put their needs before your own.

And so it gets more and more challenging for me when the Lord keeps on increasing our family size! Everything irritates me at this point. People talking too loudly, people talking too softly. People touching me, people ignoring me. People asking too many questions, people not bothering to ask how I am. Yes I morph into this unreasonable creature.

And then there are the tears. Crying at the drop of the hat. Being overly sensitive over everything. Like I said – no fun! To me and to those who have to live with me! And it doesn’t help when I tend to go over my EDD! But life has to go on, right? And that’s why I title the post “Getting Back To Basics”. As I hit the last stretch, I start to slow down and pare down life to the basic essentials. This helps me to not feel ovewhelmed and it also helps me conserve energy for the birth.

Quiet Time
This is basic that needs to be done each day. And yet, it is something that is the easiest to push aside when I hit this last stretch . It is always easy to be busy and do things especially when the “To-Do” List is a mile long! But that is exactly why I feel overwhelmed. I need to stop and remember the words of Moses as he stood between the Red Sea and the advancing Egyptian army (talk about being overwhelmed!) :

And Moses said to the people,
“Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today.” Exodus 14:13

If I rush around like a headless chicken, I am taking things into my own hands – again! I need to stop and choose to rest in the Lord and not miss what He wants to do in my life. He is working something out in these last weeks. I can choose to make it meaningful and draw closer to Him or I can whine and grumble till I birth. Which will I choose?

As an aside, I remember when I was waiting to birth #4. Everyone around me was telling me that she will definitely be early since she’s the 4th child And so by Week 38 I was more than ready to have her. Week 39 came and went. So did Week 40. I was getting grumpier by the day and complaining non-stop. I was huge and hot and tired. Despite taking lots of pineapples and walking around a lot (we were at the zoo on her EDD!) the baby was just not ready to come out. It was only after I realised that I was being silly – you can’t make a baby come out when it is not time – that I started to rest in the Lord and let Him take over. She finally joined us 5 days past EDD.

Housework
I de-clutter like a maniac in the last weeks. This helps to cut down the amount of time needed to clean up the house in the last weeks as well as after the baby’s arrival. And …it gives me something to do instead of moping around and feeling sorry for myself.

This time round, I am engaging the services of part-time home cleaners to come in once a week from Week 38. So even if I go beyond EDD, I won’t have to bother about housework. While I didn’t take up a part time cleaner after #4 and #5, I shall take it real easy this time and get them to come in. I am obviously not as young nor as energetic as I was before! Lol!

I will probably use them for a minimum of 2months, if not 3. I have realised that resting more in the post partum days helps me recover much faster than trying to get many things done immediately.

Cooking
I look through my menus and start listing my final month of cooking before I take a break – yay! (I don’t cook after I birth. My mil helps out in the first month and then I switch to catered tingkat food in the second month.) This is one break I look forward to! No need to think about food and cooking for 2 whole months! Ok – so the children dislike catered food but hey! they have to learn to think of mom!

Homeschooling
I would love to be able to just take the last month off and another 3months off after baby’s arrival. But having done it with the last pregnancy, I shall not be doing it again!

Taking off school for too long a break is not good for all. Children get bored and into each other’s faces. Mom gets lazy and find re-starting school a chore. Instead, I push for all to finish up what is planned in view of the much lighter load we will be having post partum. But the workload lightens considerably.

Everyone will take one whole month off when baby arrives! Then in the second month, we will re-start our SOW devotions (Outline/Topic/Setting/Character/Commentary). The pre-schoolers will do their own devotions with me.

In the third month, we will add in English, Maths and Science (for the 9year old only) by doing just assessment papers/ worksheets from Popular. The pre-schoolers will do just Reading and Math.

All things will swing back to “normal” in the fourth month – God willing!

It is tempting to say “I give up” especially to homeschooling when you are pregnant or just had a baby. But as a wiser mom said to me before – Life doesn’t stop when you are pregnant or when you just have a baby. It just slows down. Since we believe that God is in control and He has given us all these children with homeschooling thrown into the mix, we just have to work pregnancy and nursing into our lifestyle.