Making Decisions as Mom is So Much Harder

Decision fatigue and anxiety plague small and big decisions

Mindy Morgan Avitia
4 min readSep 1, 2022
Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash

I woke up this morning like any other morning.

To my daughter yelling “mama” in her room while I prepare coffee.

I lazily walk to her room and her energy demands my attention immediately. It’s adorable and usually makes me smile. I change her diaper, get her dressed, comb her hair, and we move to the kitchen for breakfast.

My first decision of the day.

Mornings are mostly peaceful because they’re predictable. I know she’ll wake up asking for me or her dad. I know she’ll need a diaper change. I know she’ll brush her teeth. I know her hair will need to be combed.

Breakfast starts the day of decision-making.

Should she eat eggs? Or oatmeal? Or a frozen waffle? Or maybe yogurt with fruit? Should we give in to her demands for Goldfish with her eggs, or stand firm that Goldfish are not for breakfast? (Is that even a rule? Who says?)

And then her dad takes her to school. That’s when the chaos of the morning subsides and I transition to my home office. Sometimes right away, sometimes I take a whole-ass hour to wind up to a day of writing and client calls.

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