While visiting some friends this weekend, I was asked whether my whole life had been turned upside down since the arrival of our daughter 3 months ago. Certainly many things have changed, but I realized my answer just as they were asking.

Life has slowed down a bit, but my life was already slow and relatively quiet. Not many of my daily activities have changed dramatically. I wasn’t working full time prior to her arrival and I had been spending time with kids in homes for the last couple of years. I am used to tracking the sleeping and eating habits of a baby. And most importantly, I don’t have a plan to speed my life up again now that she’s a little older. While I haven’t been specifically preparing for a child for the last 3 years, I think that my routines have helped me get ready for the mundanity that parenting can be. So I already knew what a slow, quiet, daily life looked and felt like. Lucky me.

But what about all of the fast-moving, powerful, ambitious people in our country who become parents? Their experiences must be like walking quickly on a people-mover at the airport and then down-shifting suddenly when they are thrust off of it. For the first few seconds, it feels disorienting and if you’re not careful, you might fall over. Just imagine if most of your life was spent hurrying along and then <wham>, a kid comes along. Now you have to be satisfied with not leaving the house for a while or venturing out for only a short time.

While the advent of a new person with new demands and so much helplessness can be stressful in itself, being very unused to the daily monotony of early parenting can cause its own unwelcome stress. Feeling alone and trapped with unrealized expectations can make the first few months seem never-ending. So I have a couple of tips from this lazy mama to help you cope with quiet and solitude.

#1 Find a radio station that you like

Keep some type of news or music on during the day. This can keep you abreast of what’s going on in the world and keep you company as well.

#2 Practice being bored

What happens when you can’t move or do things? Does your head explode? Practice being bored before you find yourself with a sleeping kid on you and no way to reach the remote. Sit quietly and think. Look at your child’s face. Smile to yourself. Sigh. If your body is still, can your mind be still too?

#3 Have a day (at least one) where you DON’T GET ANYTHING DONE

You’ll have more of these than you’d care to think about once there is a little one in the house. Stay in your pajamas all day. Watch endless hours of TV. Don’t cook dinner. Have cereal. Take a nap. If someone asks you to go for a walk, tell them you can’t. Have nothing to say when your friend calls and asks what you’ve been doing that day. The real challenge for this one is trying not to feel guilty about not doing anything. Mama said there’d be days like this. But here’s a news flash: You’re not worthless if you didn’t “use your time wisely” to reorganize your sock drawer or clean under the bed.

Just as our worth is not determined by the price of our clothes, it is also not determined by our completed check-lists.

Having realistic expectations about the structure of your new everydays will only help you feel more steady when you come to the end of that people-mover and find yourself at home with an infant.