Life These Days: A Typical Day at Four Months

Every day, Athena does so many things I want to log. She started saying "Mama" last week, and it sparked a panic that one day she'll want to know about her childhood and I'll have failed to log it all. Of course, no adult actually seeks out an hour-by-hour log of their childhood. My agony over the failure to catalog every event is just one prong of the maternal guilt our society demands of all mothers.

I think I will start using this blog to log some of Athena's life, though. We're very much in the haze of new parenthood--that time that everyone says they forget, that time which childless people cannot possibly understand. Our lives are filled to the brim. There is no spare time, and we must rigidly adhere to a schedule if we are to have any leisure time at all. Most people tell us it gets better, but I sort of enjoy having such a full existence. It helps me feel less guilty about the things I'm not doing.

So here's what a typical weekday looks like for us. If you're planning to have a child and intend to breastfeed, aim for gender equality, and practice attachment parenting, life will probably look pretty similar for you.

We're in the thick of the four-month sleep regression, so Athena awakens 3-6 times a night, staying awake anywhere from 30-90 minutes. It is every bit as horrible as it sounds, but it's mostly anomalous. Prior to this regression, and hopefully after it's over (assuming it ends--dear God, it better end), I got up at 2:30 each night to pump, and then Jeff got up at 3:30 to give Athena a bottle.

It might seem weird that I got up to pump instead of nursing her, but there's a method to the madness. She occasionally slept through the night, and I need to pump every night to maintain my supply. Athena also nurses only briefly when she does so in the middle of the night, so I can pump more than she can nurse. This supports a good supply, and reduces the need to pump during the day. It's important to us that Jeff does a nighttime feeding to support bonding and gender equality. Thus the odd schedule.

Very rarely, she woke up a second time, but this schedule was pretty reliable from about six weeks on.

She wakes up between 6-6:30 (both during and before the sleep regression). I get up with her and nurse her for 20 minutes while Jeff meditates. She usually takes a 20 minute nap on top of me, then nurses on the other side while Jeff makes us breakfast and coffee.

At 7:30, I either pump or do yoga for 30 minutes, depending on how much milk I have in my stash and how efficiently Athena nurses. I dress and shower from 8-8:30, so Jeff and Athena get an hour of uninterrupted father-daughter time. Since he has a music degree and is determined to turn her into a musical savant, this is usually their piano/guitar/singing time. It's adorable.

Thereafter, our daily schedule varies somewhat. I work exclusively from home. Jeff has largely moved his law practice home so he can maximize his time with the baby, but still spends 30-40% of the work week either in court, meeting with clients, or at the office.

We've cobbled together a childcare plan that balances our need to work with our desire not to spend extended periods of time away from Athena. The result is that we have about 25 hours of childcare a week (always with me in the next room working, and usually with Jeff working right alongside me). Half of our childcare comes courtesy of Jeff's parents. The other half is thanks to our wonderful nanny, Collette. We divvy up the rest of the time we have according to a rigid daily schedule. A rough sketch of that schedule:

I spend the first hour or two of the morning with Athena, usually engaged in some combination of reading, talking, singing, walking, or playing in the yard. She (when we are lucky and she's not in a sleep regression) usually naps from 10-12, which is also when our childcare arrives, so that's typically when I begin working.

That gives me 35 hours of scheduled work time. In reality, it ends up being more like 25-30, since she needs to nurse frequently--anywhere from 5-12 times in a given 24-hour period. So I'm condensing what used to be a 40-45 hour work week into a part-time schedule. It's utter madness, and I've trimmed a lot of fat. I refuse to do phone calls that don't come with an agenda. I'm not afraid to cut videoconferences short, or to insist that folks communicate solely by email. It's made life a lot better.

I write somewhere between 3,000 and 20,000 words per day. I couldn't even begin to give an accurate accounting of how Jeff spends his time. He has so many cases, so many clients, so many obligations all over the city and across every court system. There are always at least a couple federal briefs in the works. There's almost always a major oral argument on the horizon. And there are always, always protesters. Our work lives are little more than [very marginally controlled] chaos.

We wrap up the work day at 5. This has to happen to prevent the evening from becoming an unmitigated disaster. We both occasionally have meetings or events after 5, so disasters are common.

We clean the house, do small errands, tend to the yard, water the plants, and tackle all the other everyday obligations of a house from 5-6. Jeff makes us dinner while I nurse from 6-6:15. We eat together, then have about an hour of family playtime with Athena.

At 7:45, we begin the bedtime ritual. We put her in her pajamas, sleep sack, and breathing alarm, read a story, and then I nurse her. Once she's almost asleep, Jeff gives her a bottle to ensure she goes to bed full. That happens sometime between 8:30 and 9:00.

Jeff and I hang out until bedtime, which depends on how exhausted we are. I pump. We do dishes, and then it's off to start another day.

I'm kind of wondering now why I bothered to write down the tedium of our daily lives, but I'm sure I'll one day enjoy the reminder of what life looked like during our busiest period.