For every organized parent who got emotionally clotheslined by postpartum life.

I used to consider myself highly organized. I had two planners I kept updated and a perpetually clean car. I never missed a deadline. I was never late to events. I had my Christmas shopping planned out, gift by gift, long before Thanksgiving.

Then I had a baby.

Postpartum brain isn’t just tired—it’s rerouted. There’s actual science behind this. During pregnancy and after birth, parts of the brain involved in vigilance, empathy, and social cue detection become more active, while others—like those used for executive function and long-term planning—get dialed down. It’s adaptive: your brain is literally rewiring itself to be more responsive to your baby’s needs and to conserve energy for the most important stuff.

Unfortunately, what your new brain defines as ‘most important’ is largely out of your control.

Many of the things my ADHD husband had spent years learning to cope with—time blindness, mental clutter, emotional overload—started becoming my daily reality too. I’m told my brain will ‘go back to normal’ eventually. But when you’re trying to squeeze out a couple kids before you become geriatric (geriatric pregnancy is 35 years old, time to do your backwards math if you keep telling yourself ‘someday’) or if you just have kids within a couple years of each other (like most do) then it may feel like ‘going back to normal’ is half a decade away. 

It took me a long time to let go of the kind of organized person I used to be and embrace a whole new style—one the old me wouldn’t recognize as “highly organized” at all. Because she essentially lived in a different world.

Here are four ADHD survival strategies I borrowed from my husband that made new parenthood just a little more bearable.

---

1. Don’t Plan to Do It Later (There Is No Later)

“I’ll do it later” is a luxury you no longer have.

Before the baby, you might have been someone who could schedule tasks across a tidy dayplanner and double check your ‘to do’ list before calling it quits at the end of the day. Now, your days are never ending and you’re lucky if you even made a ‘to do’ list to start with. Your tasks are the worst combination of repetitive and chaotic. Your energy is depleted. Your executive function is fragmented.

Do the thing. Any part of the thing. Even just starting a thing. Toss the dirty socks in the general direction of the hamper. Set a reminder on your phone while your hands are free. Run the dishwasher when it’s only half full and there are still dirty dishes in the sink.

Embrace incremental progress. You’ll thank yourself later. And just like those with ADHD, you learn to act in the moment because you don’t know when the next usable moment will come.

---

2. Embrace the Piles

ADHD people love piles. Not because they want clutter, but because putting things “away” often means forgetting they exist. Out of sight, out of working memory. And when energy or motivation (or the baby’s nap time) finally hits, you don’t want to lose it to assembling all your supplies.

Postpartum brain behaves in a similar way. Your cognitive load is so saturated with baby needs, sleep tracking, feeding schedules, and basic survival that your ability to hold abstract spatial relationships (“Where did I put the scissors and tape?”) just… leaves.

Piles become a transitional state between chaos and action. They say: “This is important. This is in use. This is my best attempt at continuity.”

If piles feel too messy for your eyes, buckets are your friend. Big ones. Color-coded, if that soothes you. One for baby meds. One for unopened mail. One for projects you’ll eventually finish. Maybe.

It doesn’t look like your old system, but it works in your current brain.

---

3. Calm Your Cortisol

One of the lesser-known ADHD quirks is how stress hormones—especially cortisol—can spike at weird times. Evening can feel both jittery and sluggish, with the brain ramping up just as the world quiets down.

Welcome to postpartum evenings.

Your nervous system is no longer on a 9-to-5 circuit. Instead, you’re in a survival loop of vigilance: “Is the baby breathing?” “Did I pack the diaper bag?” “Did I eat today?” Cortisol stays high to keep you alert, which ironically makes it harder to calm down.

ADHD folks often learn to regulate this with “closing rituals” or light movement—ways to spike and resolve the stress cycle instead of staying trapped in it. You can do the same.

Try a walk without the baby if someone can stay home. Try stretching in a dim room, or even washing your face while breathing deliberately. It’s not about productivity. It’s about retraining your system to know that it’s okay to stop.

Because rest is a skill. And like many things, it may not come naturally anymore. (And don’t mistake being able to fall asleep instantly for ‘resting’.)

---

4. Better Late Than Never

ADHD people often run late. Not because they don’t care, but because time gets weird. Ten minutes either stretches into forever or disappears entirely.

Sound familiar yet?

As a new parent, you’ll probably start running late too. Not always because the baby pooped just as you were leaving (though yes, also that), but because your brain is juggling more than it can hold. Even calendar events that used to be simple now come wrapped in layers of prep, contingency planning, and emotional inertia.

You’ll miss birthdays. You’ll forget holidays. You’ll realize, halfway through someone’s baby shower, that you didn’t RSVP.

Let me be clear: this is normal. And you’re not a failure for not keeping up.

One of the most valuable things my ADHD husband taught me is this: connection matters more than punctuality. Show up late. Send the message after the fact. Give a gift card and a note saying, “Thinking of you—even if my calendar didn’t cooperate.”

People don’t remember whether you were on time. They remember whether you showed care. That’s what lasts.

---

FINAL THOUGHT: New Brain, New Rules

Postpartum isn’t a break from your old life. It’s a new book in the series. A complete reorientation of self, values, and function.

The version of you that kept two planners and sorted tasks by color code was not better than this one. She was just working with a different operating system.

You are not failing. You are adapting. You are learning a new kind of organized—one that prioritizes access over appearance, momentum over structure, and compassion over perfection.

It doesn’t have to look impressive to be impressive. And one day, when the fog lifts, you may even find that your new systems work better than the old ones ever did.