I will be the first one to admit that I am an introvert and a homebody. Maternity leave sounded like an absolute dream to me, especially because I got to be off for seven months! (Yay for summers off as a teacher.) But I think anyone would go stir-crazy being stuck at home alone with a newborn for 8 hours a day. So I made a simple rule for myself that I followed through most of my maternity leave and it helped me stay sane.

So, what was the magical rule that kept me sane through those 7 months? Here goes:

Leave the House Everyday

What? That seems so easy! Except it isn’t when you haven’t showered in three days and you’d rather veg in front of the TV with baby. Packing the diaper bag, changing the baby, trying to avoid being out during nap times, and getting yourself ready just seems like an insurmountable task.

Now, you don’t have to leave in those first couple of weeks when you are still recovering and everything seems a little bit unreal. Time passes and all of a sudden your baby is a month old!

But I made a goal that Mac and I left the house everyday. Sometimes we went to a playgroup with other moms of young babies. Sometimes we went to the grocery store. And sometimes we just went for a walk around the neighborhood. But we went out and about everyday.

And you know what? It made me feel better. It was such a feeling of accomplishment that we were out in the real world.

Laugh All You Want, But It Made Me Stay Sane

Before I had a baby, I sometimes would spend an entire weekend in my house. And it was kind of nice, but by the end of the weekend I would feel like crap, probably because I hadn’t seen the sun hardly all weekend.

So on maternity leave, it was really easy to just make excuses to stay inside. But I that isn’t good for me or the baby. So Mac and I went on an adventure everyday. Then if there was a crappy, rainy day where we didn’t have anywhere to go, I didn’t feel so bad about staying home.

So how did you stay sane during maternity leave?