Wake up. Make breakfast. Get dressed. Clean up from breakfast. Pack up the diaper bag. Brush teeth and hair. Put on shoes. Out the door for morning activities.

11 am - 1 pm

Home for lunch. Eat lunch. Listen to audio stories. Clean up from lunch. Change clothes. Read books. Down for naps.

3 pm - 5 pm

Wake up from naps. Make snacks. Clean up from snacks. Organize at-home activities. Dinner prep.

5 pm - 7:30 pm

Dinner. Independent play and dinner clean up. Bath time. Put on pajamas. Brush teeth. Read stories. Tuck in and lights out.

This has been my daily routine with my toddlers for a couple of years now. Sure, there are other chores, activities, and moments that happen in the in-between moments, but this is the baseline. The foundation for our daily life.

We read many of the same books. Make many of the same meals. We rotate through the same handful of activities each week.

And honestly, it’s been great. My kids thrive with consistency, and in some ways, I do too. Everyone knows what to expect. There are fewer meltdowns. We have a lot of fun. It’s a great life.

But I can’t be the first to feel that motherhood with small children can be repetitive. I personally don’t mind repetition, consistency, and schedules, although I’ve recently noticed that my routine is missing something.

Awe.

You see, even on the most basic of days, there is magic in these moments.

There are two babies who run into my arms for snuggles first thing in the morning. Little toes that lay across my lap while I read stories. Sticky fingerprints on the window, a sign of anticipation for our morning outing. Little shoes scattered by the front door.

Sometimes, in the repetition of life, I miss out on the absolute magic of these moments.

Last weekend, I watched my husband get our kids up from naptime on the Nanit monitor while I was out. I watched him grab my youngest out of the crib. He reached for Dada to give him a big hug and kiss on the cheek. I saw them dancing around the bedroom with his favorite stuffed animal. I smiled as my youngest waddled into his sister’s room to wake up “sissy” with extreme enthusiasm and gave her wet kisses.

That’s when it hit me. This magic happens every single day. And if I watched my repetitive daily life with a cheesy song playing in the background as an Instagram Reel, it would look picturesque.

Spoiler: it is picturesque.

The highlight reel we see online is happening right before our eyes. It’s happening in the moments between the mundane, repetitive schedule of everyday life. The little interactions we start to take for granted.

We spend a lot of time talking about how harmful it is to compare our lives to the highlight reels we see on social media. I’m starting to wonder if we’ve got it all wrong. What if we don’t need to remember that life isn’t a highlight reel but rather remember that our life is a highlight reel? The highlights just happen in between all the other moments that steal our attention.

The 10-minutes I spent watching my everyday life unfold on the monitor gave me back the gift of awe. I’m in complete awe of my life. I just forget to let myself feel it sometimes.

But this was different. I wasn’t nervous to hear a heartbeat or anxious about what the tech might say. All I could think was, “What if this is my last time on this table?”

My husband and I have always said we want three or four kids. Three was always certain. Or at least as certain as trying for a baby can be. But four? The fourth has always been a possibility, but one that we wouldn’t make a final decision on until the time comes.

I completely relished my first two pregnancies. Making it through with essentially no nausea, minimal fatigue, and no pain was picturesque. I worked out until the day I delivered each time, nourished my body with healthier choices than I’ve ever made, and arrived at delivery day feeling like I truly soaked in every moment.

This time has been different. I’ve experienced nausea throughout the entire pregnancy so far, and to say my hormones have taken me for a wild ride would be a huge understatement. My mood has been low. The best way I can describe it is that I’m operating at a slightly lower frequency with a fog over everything.

Each pregnancy is different, but life circumstances certainly contribute to the hardships this time around. Chasing two toddlers while pregnant is no easy feat in and of itself, but doing it all while my husband pursues his MBA at night, on top of his regular work demands, has been, quite honestly, excruciating on some days.

Ironically, that has not been the most difficult part. That little voice in the back of my mind from the ultrasound reminds me every day that this could be the last time. And if it is, damn, I want to be enjoying it.

My husband and I have talked about waiting to have a fourth when all our kids are in school. Prioritizing a time when I have the bandwidth to process and hopefully fully enjoy the last time to the fullest.

He wants that for me just as much as I want it for myself, but I can’t help mourning every bit of this pregnancy as it’s my last. Self-preservation? Maybe.

Part of me wonders if this pregnancy would be easier if it were certainly the final piece of our family. I’m sure I would still be mourning the “lasts” but without the unknown of what’s to come or not come.

Part of me takes this feeling as the confirmation that we aren’t done. There’s one more out there for our family.

Part of me wonders if moments like this are so sweet, so good, so beyond what we can even dream, that I’ll simply never be ready for them to end.

I know this isn’t a decision we are ready to make until we experience life as a family of three, finish this extraordinarily busy season of life, and see where we land in the next phase. I am confident in that.

Nonetheless, the fear that haunts me daily is what it will feel like if, when the time comes, we conclude that we are complete. That this season of life is over. That these experiences are now just memories.

You know what, though? We have at least an hour of family time every single day. My husband hurries home from work before class, and I make sure dinner is ready so we can have intentional family time. We are both still getting to the gym 3 days a week. We eat 90% of our meals at home, freshly cooked from our kitchen. My husband cold plunges once a week. I’m writing. We have one family day a week, where we spend the entire day just the four of us.

But we’re not superheroes. We don’t talk to friends as much as we used to, or would like to. We say no to a lot of social invitations. I have cut down significantly on work outside of the home. We don’t do many things that require us to be out after 8 pm. We’re not traveling at all.

Before we started this busy season of life, we sat down and discussed our priorities. For us, right now, that’s family time, health, and growing our family. If something doesn’t fall within one of those buckets, it’s more often than not a no right now. We still love the things we’re saying no to. We’re just aware that we can’t do it all, all the time.

I’ve stopped saying “I don’t have time”. I do have time. I firmly believe we all have time for the things we care about most. Instead, I’m saying “that’s not a priority right now”. And honestly, it feels good not to give away my power to limitations on time. I have the power and capacity to do everything I want to do, but not all at once.

She’s 3. She was age-appropriately reacting to not knowing what to do with the emotions of being overwhelmed by a mommy and me class that was unusually crowded after a holiday weekend, not wanting to go home after a fun morning, and desperately needing lunch. I realized, while sitting on the floor of the backseat of my car trying to wrestle everyone into car seats, that this was about me.

I didn’t fully understand why until my virtual therapy appointment later that afternoon (excellent timing). Turns out, my brain immediately jumps to “what if I can never get them into car seats? I’m a terrible mother”.

I’m a really good mom. I know this. I’m actually very confident in my motherhood most of the time. But my body reacts to tantrums with black-and-white thinking. “We’ll be stuck in the car for the rest of our lives.” A bedtime meltdown results in the thought “I’ll never get this toddler into the bathtub.” One night of difficult sleep leads to “I’ll never sleep again.”

Do I actually think we’ll live in the car in the mommy and me parking lot for the rest of our lives? No. But it feels real in the moment. And, in my brain, that makes me a terrible mother.

My therapist asked where this thought comes from. I sat in silence for a while before saying “my care for them and doing a good job as their mom”. What a cool thing. To care so much about my role in life that I want to do it as perfectly as possible.

But what a miserable existence to spend motherhood looking for perfection to feel proud of the job I am doing.

So what are the answers? I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out.

For now, it’s understanding where the feeling comes from and maybe reminding myself that we won’t be sleeping in the car until my kids outgrow car seats. And if we want to really look at the bright side, we just bought my dream mom car, and it wouldn’t be the worst place to live.

The first time I was pregnant I worked like crazy to save for three months off. I work with a supportive group of women who were happy to help shoulder my workload while I was away. The second time around, I did essentially the same thing. I did get to really soak in the newborn bubble each time and for that, I am grateful. However, for me, the downsides outweighted the benefits.

I used to think I was alone in feeling like four months postpartum was the most difficult time. After hearing from many women that they had the same experience, I know it’s time to share my perspective.

Three months of the newborn bubble is great, until it bursts. When the clock strikes month four, the help becomes scarce, work ramps up, routines resume, and the general sentiment from the world is that you’re “back”. The overwhelming feeling I had was, “WTF, I just had a baby”.

Instead of focusing on the first three months, I’m focusing on the first fifteen months. This is going to look like ongoing support scheduled out ahead of time. Here’s what I’m doing.

My husband will be off for six weeks, giving me a chance to recover and take things slower with the new baby. We will have have a sitter come once a week for my toddlers so that I get uninteruped attention because my postpartum self loves to be doted on.

After my husband goes back to work, a sitter will come twice a week so that I have a couple of hours to workout, get a coffee alone or maybe just sit in my car listening to my own music. We’ll continue doing this for at least a year.

There are rules. I cannot cancel. I cannot work during this time. And I cannot “get things done”. That requires additional support. This is my time to do things that feel good and aid in my recovery.

I primarily make my own work hours and work from home, meaning I can keep working in the first few weeks while resting in bed and pausing to nurse when needed. The more moms I meet, the more I realize that so many of us are doing this weird dance of being a stay at home mom while also working in some non-traditional capacity. However, I think this conversation is important even for those in a corporate work situation with a standard maternity leave.

My gut feeling is that the three month bubble in the way I’ve enjoyed it before, has contributed to how hard month four has felt. My hope is that instead of the bubble popping this time, I’m going to slowly start letting the air out after a couple of weeks and help myself adjust to my new reality without the overwhelm and burnout of being “back”.

Will it work out how I imagine? Stay tuned.