For the past few weeks, I’ve been reposting last year’s words.  Today, the choice was easy.

It’s 4:17 a.m.

I’m sitting on the coziest of couches in the coziest of rooms, drinking a steaming mug of coffee as I snuggle under a furry blanket.  Lil Mil is on the couch next to me, eyes aflutter, lost in baby dreamland.  Outside it’s a blanket of white.  Snow on the porch, snow on the trees, snow on the mountains I can just make out in the not-quite-dark.  I can’t see the sun, but I know it’s coming.

Morning is on its way.

But for now, I’m enjoying the not-yet-morning.  Those few moments when the day ahead holds every ounce of promise, when it feels like there may actually be enough hours to get it all done.  There is so much to do.  Too much.  But here, in the not-yet-morning, there is no hurry, because the day has not yet begun.  There is still time.

These moments, they end so quickly.  So suddenly.   At some point in the very near future, Lil Mil will wake up. She’ll be hungry, and I’ll feed her.  And while I’m kissing her tiny toes and nuzzling her sweaty little neck, my screen will go dark and my coffee will get cold.   Husband will emerge from the bedroom, and before long, the sun will be up and the day will have begun.  The clock will start ticking.  And before I know it, the day will be gone.

This day.  My birthday.

March fourth.

A date.

A sentence.

March forth.

A motto.  My motto.

It hasn’t always been.  Sure, if you’d asked me, I would’ve claimed it.  At 18, 21, 25.  But it didn’t fit.  Not really.

March \märch\ (v.): to move in a direct purposeful manner; to make steady progress.

Forth \ˈfȯrth\ (adv.): onward in time, place, or order.

I think it does now.

+  +  +  +  +

The day I found out I was pregnant, I bought a blank notebook and wrote a letter to Lil Mil.  It was the first of 253 letters, one for each day of my pregnancy.  I wrote the last one exactly 36 weeks later, on her birthday.  I mention this because I am proud of this.  I am proud of this because I did what I set out to do.  I didn’t miss a day.  Not a single one.

If you’d asked me on Day #1 whether I’d really do it – whether I’d really write a letter every single day of my pregnancy – I would have said yes.  Absolutely.  Bobbed my head enthusiastically.  I would have done this despite the fact that, given my history with such do-this-every-day commitments (and there have been many), the odds that I’d actually stick to this one were slim.  And by slim, I mean none.

I’m not exactly sure where I got this daily-letter-to-baby idea, but I embraced it with gusto. I immediately went out and bought a new leather moleskine (despite the fact that I had no less than five empty journals in my closet). I searched and searched for just the right pen. I drafted my first letter, in which I promised the poppyseed-sized embryo inside me that I would write to him/her every day until he/she was born.

This is what I do when I latch on to an idea I like.  I run with it.   No hesitation, full-speed ahead.   No matter what the context – a night out, a workout plan, the much-needed reorganization of my bedroom closet – I always start big, with flourish and gusto, full of ideas and grand plans.  And enthusiasm!  So much enthusiasm!

Which, in the past, would typically last for roughly the first third of the activity.

Sudden fervor followed by an equally sudden loss of interest.  That was my m.o.  I’d love an idea, then I wouldn’t anymore.  I’d craft a plan, then abandon it.   Race forward, then abruptly change course.  Always on to the next thing, the next idea, the next grand plan.

But then, something changed.  One sunny May morning, I found out that I was no longer alone in my body.   There was a tiny little person inside me, a poppyseed-sized person who deserved more than just my good intentions. A person who, even at poppyseed stage, deserved to have a mom who sticks to her promises.

I wanted to be that mom. I wanted to be that woman, not just for her, but for me.

That desire, more than anything else, was the impetus for this blog.  I’ve talked a lot about the why behind this project – why a book, why now.  I didn’t want to lose my identity in motherhood.  I didn’t want to lose momentum with my writing career.  I didn’t want this detour to take me off track.  I wanted to prove that the journey through Life With A Newborn can be a creative and productive one.

But none of those reasons explain how I got from the why to the what.  Why a daily (okay, not quite daily) blog?  Why the detailed game plan, the rules, the weekly list of tasks?  Why the need for an audience?

Because I wanted to succeed.  I wanted to make the first 12 weeks 100 days of my daughter’s life the best 12 weeks 100 days of mine.  And I was afraid that I would fail.

Not by falling short of my goal, but by abandoning it.  By giving up.  By giving in to the unceasing demands of Life With A Newborn.  By convincing myself that it was too much, too soon.  By letting my fear that I can’t actually do this (a fear I work very hard not to acknowledge) keep me from trying.

In other words, I was afraid that I’d do what I do:  make a grand plan (I’ll finish my novel in the first 12 weeks of my baby’s life!), complete with sweeping promises (I’ll write daily!), and not follow through.

A reasonable concern, considering my history of well-laid but abruptly abandoned plans.

So I launched this blog.  It’s harder to quit with people watching.

But I know now that I shouldn’t have been worried.  Because that poppyseed-sized person who became a seven-pound fifteen-ounce little girl had already changed the game.  She had made this project about something else.  Something more.  And she made me into someone else.  Someone more.

Someone who sees things through.  Who sticks to her promises.  Who finishes what she starts, no matter how long it takes or bumpy the road gets.  No matter where this detour leads.

It’s 6:28 a.m.  The sky is lighter now.   Lil Mil is awake, snuggled up on a furry blanket, just watching her mama work.  The day has begun.  This day.  My birthday.

March fourth.

March forth.

And so I will.

(If you’re new to Embrace the Detour, click HERE and HERE to read about my crazy plan.  If you have ideas or suggestions, I’d love to hear from you!  Feel free to leave a comment, send me an email at lauren at embracingthedetour dot com, or use the comment form on the right-hand sidebar).

I originally wrote this post on Day #4 of my quest to write a novel in the first 100 days of Lil Mil’s life.  Little did I know that this would be the first of many, many, many off days.  Days that threw me for a loop not once, but a dozen times in half as many hours.  As time marched on, I got better at dealing with them, of absorbing them and working around their off-ness.  I learned how to manage my off-days.

But somewhere along the line, I abandoned my day-off.

A year later, sitting at my desk in a high rise office building, facing a stack of contracts that need to be reviewed and redrafted, I’m struck by a deep longing for both off-days and days off.  Lately, I’ve had neither.

I’m having an off day.

At last, you say.  We were wondering when you’d get here.

Welcome to Life With A Newborn.  Land of off days and good intentions.

This particular off day started with Lil Mil’s first rough night.  Truth be told, I’ve been waiting for this night to come – the inevitable moment when my formerly pleasant and calm child turns into a shrieking and screaming fusspot.  So when Lil Mil started moaning at 11:45 p.m. last night, I held my breath and waited for a scream.  But it never came.  In fact, she never even cried.

She just… moaned.  All night long.  The pitiful moan of an unhappy little person who can’t articulate the source of her discomfort.  Was she hungry?  No.  Did she need a new diaper?  No.  Did she simply want to be held?  No.  She just wanted to moan.  And her mama wanted to cry.

Her mama didn’t cry, however, because her mama believed that come morning, the moans would cease.  A rough night is par for the course, her mama thought as she stared at her daughter’s furrowed, oh-so-moany brow.  I was expecting this.

The hours passed and the moans did not cease, which meant that “morning” came at an hour that most would consider the middle of the night.  Still, I believed that if I behaved as though a new day had begun, my daughter would realize that her moaning had run its course.  That this new day was a smiley day.  A happy day.

No such luck.

And so, our rough night turned into a rough morning as I held and swayed and shushed my moany girl.  Those early morning hours I’ve gotten used to spending at my laptop passed without notice.  My coffee got cold before I drank it.  And suddenly, it was 7:00 a.m. and I hadn’t written a word.  Or slept a wink.

I had, however, finally managed to soothe one exhausted, moaned-out little girl.  As the sun rose, she fell into a deep and blissful sleep.  And her mama, determined not to let the day get away from her, reheated her coffee and settled down in front of her laptop.

And stared at the screen.  Blankly.

I took a breath.  Rubbed my eyes.  Checked my email.  Read a blog post I liked.  And stared some more.

Food! I thought to myself a few moments later.  That’s what I need.  That’ll perk me up.

So I went to the kitchen and poured cereal into a bowl.  Or, rather, I intended to pour cereal into a bowl.  Instead, I poured cereal onto the floor.  Don’t ask me how it happened.  I didn’t have Lil Mil in my arms, I wasn’t on the phone.  I had my eyes on the bowl.  But somehow, I missed it entirely.

I didn’t react.  I was too tired to react.  I just looked at the pile of GoLean Crunch at my feet and debated whether to scoop it back into my bowl.  In the end, I just left it there.  Eat first, sweep later.

I poured a fresh bowl and went to the fridge for milk.  Uncapped it, tilted it toward my bowl… and spilled it on the counter.

This is an off day, I thought to myself, staring at the white puddle.  I’m having an off day.

With that, my expectations for Day Four plummeted.  Plummeted, then disappeared.  I didn’t want to write anymore.  I wanted to curl up on the couch and work my way through the contents of my 4% remaining DVR.  I didn’t want to be creative or productive or any other -ive adjective.  I wanted to take the day off.

And then I heard a tiny little moan, coming from a tiny little girl who had decided that she didn’t want to sleep anymore.  A tiny little girl with a giant appetite who was hungry for her breakfast.

So much for taking the day off.

While Lil Mil ate, I thought.  I thought about my no-writing-on-Sundays rule, my attempt to keep a weekly Sabbath.  I pondered its purpose.  I wondered how God would feel about a more flexible approach to Sabbath-keeping – a rolling day of rest that changed week-to-week.  It struck me that it would be a lot more productive if I could just take off days off, instead of giving up my perfectly good Sundays.

But what would happen if I had a string of off days?  An off week?  Could I simply proclaim it a Sabbath week and shelve my laptop for the duration?  Would I return to my keyboard seven days later rested and inspired and brimming with new ideas?  Or would I find that I’d adapted to the time off… that I’d grown accustomed to my new unwriterly routine.  Or, even worse, that my passion for my craft had waned.

I sat and I wondered.

And then I felt something wet on my leg.

More spilled milk.  Scratch that – sprayed milk.  Lil Mil had fallen asleep.   The fire hose that once was a normal human nipple was now spraying its contents all over my child’s face.

I wish I could say that this milk spray triggered an epiphany – that as I hurried to wipe up the milk before it hit our microsuede couch, I had an ah-ha moment about myself or parenting or my journey as a writer/mom. 

But I didn’t.  My hands were too full.  My mind too focused on the best way to get my drippy, milky daughter from my arms to her bassinet without waking her (or dumping a puddle of milk onto the couch). 

The epiphany didn’t come til later, when I sat down to write this post.  As I began to map out what I wanted to say about my off day, I went back through the hours I’d spent since waking, trying to account for each one.  I knew I would confess my lack of productivity (I didn’t work on my book at all), and thus felt compelled to describe how I spent my time.  What was I doing that kept me from writing? 

I ran through today’s highlight reel:  one fussy, moany baby; two painfully engorged breasts;  three blowout, seep-out-the-leg-hole-and-onto-a-perfectly-good-pair-of-pants diapers.  A broken breast pump.  Cranberry stains on my favorite white t-shirt.  A giant bruise where I ran into the bedpost. 

And that’s when the epiphany came.  I hadn’t had a day off.  I’d had an off day, but I hadn’t had a day off.  Instead, I’d had a day full of challenges, most of them entirely new.  Lil Mil didn’t care that her mom spilled cereal and milk on the floor.  She didn’t care that her mom was tired and cranky and not in the mood for a busy day.  Consequently, her mom didn’t have time to think about the spilled milk.  Didn’t have the luxury of being a couch slug.  And so, my off day became a day of lessons.  I learned a strategy for dealing with Milk Ejection Reflex (aka Forceful Let-Down, aka Spraying Your Child In the Face).  I developed a method for minimizing diaper leakage.  I discovered that hymns are like crack to my daughter, and that the chorus of Amazing Grace works like magic during a meltdown.  I found out that there are no days off in Life with a Newborn, and that off days are sometimes the most productive.

Sixteen hours after rising, I am calling it a day.  I have spent the day neither writing nor resting.  I could have written.  Even with all my day’s demands, I could have written.  In recounting the hours, I noticed slivers of time, quiet moments that I could have spent writing.  I missed those moments because I had already labeled this day an off day and decided that it would be wasted. 

I know now that off days are sometimes the most productive.  That the challenges of an off day can improve your craft.  I have no doubt that I became a better mother today — a more seasoned mother with a bigger arsenal of mom-skills – not inspite of my off day but because of it.   Had I declared today a day off and handed Lil Mil over to Husband or Gran, this wouldn’t be true.

And so, I’ll keep my Sabbath on Sundays, and I’ll pray that my Sundays aren’t off days.  I long for a day of rest.  I know I need it.  But after today, I don’t want to take my off days off.  I want to spend my off days learning and improving and growing.  I want to become a person who thrives on the offness of an off day – a person who feels enlivened by its challenges.  Empowered by its demands.

Because that person, she deserves a day off.  Not a week off, or a month off.  A day off.  A particular day.  Each week.  A day she can look forward to.  A day to reflect on lessons learned, to marvel over unanticipated accomplishments, to enjoy the product of her labor. 

Which is why, I think, God gave her one.

Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin,
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.
- Francis Anne Kemble (1809-1893)