I know that most babies, unless they are holding down demanding factory jobs, do not have predictable schedules. I have no desire to impose order where it is unwarranted, but it does seem that both Simone and I could benefit from a bit more rhythm to our days. I am told that infants crave predictability, and at the very least I would like to maintain a bedtime routine—a bath, a book, a snuggle in our chair. Routines like these were what I daydreamed about while failing to get pregnant, and now that I have my very own daughter, I often find myself too disorganized to pull such a thing together.
Until recently, Simone was going to bed around 10:00 in the evening, and the rest of our day was entirely amorphous. At first it didn’t seem to matter, as “day” and “night” were interchangeable continuous rounds of sleeping and eating. But now Simone is awake more during the day, and it occurs to me that I do not know what a Typical Day in the Life of a Baby looks like. The importance of time management has an immediacy to me now that has always before been lacking: Simone is grinning gummily and gazing at mirrors and making shrieky little sounds, and the time I spend scrambling to catch the tail of my fast-receding day is time I don’t spend with her. At the moment she is at a stage so delightful I would happily freeze time in order to live any one of these days over and over again ad infinitum. Still, laundry needs to be done and sentences need to be written, and I’m damned if I can figure a way to ensure that Simone is getting the time with Milk Lady she—and hell, MILK LADY—deserve(s), while still accomplishing the occasional non-baby-related task.
For two days I kept track of my time in a notebook. This first schedule is from my most productive day ever, a day on which I crossed off all but one of the items on my to-do list:
4:00 a.m. Baby wakes, nurse baby
5:00 a.m. Back to sleep
7:30 a.m. Baby wakes, feed baby, change baby, play with baby on floor
9:00 a.m. Pump, put baby in chair
9:20 a.m. Swaddle baby, put in swing, make breakfast
9:45 a.m. Work
11:00 a.m. Baby awake, change baby, give baby medicine, feed baby
11:45 a.m. Baby in sling, back to work
1:00 p.m. Put baby in swing, pump
1:15 p.m. Baby crying—change baby, make bottles, feed baby
2:15 p.m. Put baby in chair, go to bathroom, make lunch, eat lunch
3:00 p.m. Exercise
4:00 p.m. …
I don’t know what happened at 4:00 p.m., because the evening got away from me after that, and you will notice that “shower” was never recorded, alas. But this was a remarkably productive day in the arena of work, though I ended it feeling as if I had barely seen my daughter except to attend to her orifices.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have my entry for the day after:
5:00 a.m. Baby crying. Feed baby, hold baby
…and that’s it. That’s all I wrote, and that was my day. Hold baby, insert milk as needed. Not only does “shower” not appear, neither does “work.”
So tell me—how do you do it? I mean specifically HOW? If you stay home with your spawn, what is your schedule? Do babies prefer to play before eating or after? Ought they to have a regular nap? (Simone is two months adjusted, five months actual, if that helps). Those of you who work from home part time: have you found a routine that avoids guilt and anxiety over neglecting work and guilt and sadness over neglecting baby, or is that the sort of thing I can hope to discover just as soon as I mount my unicorn and gallop along an unfurling road paved with money and chocolate eclairs?
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I YEARNED for a schedule as soon as we got Asher home from the hospital. Unfortunately, he did not cooperate until he was about 7 months old. At 7 months, he developed a discernable nap schedule. Before that, I just tried to put him down for a nap every two hours or so, and from around 4 months to 7 months of age, he took three naps a day. THAT’S ALL I CAN REMEMBER.
Yeah, at 2 months we had nothing resembling a schedule yet. When she slept, I slept (and occasionally showered), and the days went by and NOTHING got done. I’m not saying you shouldn’t aspire to a schedule, but don’t beat yourself up if it isn’t real for another few months. And I echo whoever mentioned that you’ll get periods of mini-schedule. 5 or 6 days of dependable behavior and then – whoops here comes a growth spurt – and everything changes again. You’ll get there – promise.
Scheule? No schedule? Kind of a schedule? I’m not sure what will work for you. I will say, when I read that Simone (who is delicious, BTW. Seriously. I want to eat your baby…) is 2 months adjusted I remembered how I pretty much felt like I was under water in a zone where time did straaaange things four about the first four months of dd’s life. Like you I nursed and pumped. It was a full time job. I also seem to remember this feeling of panic that set in when the monkey was around 10 weeks old because it just seemed like the entire day – and most of the night- was devoted to feeding her, or tending to the regular deposits that she made in her diaper, you know, just to break up the feedings. Then I read somewhere that most babies go through a big growth spurt at around 8-10 weeks old, meaning that they ate like sharks all the time. It stopped. She began to do things other than eating, sleeping, pooping and I guess we established a sort of schedule together. Whatever you decide works for you I guess I’d say take a deep breath and give yourself another month or two, then look at how things are going.
Oh, the other thing? I figured out a way to jigger the nursing pillow- aided by a bunch of folded blankets, throw pillows and a rocking chair with arms that were just the right distance apart – to make a sort of nest that she snuggle in and nurse from while I used the computer. Could I replicate it now? Probably not. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and man, I was motivated! Mind you, I didn’t have a job that actually involved working on a computer, but being able to surf the internet while being shut up in the house with a newborn in our tiny, rural town saved my life!
Taking care of an infant is more or less a full time job. To do another job on top of it, you need childcare, silly. Advice you didn’t ask for: give yourself another month (or three or six) of maternity leave and then worry about hiring a sitter to come for a few hours a day so you can get work done…and maybe take a shower. Also, your very productive day demonstrates perfectly why “exercise” has not managed to make its way back into my daily routine since I became a mother. It’s time I could have spent working or baby-ing!
I do not have a baby, despite efforts, so I can not offer much adivce. But from what I have heard from other moms, you sound like you are doing the rotuine! LIstening to baby, keeping baby happy and yourself happy to! Good luck!
We have one son, about to turn 3 next week and we read and used Babywise with him to great success. He slept 7 hrs a night at 13 weeks and not long after that 12 hrs a night which was a welcome respite for sleep deprived parents. So we had a schedule but were not rigid with it-he ate every 3-4 hrs roughly (until he started sleeping through the night obv), we fed him when he got up and not as a way to get him to sleep and he always slept in his own bed. I do not think it is the answer for everyone but it worked great for us. There’s a lot more to it but like I said, he is about to be 3 and it’s all hazy now. I generally took a shower when he napped unless I was passed out as well and then when he was 6 months old I started night school but was home during the day. I read him my microbiology notes and he liked it, just hearing my voice and it allowed me to study. I did night school for that whole year and then he started Mother’s Day out three days a week so I could go during the day.
I have no advice to offer, but just wanted to say that Simone is cuter every time I check your blog! And I just love the new video clip of her. Go Simone!!!!!
If you find something that works, please let me know. My son is 7 weeks now and while he used to be predicatable because all he wanted was eat and sleep, he is becoming less so. I totally get the guilt you feel. I don’t feel like I’m very good at playing with him. I just keep talking to him.
I didn’t read all the comments (which I’m sure you understand why) but I bought the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. It’s written by an MD of a sleep institute who has studies over 2,000 infants. The short of the book is, babies can’t handle more than 2 hours of wakefullness so they should go down for a nap then and as they get older the bedtime should get earlier and earlier. Also that daytime sleep doesn’t organize itself until 3 – 4 months old so you can’t really predict when that nice 2 hour nap will happen at first. Then, around 3 – 4 months, the morning nap will organize between 9 and 10 a.m. Of course I have no idea if this will actually happen but a friend of mine swears it does. Julia http://julia.typepad.com/ wrote a post several days ago that is similar.
Also, love your blog.
Ditto Ask Moxie.
My first impression is that your bedtime sounds late for a baby — IMO the more they sleep, the better they sleep, although that’s totally counterintuitive.
As far as the daytime routine — they establish it themselves, and one day you sort of realize you have one. A morning nap and an afternoon nap arranged with feedings is generally what it looks like.
I’m on baby number three and degree number three, and am still only able to pull off something that approximates a schedule. I guess this is because this is what works for our little assortment of temperaments. Eating and such happens at around the same time every day, except for the days it doesn’t for whatever reason. The same goes for work. Baby number one is almost twelve, and she spent a great deal of time strapped to my chest, or resting in my lap as I read to her from undergraduate psych texts. Baby number two is three and a half, and spent a good deal of his infancy wedged in my lap in a boppy as I nursed and wrote a master’s thesis and lectured him on the assumptions underlying various statistical models. Baby number three is four months old, and is at this moment wrapped against my body having a little nap as I neglect my dissertation. When not doing these school things we play and make messes and usually clean up the messes. Some days it seems like nothing is getting done other than orifice-tending (their’s, not mine) and baby-loving, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Not to sound like a needlepointed sentiment or anything, but baby days go by fast. Radically accept that there will always be an embarrassing heap of laundry somewhere in your house, and focus on yourself, your work, and your lovely little family. Be thrilled that you have anything even remotely schedule-ish at this age, and feel good about whatever it is that you manage to accomplish on any given day.
I’m all about the schedule. But I’m speaking as a mom who had full-term, healthy babies. Two books I devoured as a new mom were Babywise and How She Really Does It: Secrets of a Stay At Work Mom.
I loved Babywise for a couple reasons: it advocated a schedule: eat, play, sleep. I loved it because it inserted much-needed predictability to our day. And, I could finally figure out why my child was fussy/cranky/crying. If it was when she woke up, then it was probably because she was hungry. If it was after we’d played a bit, it was probably because she was tired. I also figured out a perfect time to run errands (right after eating) and a perfect time to get “my things” done (during a nap). The second thing that I really loved is it really helped my kids to be good nappers and great sleepers. My daughter is 3 now, and she still takes a really great afternoon nap (3+ hours) and sleeps 12 hours every night (7:30-7:30). My son is 16 mos and he takes two naps a day still (2 hrs in am, 3 hrs in afternoon) and sleeps 12 hours a night. We snuggle every night and have a bath, book, bed routine, but they put themselves to sleep. It is GREAT. Daughter was sleeping 10 hours a night at 6 weeks, and son was sleeping 10 hours a night at 8 weeks. Needless to say, it changed my life. I could get some sleep, I could get a shower consistently, I could get things (house and work things) done during the day. There were some things I didn’t particularly agree with in Babywise, but generally I figured if I combined the advice in the book with my own mommy-sense, then we’d get along fine. And we did, so that’s probably why it worked for me.
Good luck. Anything with a baby can be tricky. But remember, Simone is a remarkable child, even at this tender age, and you never know what she is capable of until you try it together! Hang in there…
OK, I read about half the comments and then glibly began typing — just so you know.
Now, wait — let me get this straight. You are staying home with a two month old and hoping to do work? Indeed, occasionally succeeding at doing work? Wow, on both counts.
I do work at the following times: when I am at my office (and my son is in daycare or with his grandmother); rarely, when my son is napping; or at night, after my son has gone to bed. The “when napping” bit only happens if things are truly desperate because usually I need that time either to shower, do laundry, or nap myself.
To provide a different context, at 2 months, using paid daycare, I went back to work 16 hours a week. At 3 months, I bumped it up to 24. At four, I went to 30 and have stayed there (he’s now 16 months).
My point here isn’t that you shouldn’t work (quite the contrary), but for me at least it would be wildly unrealistic to try to do much work at all without having someone else available to care for my son. It just wouldn’t happen.
Oh, and on the schedule thing? We’re pretty carefree about that. Also, I omitted bathing from our bedtime routine because I don’t want to be committed to doing that every night. Too much work! We often have a bath earlier in the day; at nighttime, it’s (a) “brush” teeth, (b) change diaper and clothes (and clean with wet washcloth, as needed), (c) bedtime story, and (d) to bed.
I don’t have my baby yet- so I have no valid advice… but I think you’re doing great!
:)
We had to have a schedule here. Our third daughter was born at 30 weeks and after a month in the NICU, I was completely floored. Here I was, presented with a baby who HAD to have a schedule, because that’s what she’d been used to from day 1, and here I was, completely NON-schedule oriented. It took until she was about 6 months old before I got her out of the NICU schedule and on to a more livable one. By that time, I was about 5 1/2 months pregnant with her brother (our 4th baby).
Our schedule went something like this:
4am: feed/change baby, get her back to sleep
7am: up for the day, feed/change/clothe baby, put her on the floor while I get some breakfast
730: baby in sling, start chores
9am: feed/change baby, lay down in swing
9:30-11:30: work
11:30: feed/change baby, baby in sling while I eat lunch
12:00: go for walk with baby in sling, or go run errands, or just play if the weather is yucky
1:00: feed/change baby, baby in swing for nap
1:30-4: work
4-6: play with baby, read books, lay on the floor and laugh at the ceiling, put her in the pack and play in the kitchen while I make dinner, whatever
6: Daddy home! Dinner with baby in sling
6:30-8:30: pass baby off to daddy while I finish chores/work
9:00: bath, read to baby, change/feed, swaddle, turn on CD player, leave room
11pm, 2am, 4(or 5)am: feed/change baby, rock back to sleep.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
For two months, it sounds like you’re accomplishing a LOT. She’s only 2 months. You’ll get there. I HAD to have a schedule, knowing that I was going to have two infants in my house. It sounds like you’re doing great.
Well, I don’t work from home and my daughter is now 4 years old, so my memories of that time are a little rusty…
But I think you are doing just fine! We really didn’t have a “schedule” until she was close to one. The only thing I wish I had tried to impose would have been a bedtime routine.
Love your blog!
OK, when my son was 2 months I thought we would never have a decent routine, some days would be great, and the next awful. I started watching a 5 month old at that time and she seemed so easy to care for compared to him.
About 4 months it became much easier to care for my son, and yes he needs a regular nap. Now they are 7 and 11 months, and the schedule is very predictable, except on Mondays. They seem to get messed up on the weekends.
Oh, honey. This stage is remarkably schedule-resistant. (I think it’s actually a stage of YOUR life with baby, not mattering whether Simone is really a two-monther or a five monther or whatever.) It’s hard, because there really is not a good predictable routine for most babies at this stage. We settled into a routine at 3 1/2 months (Bug was full-term) though everyone else I knew swore that 2 months was when it settled down. Wev.
And honestly, I was so enmeshed with my baby that I couldn’t help him get a routine on his own. He would look sleepy, I would try to put him down for a nap, he would fuss a tiny amount, and I would give up and try something else. We put him in day care at 14 weeks, and they told us that he immediately waltzed into a steady two nap routine. Four weeks into that game, he began going to bed at a predictable time. (I dropped in randomly at day care, and lo, they seemed to be telling the truth.)
So I’m not that much help. I agree with Katy, that writing down the schedule may aid the mommy-fog. But there are lots of opportunities for guilt trips, and whenever possible, you should decline them.
I’ve read most sleep books. Well that is until my husband took them away and refused to give them back. They caused way more stress than providing actual help! I know a lot of people have found the Baby Whisperer useful. For me, that one was the absolute worse (At least for baby sleep books – Don’t get me started on The Happiest Toddler on the Block – the only book I have ever returned to the store).
It sounds like you are doing a great job already. Simone is still just so young. I seem to remember being able to get more done when our babies turned about 4 months corrected. It was about that time that they finally started to fall into more regular napping times.
I have a two-year old and a five-month old and work part-time from home (15 hours a week). I started working from home when my older child was six weeks old. Back then, I would wait until she took her long afternoon nap and do some work, then work more at night after she went to sleep. Now that I have two kids, I get work done one day a week when my mom comes over and at night after about 9PM when they are both asleep. I am insanely lucky that both my kids started sleeping through the night at about 10 weeks.
Can’t help much with the daytime. It’s all a blur. But around 5 months, which was 3 months adjusted, I started a nightly bath. Every single night, no matter what. And that’s when she started sleeping through the night. She just turned 2 and that bedtime bath, followed by books on my lap, still knocks her out. Best routine ever.
Read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. It really helped and it’s not too crazy to follow. If you can get her on a feeding and sleeping schedule you’re good-to-go, playtime will just fall into the mix. At first it’s a fight, but they give in eventually and things get better. When my babies were two months old I breastfed every two and a half hours during the day and once during the night. 6am, 8:30, 11:00, 1:30, 4:00, 7:30, 10:00, 4am (not exactly, but always around then). They took naps after the 8:30 am, and the 1:30pm feedings (we always struggled to keep them up for this feeding, sometimes it was earlier) and sometimes after the 4pm. They usually were asleep around 7:30pm, but would wake for the 10 pm. Try to stick to a schedule for a week or so before you mess it up with outings, but after that it’s okay. Good luck, I thought we would never get on a schedule, but after a lot of hard work and crying, they are like clockwork.
We don’t do much with scheduling, mostly because the girls are so very different and every time we say “Ah ha! I see a pattern!” Fitz-Hume has a growth spurt and wants to eat every two hours (and what am I going to say “No, you’ll eat every X hours! No growth for you!”??) or they get stomach flu or some other crap, and it all goes to hell.
I think it would bother me when it went to hell if I hadn’t realized that Schedule Hell is actually a lovely place, as long as you wear your sunscreen and bring your own canteen. Really.
They sleep beautifully, they eat whenever, some days they sleep most of the day, some days they stay up and play, and most of the time, they’re just nauseatingly happy about it.
Here’s the one tip I got from a public health nurse who’s been working with babies since receiving blankets were made from sabertooth tiger fur:
When babies wake up the first time in the morning, feed ‘em quietly and get them back down. This will probably be their best sleep of the day. Use it wisely. Either the whole house can go back to sleep, or you can knock out a half dozen chores while they nap.
Other than the morning thing, I’m not a huge fan of schedules for the very wee, because it seems like training housecats to jump through flaming hoops, or trying to. The results are impressive, but it seems like an awful lot of effort for the result. That being said, if scheduling works for you…well, run with it.
well my baby is nearing the 7 week mark…and I am finding NO consistant routine as of yet, but I know its coming….I look forward to when morning nap and afternoon nap are more defined…. my days are just so sparadic. My 3 year old has a good routine, but since Allie was born with GERD, everything I THOUGHT I knew about how to take care of a newborn flew out the window, I cant change a diaper after she eats or else REFLUX, I can’t lay her down after she eats REFLUX…….so I spend a Huge amount of time just feeding, holding, repeat (since because of the reflux I am feeding her smaller amounts more often)…..what I feel guilty about is the smaller amount of time I have with my 3 year old…. the other day he said “you dont have time to help me”…………broke my heart..
I second Jodi’s recommendations, posted July 15, 2008 at 7:11 am. I work from home, writing and graphic design, and have since before I had my three kiddos. And it’s been seven years now. It really CAN work (even without regular childcare). Took four weeks off when Madison was born, and I remember thinking in my first day back at my desk, with her snuggled between me and the keyboard in the Baby Bjorn, that maybe I had made a severe error in judging thinking that I could juggle it all.
But we got into a routine. Eat – Play together – Play independently (while I worked or did chores) – then Sleep (while I worked, slept, or did more chores). Thank you “Baby Whisperer” although I agree with whoever commented that the author makes things sound more angelic than they can actually be.
I gave birth to Michael, who has Down syndrome, two years after that so another unexpected, yet rewarding, chapter began. Took eight weeks off that time. Then two years later, along came Mason (planned even, crazy, I know). Took three months off that time.
The issue of guilt was mentioned in a number of posts. I feel a bit of guilt about neglecting certain things every day, but I don’t let it paralyze me. My husband’s teaching salary doesn’t support even the meager lifestyle that we enjoy (plus doctor bills), so work is something I have to juggle. And I can’t afford childcare. I would have to work more to pay for that, which defeats the purpose. I always try to look at the big picture of the week or the month. Sure there are days I feel like I’m neglecting my kids, other days it’s my clients, almost every day it’s my house. But when I look at the big picture over the long term, everything and everyone generally receives a nice level of care and tlc.
P.S. Do you really read all of these?
I have three kids, ages 6, 4, and 2, and I work from home 2 days a week with them. Monday Wednesday and Friday they go to daycare and I go to the office.
On my Tuesdays and Thursdays, the mornings are mommy-kid time. We do story hour or play time or just hang out. Then it’s lunch and nap time. As soon as I lay them down for nap, I go to work. Then, when they wake up, I get them snack and then they play while I work a little more. I try to get in 3 to 4 hours on those afternoons. Then, the computer is shut off and the kids help me with supper and laundry and other mundane tasks like that. I go back to work after they go to bed at 8:30.
Granted, they are a lot (LOT) older, and you are probably just now getting the point of being able to set a schedule like that.
My best advice and the only one you should really listen to, is don’t feel guilty. Don’t feel guilty about not spending enough time with her or not enough time at work or not enough time on the house. She can entertain herself a little, some work is better than none, and the house stuff will wait until Saturday.
Oh, and give yourself a day off. It’s hard to do when you work from home, but try your best!
Hi hi Flotsam family! I really like the suggestion on having a “wake up” time and “go to bed” time. That has worked well for me with my 4 month son, although the time is not strict. Wake up is somewhere between 7-8 am, bedtime between 8-9pm. Sometimes we have an off day (Remember your twitter 3 am is the new morning, yeah kind of like that). But I just deal with those days as they happen and try to get back to the regular schedule.
Now Daytime. I had an awful time working exclusively from home to be honest. It felt like being two places I didn’t want to be at the same time. I, like other commenters mentioned, used babysitters part time. There was too much pressure on me and I needed the help. Not to mention a shower and a bite to eat.
At 3 months, my son started a small family based daycare. His caregiver is this fabulous Nona (Italian grandma) who is great with infant scheduling. He cried some at first at being put down for naps, but he adjusted FAST within days actually. So as hard as those first few days were, it was very worth it for us both. He was overtired.
Now, my son takes a morning nap after his first feeding. (I think morning naps are the easiest to “enforce.” Most babies fall back to sleep pretty easily after a bottle and maybe a swaddle.) And he takes an afternoon nap 2-4 ish. That one is harder to enforce, but now he is used to it and needs it. On the days I work from home, I try to keep him on that schedule and it works pretty well.
Re: showers. I’ve become one of those fuddy duddies that showers at night. In fact, I’ve used the “I need to wash my hair” excuse to get out of a few engagements I wasn’t into. Well, my hair was dirty after all. I just put the baby in the bouncer while I do it. (Single mom here).
Re: guilt. Try and let go as painful as it is. You’re doing marvelous. Baby Simone has it great with you guys.
I’ve been following Simone’s triumphs for a while. Shove over, Mother Theresa — you, Alexa, should be on the fast track to sainthood. By your own accounting, you’re trying to balance five full-time jobs: nursing/pumping/supply-building, mothering, housekeeping, working and wife-ing, while maintaining at least a passing acquaintance with personal hygiene.
The only scheduling advice I have for you is to take a nap like a doctor’s prescription: 20 minutes (or however long until you wake in a puddle of your own drool) every afternoon, with or without baby, no excuses. It’s the only thing that kept me (relatively) sane during the Newborn Boot Camp phase.
I read the first 50 or so comments, and feel like posting my own…
I’m mom to three (7, 5, 9mths). I read books and frantically sought for the perfect schedule with my first. Of all the books I read, The Baby Whisperer was the best for me. As you can read, however, it’s not the best for everyone. I still try to use some of those ideas, like baby eats, then plays (this is especially helpful because two of my three have had reflux, and I HATE having them puke in bed), then sleep after play. The “you” time is supposed to be while the babe sleeps, but it is really hard when life seems to have its own plan for you. Yes, on your unicorn, down the money road (to which I need directions, please), you can work from home, shower, tend to baby and bake bread. Not in my world though… I have to do all work late at night, after all kids are in bed. Sometimes that doesn’t start until 10 or 11 (depending on how many cups of water I have to give the older ones). I am constantly tired. I think #13 said it best, it’s insanity, but at the end of the day, schedule or not, it’s worth every shred of sanity! It goes by really fast and poof, you long for the excuse to NOT do the laundry (that’s when I had another baby) haha!
I work from home full time and my youngest has been home with me since birth. I found out early on that he loved the sound of my voice, no matter what I was saying. Since a good portion of my job is reading (I’m an attorney focused on research and writing), I just read to him alot. He didn’t care that it was caselaw or transcripts. It was the best of both worlds since I was working and entertaining him at the same time. Now that he is almost 2 and his 5-yr-old brother is home for the summer, I have a 13-yr-old babysitter who comes to play with them 4 days a week for 5 hours for $5 an hour. I can’t even believe the rate myself.
Hi Alexa:
First off, you are doing so well.
I’ve followed your blog for the past two years and am thrilled that you are actually attempting to work on a full-length book. (You may remember me as the editor of the literary journal who tried to publish you a while back.
In any case, you asked for advice and here is my two cents. I worked full time in an office with my first daughter (now 13) and began freelancing when my younger daughter (nearly 11) was two.
I was the milk lady for three years with the younger, and became most proficient at typing with one hand while she nursed.
Depending on the type of feeder Simone becomes, you may find that she gets drowsy and naps for a while in your arms or sling.
(I can hear all the Babywise folks freaking out now).
What worked for me was to hold her while she slept, sometimes for more than an hour. I could feel when she was in the deepest part of slumber and would ocassionally transfer her to the bed at this to keep writing -with two hands.
I also worked after everyone had gone to bed. The hours between 11pm-1am were most productive for a few years. Now the routine has shifted so that working after 9pm is out of the question, because we are all up so early to get ready for school.
It always a challenge to work from home. Balance is a lofty ideal and guilt is an occupational hazard. Now that they are older, the girls need less physically from me, but require so much more mental energy to navigate the pitfalls of adolesence. But they are (mostly) kind, loving and generous souls so I know that some of what I try to teach them is sinking in.
Be as productive as Simone will allow and take comfort in the fact that you will figure out a routine that works for you in time. Oh and just when you get it figured out, it will change all over again.
Even though my kids are teens now (all the cliches are TRUE – turn around and you’re giving them the car keys so they can drive to their SAT prep classes), I clearly remember my husband insisting that I keep my firstborn on a strict schedule. At first I argued that schedules are for dullards, then I realized that, once Emily was several months old, we HAD inadvertently fallen into a schedule. And I thought it was just a rut! Turns out “schedule” is a proactive-sounding term for “rut”.
No need to stress, the rut, er, schedule, will happen all on its own.
I have twins and work from home. It is possible! But at two months my brain was just one big fog because of the breastfeeding.
At first I didn’t know about routine and it was all a bit chaotic but after a while we learned the sleep-change- feed-play routine. Initially my kids did this cycle in two hours and never in sync so that was very busy. After some time we managed to get them in sync: As soon as one started to show sleepy signs the other one would go down for a nap too. After a while they get hungry and sleepy at the same time, with cycles lasting two to three hours. So voila: routine became schedule.
In time the cycles become longer, three naps a day, two naps. My kids are two years old now and if I am 15 minutes late for their afternoon sleep they don’t fall asleep as easy as when I put them down at the right time. This is because of a hormone called melatonine. The body releases this at the same time every day and this hormone is what you need to fall asleep. If the baby doesn’t go to sleep when the hormone is available it ends up very tired but unable to sleep. That’s what happens when they are overtired.
There are a few important things to make the routine work:
- Put the babies in their bed as soon as they show sleepy signs, not in their chair.
- Put them in bed awake and don’t go in immediately when she cries because that wakes her up more than it puts her to sleep.
- Learn to distinguish sleepy cry from hungry cry.
- Don’t get her up if she cries, comfort her lying down in the bed.
I always wondered what my schedule was supposed to be like when my son was born. As a matter of fact, I have always thought this would make a great article in a parenting magazine. After reading many of the great comments here, I think many moms could be helped by all of the advice. The only thing I can tell you is I started reading to my son almost as soon as he got home. That little routine (and right now that can be at any time of the day that works for you) has always been our cornerstone and now is how we end the day.
One more thing … it goes by so fast. Don’t miss it by worrying too much about the “right” schedule.
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