When the Math Doesn’t Math: A Postpartum Reality Check on Impossible Expectations

Episode 132: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
View transcript on Buzzsprout

Have you ever felt like you’re failing no matter how hard you try to organize, optimize, or push through? Like if you were just a little more disciplined, a little more efficient, a little more clever with your calendar, you could finally make everything fit?

I recently had a full crash out over exactly this. I’m freshly postpartum with my third baby and running a business, and I spent days convinced I could crack the code on my schedule. What finally snapped me out of it was a surprisingly blunt reality check from ChatGPT, of all things.

This post is a peek behind the curtain of my life right now. It’s also an invitation to look at your own expectations and ask whether the problem is you, or whether the math simply doesn’t work.

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What We Cover in This Episode

• The reality of being postpartum, running a business, and functioning with lower capacity
• The story of my crash out, and the difference between having childcare and having baby care
• How a reality check revealed I was cramming 50 to 60 hours of activity into a 28 hour window of support
• The cultural myth that we should be able to “do it all”
• A practical exercise to map your own time, tasks, and capacity
• The two choices you have when your personal math doesn’t add up

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The Reality of a Lower Capacity Season

Before my daughter was born, I had high hopes of recording a few months of podcast episodes ahead of time. It just didn’t happen. Since she arrived, I’ve missed a few weeks of publishing and put out some shorter episodes, and I can be really hard on myself about not keeping things to a particular standard.

I love creating these episodes. I also know they’re a labor of love. Coming up with topics, researching them, organizing my thoughts, and making sure you walk away with something tangible to apply to your own healing takes real time and energy. I want you to leave each episode feeling seen, understood, less alone, and less broken. As a mom running a business and juggling everything we juggle, that can feel like a tall order.

A friend recently asked me, “Wait, aren’t you on maternity leave?” The answer is yes and no.

Yes, I’m on my version of maternity leave. I got ahead on a lot of things, handed tasks to my team, and set some things aside entirely. I’ve drastically reduced my workload, especially compared to my first two postpartum seasons.

And when you own your business, you can only step back so far. No one else runs my payroll. I also don’t want to check out completely. Discovery calls have been highlights of my week, and I recently hosted a support call inside the membership that was a dream. There are ways I want to keep showing up in my business, and I’ve scaled everything else back to prioritize time with my newest tiny human.

My Postpartum Crash Out

Childcare is different from baby care

Here’s the setup. We have a part-time nanny who is wonderful with my older boys and has no experience with babies. So I have childcare, but I don’t have baby care.

I don’t need much. I explained to my husband that I really wanted about two predictable hours a day for deeper work and a little space. The few times I tried handing the baby to our nanny for thirty minutes to an hour, either the baby cried the whole time (which I can’t handle), or the baby was fine and my two-year-old found his way to my office door to bang on it or color on the walls.

The spiral

So I spiraled. What do I do? Where do I find this support? What support do I even want or need?

If my husband suggested adding another day of childcare one more time, I was going to lose it. More childcare would mean less time with my kids, and time with my kids is what I wanted more of. But I also needed a nanny who could watch a toddler and a baby for a couple of hours. But I love our nanny, and finding new childcare sounded like an absolute nightmare. And, and, and. You know how spiraling goes.

The Reality Check I Didn’t Know I Needed

Hours later, I decided I needed some strategic help. I opened ChatGPT and gave it every detail I could think of:

• I’m a business owner and a mom of three, and here are my kids’ ages.
• Here’s my team, when my son is in school, and when my nanny is here.
• I have the baby around the clock, so in a seven hour block of childcare I’m lucky to get one to two hours of unpredictable, broken up work time.
• Here’s my weekly workload, plus everything I need to do to run our life: grocery shopping, making dinner, and so on.
• I’m also breastfeeding full-time. How many hours a week is that?

Then I ended with one question: How do I make this work?

It came back with a detailed breakdown of hours of tasks versus hours of support, along with some suggestions. (In case you’re wondering, it estimated I’m spending about 28 hours a week breastfeeding.) One line stopped me in my tracks:

“You’re trying to fit 50 to 60 hours of activity into a 28 hour window of support. That’s not sustainable without strategic restructuring or extra support.”

Why did I think this was possible? Why did I need a robot to show me that my expectations for myself were impossible? And why was this what I needed to read before I could stop feeling like I was the problem?

For days I had been running through logistics, convinced I could crack the code. If I was clever enough to fit the pieces together just right, or if I just worked harder, I could make it work. ChatGPT’s follow up suggestions boiled down to something simple: you need to do less or get more support, and you probably need to do both.

When the Math Doesn’t Math

I know I’m far from alone in this pattern. We blame ourselves for failing to achieve the impossible. We think that if we were more organized, more efficient, or more disciplined, we could bend time and physics to our will. We decide we’re the problem, when the math simply doesn’t add up.

Sometimes you need something or someone outside yourself to hold up a mirror and say: this doesn’t add up. You’re trying to do something that is literally impossible, and that says nothing about your worth or your effort.

I needed to see it in black and white. Fifty to sixty hours of activity. Twenty-eight hours of support. Those numbers don’t work. No amount of hustle, optimization, or “working smarter” can make that equation balance.

The Myth of Doing It All

Here’s the part that makes me a little angry. We live in a culture that tells us, especially as women and especially as mothers, that we should be able to do it all. That if we can’t, it’s a personal failing. That other people manage, so why can’t we?

When you actually run the numbers and add up the hours of care work, paid work, life maintenance, and basic human needs, you realize nobody is truly doing it all. They’re doing less than it appears, or they have more support than they talk about, or they’re running themselves into the ground and calling it success.

The expectation is the problem. Sometimes the most regulated, grounded thing you can do is tell yourself the truth about what’s possible and what isn’t.

This connects to something we talk about often on Regulate & Rewire: anxiety grows when the load we’re carrying outweighs the capacity we have to carry it. When the load is mathematically impossible, no amount of trying harder will close that gap. Seeing that clearly is often the first moment your nervous system can stop bracing and start to soften.

Try This: Do the Math on Your Own Life

Whether you use ChatGPT, a notebook, or a conversation with a trusted friend, take some time this week to actually map out your time and your tasks.

1. List everything you’re trying to do in a week. I mean everything: work tasks, household tasks, caregiving, self-care, sleep, and meals.
2. Write down the hours you actually have available. Include sleep, because you’re a human who needs it. Include time for basic needs.
3. Be honest about how long things take. Use how long tasks actually take, and leave out how long you wish they took.
4. Look at the math. Really look at it. Are you trying to fit 50 hours into 28? Are you expecting yourself to run on four hours of sleep indefinitely? Are you counting on zero interruptions, zero unexpected needs, and zero time for rest or emotional regulation?

Two Options When the Numbers Don’t Add Up

When the math doesn’t work, you have two options: do less, or get more support. Usually you need both.

I suppose there’s a third option, which is to keep feeling perpetually behind and spiraling about not being good enough. I don’t recommend it.

Do less

Doing less is an honest response to what’s humanly possible. It means prioritizing. It means letting go of the fantasy that you can do everything perfectly all the time. Laziness has nothing to do with it.

Get more support

Getting more support means recognizing that humans are interdependent. We were never designed to do everything alone, and asking for help is one of the most mentally healthy things you can do.

Support can look like a partner, a friend, a sitter, a team, or a community. It can also look like a space that helps your nervous system carry what you’re carrying. That’s a big part of why we built the Regulated Living Membership, so you have tools, guidance, and people in your corner during the seasons that ask a lot of you.

Even when you do both, life can still be hard. Many of the systems we live in weren’t designed to support human thriving. At the very least, you can stop blaming yourself for failing to achieve the impossible.

Still Figuring It Out

I’m still in the thick of this season and still finding my way through it. I don’t have all the answers. What I do have now is a little more compassion for myself, because I can clearly see that what I was expecting of myself was mathematically impossible.

I hope this story gives you permission to look at your own impossible equations with a little more compassion too.

When good enough has to be enough, that’s survival. That’s wisdom. That’s regulation. That’s being human.

A key to regulated living, and to healing, is making space in your life to do it, and to stop blaming yourself for being unable to do the impossible.

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Three Tangible Takeaways

1. Do the math on your life. Before you spiral, get strategic. Map out the hours of tasks you’re trying to accomplish against the hours you actually have. You might be trying to solve an impossible equation without realizing it.
2. You have two options: do less or get more support (usually both). When the math doesn’t work, trying harder won’t fix it. Make a strategic choice to realistically reduce your workload, increase your support, or both.
3. The expectation is the problem. When you can’t achieve something, it isn’t always a personal failing. Sometimes what you’re attempting is mathematically impossible, and no amount of hustle or optimization can change that. Giving yourself that grace is a foundational part of healing.

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Want to Go Deeper?

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.