Work Life "Balance" in 2020

This family has had two parents working from home full-time since Memorial day, over two months ago, with a baby at home 24/7. 

Some things have gotten easier : 

• The Bub is on a meal & nap schedule most days, and often sleeps through the night.
• We are organized & flexible with a whiteboard showing shifts, meetings, baby tasks, errands, and social Zooms.
• After our state lifted the harshest lockdown restrictions, my mom has come over 1 afternoon a week to help out if we are double booked or extra busy. 
• I have become fiercely determined to single-task only and keep to-do lists for work and home, so my brain can get through the day and not too much slips forgotten through the cracks. 

Some things have gotten harder: 

• The novelty and adrenaline is wearing off and a serious burnout is weighing on me. Most days I either sleep 10 hours or cry or feel lightheaded from a stress spiral. 
• I've forgotten how to relax - taking the baby for a walk, showering, and sleeping feel great. So does doing yoga while I watch him, playing a podcast while I do dishes. But true downtime, doing something fun for me? I don't even know what I want to do, what I could do without feeling guilty for wasting that time.
• Knowing that we could start day care any time - that we have more choice than public school parents - makes me worry about professionalism and the patience of my coworkers. 
• The Bub has become mobile and social, more like a small boy than a lump. It's harder to multitask while watching him or leave him unattended for a couple minutes. He sometimes fusses and reaches for me when I run from office to kitchen during my work time. I think he's starting to get bored never leaving the house (between quarantine, heat waves, and the pace of the workweek, we're limited to grandparents dropping in and early Saturdays at the park). 
• Work is picking up - we both have more projects and more meetings. 

Today, Mr. Cat took the baby to see family in Reston while I stayed home to work and I felt different within about 90 minutes. I don't have to think about the baby, just work (and dishes and laundry). There's a big difference between someone else watching him in the house (texting me questions, I'm keeping in mind if his schedule alters or where he's already played a lot that day). Today, when I took a 30 minute break I didn't feel guilty that I should be instead stepping in to baby duty so Mr. Cat could have his turn to work. I can be a great parent and a great worker, but not both at the same time. Even rapid switching is hard - my brain is just too full and I can't escape the guilt and dread. I need more days like today. 

Even though this country does not have coronavirus under control, our state is doing well, and our county is one of the best in the state. We are planning to start daycare in about one month and I cannot wait. The school has been open throughout and has had no known cases and reasonable policies in place. I've seen the "pod" model of the smaller private schools held up as a safe example in contrast to the larger public schools with crowded halls and changing classes. 

I wish I could have "normal" working mom with a baby problems. One person asked me when I was going to have my second and I'm like !? I don't even really know what it's like to have one in the world. 



I knew day care would have big feelings - will he be happy? will he be scared? will he get enough attention? will he be able to nap and eat in a new place? what if he cries when I leave? 
But now there's a layer of, I hope no one I know dies alone on a ventilator because I'm making this choice. I never wanted to be a catastrophizing paren; I want to be logical and acknowledge that we all make choices with some risk every day. 

I knew the days would be long, but I never imagined working multiple fulltime jobs at once. At least we've done this long enough that I feel sure there is not a better way - I can't work harder or be more organized than I already am. My work laid off 50 people in June; if I try to reduce my hours I don't know if I'll have a fulltime job to return to. I could take more unpaid FMLA leave, but if we don't start now what are we waiting for? A vaccine? We can't do this for years - I'll have a mental breakdown and the Bub will increasingly need experiences and socializing beyond his distracted parents and his home. 

I know working moms faced judgment, but I feel like I'm in a don't ask, don't tell/classified need to know basis with daycare. I never know who in my life will be horrified, or "helpfully" want to brainstorm alternatives (as though I haven't been doing that for months). 

Maybe I should take a moment to acknowledge silver linings.

• We had so much family time during a time when the Bub changed every day - new games, new skills, reasons to laugh. It's helped us be equally involved parents and to occasionally sit down to a meal together. 
• I'm glad that Bub is on a nap & meal schedule before he goes elsewhere for the days - I took data for weeks to track what his natural patterns were, which would have been hard if we'd been apart. 
• We introduced all kinds of food including all allergens at home, making it easier to send him to school with packed snacks. 
• Bub is old enough that he spends much of the day playing rather than being physically tended to. He loves to explore new places and warms up to new people (eventually). I can picture day care being actually fun for him and good for his development, which would have been harder to believe even a few months ago. 
• Since both parents are working from home for the foreseeable future, he won't have as many hours away from us. I'm picturing 10-3 or 9-4 most days, with mornings and evenings together. And we may start him just 4 days a week and keep the current chaos for Fridays which tend to be slower workdays - less money and more time together. 
  
  

Perhaps most important we have some perspective:

• Our challenges are real but we are lucky to be healthy and employed.
• This has made our marriage stronger, we really leaned on each other and got through it together.
• Future "busy times" may not seem so bad.
• Lots of life seems more optional and arbitrary now - we can say no to drive far away or socialize if we're tired.
• I can log off work at 3 and check back around 7. It's ok if I ignore my eamil for 3 hours at a time, no one dies or is angry with me. I can on occasion work while the Bub is home sick. 
  
  

If we can get through this year what can't we do? (Please don't take that as a challenge 2021.) 

Love in the Time of Corona

I've had a lot of existential fear about climate change since the Bub was born. Realizing that he'll be young in 2050 and probably alive in 2100, and there was a slew of dire new headlines in the first months of his life, and sometimes I'd read one at 3am and spiral into despair, and I feel both a helpless victim and a complicit rich person using more than my share of resources...

But then a different Horseman of the apocalypse arrived - coronavirus, covid-19. And in some ways getting down to business & dealing with the changes of life is easier than waiting for the ax to fall. I suppose there may be additional axes both this year and this century, but the way that we're all adapting & getting by & looking out for each other is a good confidence booster.

It reminds me that the future is always different than what we expect. That helps me with dread sometimes; it's hard to believe Everything Will Work Out, but easier to believe that while we all worry about one apocalypse (robot overlords) a totally different one sneaks in unnoticed (social media bubbles of conspiracy theories).

Of course it helps a lot that the biggest change for me so far is not to go to war or exist on starvation rations or work on a chain gang or nearly die in a makeshift hospital bed, but to stay at home, which is an activity I pretty much enjoy. I feel sad about some of the things we're missing - our anniversary date, seeing the cherry blossoms, doing anything for my birthday, hosting Easter, having the baptism, working at the library (or even getting an email there's a new book to pick up).
Some of the activities others can do, like drive out & take hikes or bike rides, won't work for us because we can't have the grandparents over to watch the baby.
It makes me sad that many people will see less of him as he grows and changes. And a bit concerned that he'll be spending so much time in the house with only his parents - how will he take going to daycare? But this is a reminder that the future is never written and to just be grateful for today.

I feel lucky, like I was uniquely situated to have this pandemic come at a great time in my life. The very week that I planned to return to some remote work for my job, even while watching the baby, suddenly every white collar worker is thrust into telework while watching their kids. Instead of feeling I had to act like my old self, I brought the baby to our conference call and brightened everyone's day.
Mr. Cat is teleworking indefinitely. Bub & I see him throughout the day and we have longer evenings & mornings together. We're catching up on sleep. It's much better than the exhausted evening hustle that was the 6 weeks or so that he was working & commuting and I was home.
Because of the baby and the maternity leave, I have very few cancelled plans. No trips were coming up and I rarely went to restaurants these days anyway. In some ways it's frustrating to have social distancing start right when I was trying to rejoin life. But I was already living my life where the grocery store was the big exciting trip out once or twice a week, and now everyone is on my level.

I am grateful now that we had so many visitors in the winter, and that I did the silly things like library story time and stroller workout class and parish mom's group even though he was too young and I was tired. I'm glad that I was selfish on the weekends and went to the rec center, the movie theater, the Quaker service, coffee with my sister, because who knows when those things will happen again.
I am grateful that we were not in the hospital while they were overextended and restricting visitors.
I am grateful that my baby is young enough to be a joy who has no idea the world has changed. He doesn't miss his friends or want to go to the playground or need to do homework. He's happy as can be to stay home with his parents.
I am grateful this is not the year we planned our wedding or a move or a big vacation (or even one of my more fun work trips).
I am grateful we can work from home and earn enough money.
I am grateful we have a nice big enough house with a yard and safe streets to walk a couple times a day. I am grateful this didn't happen during our courtship or during the years when I was living 3 adults to a 2 bedroom, or living with my parents.

Mostly I feel grateful to have a healthy functional loving little family. There are no two people I'd rather be quarantined with. And honestly two adults home all the time is just about the right pace to keep up with baby care, cooking, the house, and the real job. We can chat & watch tv in the evenings, go for a walk, not always be desperate to collapse into bed. What a special time with our small baby.

In some ways, I feel more socialized than the past couple weeks. Mr. Cat is home with me; people are chatting online more ; my book club and community theater squad that I couldn't see in person anymore are starting to have virtual meetups. What a silver lining for me, but also a word of caution about how easy it is to feel isolated as a new mom. (If I was more extraverted, or planning to be home & not work indefinitely, I probably would have tried harder to make mom friends. It seem like a waste of effort when I was tired and about to go back to work anyway.)

And I was a couple weeks ahead of everyone else to adapting psychologically to never leaving your house. I developed daily and weekly rituals of tasks & fun breaks, to keep myself sane and keep track of what day it was. It used to be just me - morning mail check, midday meditation, afternoon yoga, evening walk. Wednesday laundry, Saturday sterilize the bottles, Sunday turn the compost.

But now it's more fun - I video my sister during yoga, and Mr Cat comes for the walks. My family has dinner Sundays, book club meets Wednesdays. My team meeting on Thursday mornings is more social & everyone turns their video on which we never used to.

I honestly don't know what we'd do before the internet. Work & socializing are much more possible, as is keeping up with information - stats from the CDC and info about what's closing, but also seeing cool ideas that other people are trying and jokes that will get us through. 

Say No to Dread

I had an extra heaping of anxiety while pregnant because it seemed to be that some of the experienced parents I knew, or read articles by, wanted me to be FULL OF DREAD.

To be fair my brain is known to take neutral information and turn it into dread. But I think this is also a cultural moment where parents love to complain about their suffering and choose to scare the uninitiated.

So I'd say that if a source is making you feel dread you should ignore them because no one knows what your experience will be like.

I was told that I would DEFINITELY FOR SURE - get insomnia in the third trimester ; forget how much labor hurt ; resent my husband. And those things did not happen.

Some of the hard things that I was warned about - sleeping less and the mood swings and the extra work - I've adapted to faster than I expected.

Some of the hard things that did happen were completely unexpected - the NICU stay, the amount of pumping I did in the first month.

Your experience will be your own, no one can predict exactly how it will go and how you'll cope.

To be charitable, I think that maybe some people are trying to "keep it real"? Maybe they went into parenthood very naive, expecting to just continue their old life but with a baby in tow, so now they want to warn others but they kind of overdo it?
I talked to one woman a few years older than me who thought she'd spend her 6 week maternity leave learning a new language and scrapbooking. She's now on her third kid, but had quite a reality check with the first.

But the takeaway message should be - everyone finds this hard, you're not alone or doing it wrong. It is a big change to your body, your relationship, your priorities, how you spend your time.  Be patient with yourself. Ask for help. Set reasonable expectations (as in, every one is alive at the end of the day).

Pregnancy is scary & tiring enough without believing that the worst is yet to come. It's a different kind of challenge now, but it's not all bad. The end of the pregnancy symptoms is a relief; being on this side of childbirth is a relief; and it's really fun to get to know your baby.