Life Lesson from a Busy Mom

Sunday night: work a 12-hour shift.

Monday morning: turn in 15-page concept analysis paper on social justice in healthcare, put dinner in the crock pot, then sleep.  Wake up, gather children, start homework, eat dinner, baseball practice for #2 son at 5:30.  I’m tired already, and I’ve only been up for 3 hours!  After practice, baths and bed for the boys, and advanced pathophysiology for yours truly.  By the time I go to bed, I think to myself, “what am I thinking?”

That’s just the first 24 hours of my week, because I am the proud mother of three amazing, crazy, baseball playing, beautiful boys, a full-time night shift nurse, and a grad student working on my nurse practitioner’s degree.  Luckily, I have an amazing husband who fills in for my short comings, but this is my life as I know it.

We have baseball on Mondays and Tuesdays, select basketball on Wednesdays, soccer on Thursdays, and games Fridays and Saturdays.  I reflect on the question I am frequently asked, as well as I ask myself, “What are you thinking?”  And the answer is, “I try not to think about it!”

I know someday that the games will be over, the homework will end, and my family schedule will be empty, and that is what keeps me going.  I realize this too shall pass, and strangely enough, that makes me sad.  So no matter how crazy your life gets, how stressed you are, or how much time you think you don’t have, just remember: someday you will have too much time.

So today, do something fun!  Fill your calendar, and enjoy every minute of it; for this too shall pass.

Carrie White is a nursing supervisor in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Plano.