Working Mom

I have so far survived the past 3 weeks of a very intense workload.  I knew I would; I just knew it was going to be very difficult and stressful.  I didn't realize how difficult though until 2 Tuesdays ago when I chose to skip a personal meeting in the evening because I knew I had work commitments the next 4 nights, and 2 of the days were going to be definite 14-18-hour days of work at community events.  That meant that I was only going to be able to feed my baby 1 time/day for the next 4 days, and would only see him for a brief time in the morning before taking him to daycare.  This absolutely broke my heart and brought me to tears.  My husband didn't quite understand where I was coming from, but any mom, especially a mom who is breastfeeding, I'm sure can relate.  He did his best, though, to make me feel better.  I know that my job isn't supposed to necessarily require these kind of hours from me year-round, but when supporting 11 counties and each of their community fundraising events, the past year has certainly become more demanding on a professional level. I am fortunate enough to have a flexible work schedule though, so that, ideally, when I have these night meetings I should be able to adjust and go to work later since I will be working later.  That hasn't really been the case since coming back from maternity leave, unfortunately.  I still begin working first thing in the morning and often don't return home until 9 PM or after, thus making for many 10-12 hour days, which is hard with an infant and now, a husband who is away for work during the week, and only home on the weekends.  I used to do a good job at setting a work schedule for myself so that I wouldn't work all the time when I am home, but with my current workload, that hasn't really be possible, since the hours I have been putting in have been out of necessity to ensure event success.

We've always struggled to get our son to nap well at daycare, but it was getting particularly bad right about this same time that I was realizing how little I was going to be seeing him over the next 4 days.  At home he can sleep for 1-2 hours in the morning, but at daycare, his naps are close to nonexistent, which makes for one very sleepy boy by the time one of us picks him up, usually between 4 and 4:30 PM.  We already have an early bedtime for him since we use his biological sleep cues to know when to put him to bed, which is usually around 6/6:30, so when he doesn't get a nap and is ready for bed even earlier than that, we are limited even more on the time we get to see him.

When thinking about both of these problems that had been escalating up to this point, I had an epiphany.  I decided that I would try keeping my son home in the morning for his first nap of the day then just bringing him to daycare when he woke up from that.  He is usually only awake for an hour or hour and a half anyway before he is ready for this nap, and getting him fed, clothed, to daycare and soothed for sleep again in that short time can be tricky.  So, he usually ends up overtired, making it harder for him to fall asleep at daycare.  When keeping him home in the morning, I would use his napping time to work since I am a remote worker for the company I work for.  Now I know I wouldn't really be spending time with him during this time, but I would be able to feed him more times during the day, and I would ensure he would be able to get at least 1 good nap, hopefully.  So, I gave it a shot and it seemed to work wonderfully.  The girls at daycare said he had his best week yet, and was full of smiles and giggles those few days that I first tried this.  Last week produced similar results!

I don't know if my little monkey's personality improvement is related to his morning nap and getting to nurse more in the morning rather than having a bottle; or if it is related to my body starting to normalize from taking thyroid medication, thus his body starting to normalize; or to the fact that he is getting a little older now and just growing out of his cranky stage, but whatever it is, I am thankful for that flexibility in my job.  This solution may not have taken care of the fact that I am still working an insane number of hours each week and spending a lot of time traveling in the evenings and on weekends, and not being fully present with my family when I am home, but it at least is helping me cope with often missing my evening snuggles and time with my baby.  I'll give it a little longer, then try again to have him at day care in the morning for that first nap.  And hopefully I'll start to see a slow down at work for a  few weeks after my next event on Saturday wraps up.

 

An update from my last blog post.  Huck's upper GI showed that he definitely does reflux very easily, which we had already gathered our own experience and from visits with the docs, but that there are no structural abnormalities.  We also had a very good chat with his gastro doctor and are encouraged that he is making progress little by little with weight gain; again, perhaps partially due to my thyroid levels changing.  We also introduced rice cereal a couple weeks ago to hopefully help with getting him more calories.  We will celebrate 6 months on Saturday and will see how his routine check-up goes the following week, but things are looking up already!  We haven't quite made it to 15lbs yet.  And sitting on his own is becoming easier and easier each day!  We experienced camping for the first time last night too...life is good.