How to keep riding after the baby

[Rides 2 Far <rides2far@juno.com>]

IActually, my problem is that after having my son 20 months 
> ago, I've had a heck of a time finding the time to condition.  How did
other working > parents solve this, or at least deal with the guilt?  

I *started* doing endurance when my first child was 8 months old. 
Granted, I was a stay at home mom, but my husband was working 56 hours a
week and there was nobody to leave my daughter with. It's HARD to watch a
baby sleep and see the horse outside and WISH there was just somebody to
sit in your house with her while she slept and you rode.  

I had a system though.  I got up at 5, drove to the barn (which didn't
have lights) brushed by feel, saddled in the dark and walked the first 15
minutes in the dark till it got light enough to trot. I rode for an hour,
fed immediately afterwards (which wasn't good) and drove home fast. I
came up the driveway at 7:30 AM just as my husband was ready to leave for
work.  If all went well baby Bonnie never knew I left and I crawled back
in bed.  Saturdays were sort of the same. If you leave early enough ad
get back early enough, they hardly know you're gone. There was some guilt
involved, but I noticed that if I slept till 12 nobody held it against
me, so if I could ride 6 hours by 12 whose business was it but mine? I
was lucky in that I had trails right out the back of the barn.  

It would have been a lot harder if I'd been working because I did go back
to sleep after riding.  Babies love to sleep by their mama, even when she
smells like a horse. :-)  I never tried to double a child. Don't believe
in that. I did briefly try putting her in a playpen and riding round and
round the arena sized field, but my kids inherited the "don't fence me in
gene" and wouldn't put up with that. 

Angie


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