***This post was originally written as a Guest Blog post for Momstown.ca.***

I’ve recently been corresponding with another female chiropractor, whom I worked with long, long ago…. I mean, before-I-was-even-a-chiro long ago.  She has just had her first baby, and now she’s trying to navigate the challenge that is being a working mom.

“Often it feels a lot like you should be able to manage it all,” she said in a recent email.  And that, my friends, sums up the motherhood condition known as “The Shoulds”.

• I should be able to work as much as I used to.
• I should be able to wear my pre-pregnancy clothes.
• I should be able to smile and laugh and play with my baby all day.
• I should be able to get up early.
• I should be able to keep my house clean.
• I should be able to do it all.

Guess what mamas?  You can’t.  Motherhood is an all-consuming, priority-shifting, time-altering new reality.  So, what’s a girl to do?  Well, you have to choose what’s going to change.  You can choose sleep or fitness or work or socializing or housework or….. see what I mean?  There are simply not enough hours in the day to do it all, always.  My choice is less sleep (okay, far less sleep), part-time work, and a perpetually dirty kitchen floor; it wouldn’t have worked for the childless me, but it works for the mama in me.  And I’m slowly recovering from “The Shoulds”.

My motherhood experience began on Jan 22nd, 2009.