Dummies & Diapers

I recently read about the brilliant Spoon Theory and while I am not sick I felt it was easily applicable to my current situation with a 2 month old, colicky baby. Obviously I am not comparing being ill to having a baby (I love my little baby girl and I am pretty sure noone ever said that about their illnesss), but the idea of having a finite amount of spoons resonated with me.

Spoons however are not really that geeky, so I came up with my own version of the theory.

Life with a colicky baby is like playing oldschool D&D. You roll your character and based on your stats you have a certain amount of hit points. Once your hit points reach 0 it is game over.

Here is my stats sheet:

© Mistel 2013

Every morning you start out with full Energy Points, but each task you do takes away a certain amount of points. Want to go grocery shopping? Roll a D20 to see if your baby gets hungry midway. You rolled too low, ouch, baby lands a critical wail at you in the middle of the supermarked. You loose 4 Energy Points!

Want to vacuum? Roll the die again to check against your luck. If you roll high enough the white noise from the vacuum cleaner will lull your baby to sleep so you only loose 1 Energy Point.

Baby is crying, roll the die against your ability in baby decoding. Result: 1... Ouch critical failure, you thought the baby was hungry, but she wasn't now she is in hysteria and it will take 1 hour of walking back and forth singing to her before she calms down. You loose 5 Energy Points.

One of your friends ask if you want to meet up for lunch. Preparing to leave the house includes feeding and changing your baby. You loose 2 Energy Points for that and another 1 for packing the changing bag and walking back and forth to the cafe because you have to take an extra long route  as the pavement on the route you normally take does not accomodate a pram.

Your Energy Points got to -3, because you had to change diapers 3 times during the night? You will have a negative modifier for tomorrow... it is going to be a loooong day.

I hope my geeky version of the Spoon Theory helps non parents understand how it is to have a baby. When I decline a lunch invitation, it is not because I don't want to hang with you, it is simply because it is only 11:30, my Energy Points are already at 2 and I am fresh out of potions ;)