Thoughts on Our Own Screen Time (Screen + Tech Series, #3/3)

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:00:03
Speaker 2: This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:08
Speaker 3: And this is Sarah hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:17
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping.

00:00:25
Speaker 1: Out long term career goals.

00:00:27
Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:32
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.

00:00:35
Speaker 4: In this episode, Sarah and I are going to be talking about our own screen time feelings and policies, and how we handle social media and you know, interact with the electronics in our lives. A couple weeks ago, we were talking about kids and screens, our household policies for the young people we live with and are trying to shape into upstanding characters, what we did with them. Then we had an interview with Devora Heidner, who is the author of the book screen Wise, author of the forthcoming book Growing Up and Public about how we can help young people in our lives navigate this sort of you know the digital universe that is there, that they are part of that ecosystem, often whether you wish to be or not. As Sarah often says, just because you get away. No, you can give up your phone, but that won't make twenty twenty three into nineteen ninety five, which is when we grew up, although without many of these devices and such. So, Sarah, you have blogged and written a lot about this. You have for the most part removed social media from your life.

00:01:41
Speaker 1: I mean, you're still very, you know, tech savvy person.

00:01:43
Speaker 4: Obviously you have a podcast, you have a blog, but social media you draw a line around.

00:01:48
Speaker 3: Can you talk a little bit about social media in particular? I have decided to draw a line around. So, going all the way back to nineteenety five, I think I loved like thee of social media. I was very drawn to it even then. I remember like spending hours on like Prodigy bulletin boards, like I have a personal attraction that is perhaps slightly unhealthy social media. I mean, I guess I've just come to realize that. I think it's not that uncommon. I don't think it makes me a unique snowflake. I think that these types of interaction have become increasingly more addictive, and the number of women who tell me that they're like unhappy with the amount of time they spend on Facebook or Instagram or whatever their you know, thing of choice is not low. But I will I feel like I've always had a proclivity towards those things. And in twenty sixteen, before any election happened, but maybe in some of the lead up to that, I was like, I don't think anyed Facebook in my life anymore because it's just like too much. Plus I was often spending time on something called PMG with this physician Mothers Group or mommy group or something like that. And you know what, there was a lot of useful threads in there. There's a lot of great, strong, smart women on there talking about very similar topics what we talk about on the show. But I could not read it and feel good and like turn it off and like not have a lot of feelings. Like there was something about it that it was just like either it made me anxious, or it made me compare, or it just like made me want to read it for three hours straight and then be like, oh my god, what did I just do with the last three hours? Like I was unable to use that in a healthy, constructive way. And my biggest thing is like if we had unlimited time on Earth and like this time we spent on screens, like somehow it didn't count, Like, oh, those are extra hours of life that you get, it wouldn't bother me so much. But it's like no, like I want to do other things. I want to exercise, I want to read, I want to hang out with my kids, I want to do X y Z, I want to go outside. And so I just decided like that I was going to be better off if I took Facebook away, and then I think Instagram gradually rolled in and kind of filled up void. And then in twenty twenty one, I was like, okay, time to take Instagram the way as well. And I've been absolutely happier having done that. Like I there's just like some weird angsty feeling I get when I spend too long on those things, both something about consuming the content also like sort of seeing how I think Instagram especially has just become this like weird like who has the most followers and like who's most successful, and like it didn't feel like it was me and my friends. It felt like was me and a bunch of influencers right like and then just like realizing that I could spend my hours doing other different things. So it's been great. I put up kind of an away message. I didn't like close my accounts. I was just like, I'm not.

00:04:43
Speaker 1: Going to be here anymore.

00:04:44
Speaker 3: And I put up a link tree so that like, if someone looked up the shoe box or whatever on instad they could like find my blog or whatever. I have no idea what percentage of traffic like ever makes it anywhere. I obviously haven't grown my social media platform because of that, so that may be a downside, honestly, because now that I've kind of entered this creator world as an actual part time career, sometimes it's good to have a bigger platform and I don't have one. But yeah, no, it's not worth it to me. I am just like so much happier without those things. And I haven't really thankfully come up with any Like I haven't even let myself touched TikTok, like I'm like, that would just be my next Instagram.

00:05:25
Speaker 5: I know, I just like can't handle it.

00:05:27
Speaker 1: So but do you find that?

00:05:28
Speaker 4: I mean, so there's this quantity of time in our lives where you have zero energy. You are not in some situation where it's particularly convenient to do much else. And that's why I know a lot of people pull up social media, and so I try to train myself to, you know, do puzzles or to pull up something on my kindle or whatever.

00:05:47
Speaker 1: But then there's also you know, just like sometimes.

00:05:50
Speaker 4: You want the brain dead sort of staff that you're you're doing, and I wonder if you ever even wind up like just reading a lot of blog comments then or I think you've mentioned going to it at various points and reading through.

00:06:02
Speaker 3: So that's it for me, is no better than Instagram when I find myself falling down that it's the same when I'm in a healthy mental health space, just none of those things domaining favors, Like they're not relaxing.

00:06:13
Speaker 5: They make me stay up later than I need to.

00:06:15
Speaker 3: A lot of times it is when I'm tired and I'm just be better off reading a book and then falling asleep.

00:06:19
Speaker 5: I'd be better off talking to a real person.

00:06:21
Speaker 3: If it's stressed that has made me turn to those things, I'd be better off just like writing a list in something I will say, like the healthiest screen escape time for me is and I don't do a lot of it, but YouTube, because I have very specific people I follow. They're all like in the Planner kind of world, or like jet Pens is a company of Japanese stationary and that it just for whatever reason, I'm not compelled to watch fifty of them. I don't get all comparing. I can just like relax and like enjoy it. And I'm sure there are people who feel that way about social media in general.

00:06:58
Speaker 5: I'm just not wondering them.

00:07:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, I say, I guess I haven't found it quite as addictive to me, or I.

00:07:10
Speaker 5: Agree, I don't think you do.

00:07:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really.

00:07:12
Speaker 4: Fire as many negative feelings for me, and so I tend to look at it. You know, Let's say, if I have I'm waiting in line or something, and I don't have a book I want to read, like, then I'll go see what's on at night when I am sitting in Henry's room waiting for him to fall asleep, which I would prefer not to be doing.

00:07:36
Speaker 1: But this is, you know, the particular stage of life we still.

00:07:39
Speaker 4: Happen to be in at the moment, and I kind of like, you know, if I want to do something that is completely unproductive and useless.

00:07:47
Speaker 1: Right now I can, and.

00:07:49
Speaker 4: So you know, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook now again.

00:07:56
Speaker 1: I like you left it.

00:07:57
Speaker 4: Around twenty sixteen, I happened to have one right of people in my friends and family and background from multiple sides of the political truth, not even just straight left and right. I mean there's some ones you probably haven't even thought of, like of what people's political stripes happened to be. And so sometimes that makes it very interesting. And then sometimes around twenty sixteen, like that made it just a horrible place to hang out because of people's incredibly strong, in many cases obnoxious feelings on various sides. So I left, and then I found myself back like in the last year.

00:08:32
Speaker 1: It's weird. I don't know if it was Facebook kept.

00:08:34
Speaker 4: Trying, they kept sending me notes or something, or I went on because somebody had posted, you know, I don't know, somebody's like baby photos are there and I want to go look. And I was on the buy Nothing group briefly, and then I needed a babysitter, so I had to, you know, I joined a local like babysitting.

00:08:49
Speaker 1: Group, and then I.

00:08:51
Speaker 4: Wound up joining this group called large family tricks of the trade, which perhaps, like your physician mommy group is some alternately interesting and then alternately helpful.

00:09:04
Speaker 1: And then alternately like oh my lord, like you know, but.

00:09:09
Speaker 4: You know, it's also just like you want to see the variety of human experience as well, and sometimes you wind up in your own little bubble.

00:09:16
Speaker 3: And I'm gonna beg to differ and state that the algorithms are also putting you in a bubble, like a big bubble. I mean, there is such a big brother like controlling like what you see and what is fed to you next, and they know what's gonna push your buttons. So I don't buy the like I'm seeing all sorts of like.

00:09:37
Speaker 4: Well, except that you know, it's people's lives too, in many cases very different from mine, and I do appreciate that aspect of it, because I might not have sought that out right, And so I read those sometimes, you know. I like Instagram for the photos, I like seeing people stuff, but you know, I don't use any of this as much. I haven't posted anything on Facebook and age is I think I last posted on Instagram when I'm recording this, like two weeks ago, It's not something I particularly feel compelled to do that much. I would tell you that, like with the creator aspect and bringing traffic. I mean, it's good to have a presence, and some people really do that as a way where they build community. But I think you have to decide to be all in on a particular app then to do it. And I'm a little concerned about that because you don't necessarily own all the material, right, Like, I mean, they could disappear tomorrow, They could deplatform you tomorrow for something you didn't.

00:10:33
Speaker 1: Even know you did wrong. I mean, you know, it's could definitely happen.

00:10:36
Speaker 4: Whereas what you and I have both done of building up like a newsletter list and building up our own websites, it may not expose you to a broader, bigger audience that could make something go viral quite as easily. But on the other hand, it's yours, it's ours, it's ours, and they can't instantly take.

00:10:54
Speaker 3: It away from you, or even like the number of people that like didn't really want to make reels and then found that, like well, Instagram wasn't going to show their stuff anymore. Like, I don't the idea that a company could like kind of decide which content is going to be popular and which isn't, Like, oh, there's something unnatural about that, And I don't know. I just keep going back to the fact that, like, their job is to keep you on their device as long as possible, and they're very good at doing that, at least when it comes to like me, like, they were very good at doing that, and they're buying my eyeballs, my expensive eyeballs during the time that I was doing that, feeling bad about myself, having negative feelings and not doing other things like I, yeah, I can't wrap my head around it, but you definitely have better moderation, and it doesn't sound like the self loathing is associated with it, and the fact that you haven't like posted in two weeks, like yeah, clearly you're not addicted.

00:11:48
Speaker 4: We're going to take a quick ad break and we'll be back talking more about our own interaction with screens.

00:12:06
Speaker 1: So Sarah and.

00:12:06
Speaker 4: I are back talking about screen time in general. I mean, the truth is we're on screens all day.

00:12:11
Speaker 1: I mean, we're on our laptops. I mean it's not like.

00:12:15
Speaker 4: I guess you have to sort of draw a distinction here because there's so many ways that we're interacting with screens, and you know, I'm on the laptop for eight hours of work. I don't really watch TV. You like TV though, right, You like certain sorts of TV.

00:12:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't watch like a lot of TV. I actually probably watch a very like two hours a week, maybe like it's not a lot, But I really do enjoy usually doing one series at a time, either something that I'm watching by myself, like I watched sex Lives of College Girls by myself, and I watch Bad Sisters by myself, or like Josh and I are watching Ted Lasso right now and we always watch that together. So I find TV to be like much higher quality than it was when we were growing up. There are so many more options, so you can kind of like pick your own like niche kind of a thing. And I again, it doesn't have that addictive quality like we watch it at night. I know there's some people who do have issues where they like they'll want to stay up till two am. I'm like, I'm just such not a night person. I'm tired, So once I get sleepy, I'm like, okay, we're done. We'll finish this one tomorrow. Like sometimes I can't even get through one full episode or something time last. It can be long, like some of those are more than an hour, and I'm like it's rough. So yeah, No, I enjoyed to you, And you're right. I mean at work, I'm on screens a lot of the time. I don't like that kind of like itchy hand task switching kind of thing, like I mean you brought up wadding in line, Like I if it's a very long line and there's nothing else to do, I totally get it. When it's like a short line, it's kind of like, no, my brain actually could probably benefit from just like standing here for a second and like maybe talking to the person next to me, or maybe I have a kid with me and I have to deal with them anyway, so I couldn't be on my screen effectivelyor'ng gonna end up screaming at them because they're halfway across the store or whatever. So I don't like those little bits, you know, like I find they kind of like pollute my attention a little bit. But no, it's not like I'm avoiding screens at work or we're on.

00:14:09
Speaker 1: One right now.

00:14:09
Speaker 5: We can see each other as we're recording this podcast, and.

00:14:12
Speaker 1: We met each other through our blogs.

00:14:14
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, which is something that we might not have naturally ever come across each other without that aspect of.

00:14:22
Speaker 1: The early version of social you know, and.

00:14:24
Speaker 5: You share your book, which I purchased on paper.

00:14:26
Speaker 1: So that's true.

00:14:27
Speaker 3: Okay, Well maybe maybe if we're the nineties, I would have written you a letter.

00:14:34
Speaker 1: We would have been penpals.

00:14:35
Speaker 3: Sarah, You've been like, she's nice handwriting, Let's be friends.

00:14:38
Speaker 4: It's true choice, exactly.

00:14:44
Speaker 1: I should get to know her. That's true.

00:14:48
Speaker 4: I mean, I still like to create content that hopefully people will read in their their analog times of day. But I think for me, the way I think about it is the same as I try to think of about it with my kids.

00:15:01
Speaker 1: There are I have my bedtime. My bedtime is eleven PM.

00:15:05
Speaker 4: Unless there is a really good reason, I will go to bed at eleven PM, and then I'm up at six point thirty. And you know, in the morning, I'm kind of busy doing stuff with kids. I'll read, I will turn on my phone, and I have a couple newsletters. I enjoy reading in the morning, but generally that's not time that's going to be like spent on social media. Or anything like that. You know, there's obviously work that is occasionally check in if there's something professional I'm trying to promote through social media, but I tend to have things I need to get done during the day. I'm running kids around in the afternoon, if I'm at a kid's activity, I'm generally trying to do something like a work project that I said, this is, you know what I can do during this hour. We have family dinner, we have we have to get kids in bed. We often, you know, in the summer, do our time outside after dinner.

00:15:57
Speaker 1: I sing in my choir.

00:15:58
Speaker 4: During the school year, try to have family adventures, I run.

00:16:03
Speaker 1: Whatever else, you know.

00:16:04
Speaker 4: So there's just not that much time available for going down some sort of deep rabbit hole of social media stuff. And occasionally I do just because I'm so fascinated almost from a like I don't know, anthropological perspective on some of these Twitter like little Twitter communities that will rally around some particular idea, and like, who thought that was a good idea? Now you've like tried to convince all these other people that you were into it.

00:16:34
Speaker 1: Like some really truly bad dating advice I have found, So you know, like, well, okay, like people who.

00:16:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, don't read dating advice from Twitter. I guess that would be my life coach thing. I would say there, but I find that kind of interesting and we'll read that. But yeah, there's just not that much time available.

00:17:00
Speaker 5: That's so funny. Yeah that makes sense.

00:17:02
Speaker 3: And you're not one of those people who wakes up, because I think a lot of people will wake up and get sucked into their phone and then like whatever morning intentions they have, especially if they're not a morning person, and they wake up kind of tired, get reilroaded because they, you know, spent seventeen minutes and now like they're planted to a thirty minute workout.

00:17:19
Speaker 5: Is like is over to me?

00:17:22
Speaker 3: People talk to me a lot about that, but that doesn't seem to be like you fit in a lot.

00:17:29
Speaker 4: Well, we'll see when I don't have, you know, five kids at home, I don't know, maybe I'll be the person who's on whatever the version of social media is sixteen years from now.

00:17:38
Speaker 1: A very interesting.

00:17:39
Speaker 3: Topic because there are a lot of seniors that spend their whole I mean before they used to spend their whole days watching the news right and watching TV, and now they've switched to Facebook and god knows what else, but I don't really want to do that.

00:17:55
Speaker 4: Well, I mean it's again, it's you can find communities online in circumstances where it might be more challenging to make them in person. And so if you are somebody who has physical limitations, for instance, it can be harder to get out, like if it's not as easy for you to drive, and you know you're relying on neighbors or children or whatever to drive you around it. You know, that is the social interaction you can have. So I don't know, I'm sort of understanding about that part.

00:18:24
Speaker 5: Of it that makes sense for that use of it.

00:18:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I mean, what, you've read some books on the topics of screen time and adults, Like, what are some of you.

00:18:37
Speaker 5: That found myself? Yeah? So I think I've read them all, And I'm just kidding.

00:18:43
Speaker 1: It's like you with me with the organizing books.

00:18:46
Speaker 5: Yes, I don't read organizing books.

00:18:47
Speaker 1: I don't do anything with them. I just like to like to read them.

00:18:52
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh.

00:18:53
Speaker 3: Well, I've recently just finished Johann Hari's Stolen Focus. That one, that one a lot lot, that role was a lot even for me, and that's saying something.

00:19:05
Speaker 1: Because you've heard me like rant and rape on this episode.

00:19:09
Speaker 3: But I liked some of the ideas presented there, and I liked reading specifically about his three month screenfast he took, just because like that's never going to happen for me, and so it was just interesting to hear somebody else's experience having done that. That was an interesting one. I really like call Newport's Digital Minimalism. I think he did a really nice job with the topic. I actually I enjoyed that one even more than Deep Work. I know deep work like got I think a lot more attention, But I really like digital minimalism. It was about like find the minimum, like it's not all or nothing, but like you want to use your phone to the level where it serves or your devices to level where they serve you, and like not beyond that, so that you're serving the companies basically with your eyeballs. As I said. So I thought he did a nice job with that. And then Catherine Price had to break up with your phone. It's an OLDI book, goodie. I don't think I put her recommendations like into action when I read the book, but when I finally quit the apps. I thought about her book as I did them, because for me, the only thing that made my phone less compelling and less addictive was just getting the things off of there that I found very compelling and addictive. And actually, once I did that, it became pretty easy not to go on my phone because what am I going to do? Like go to Google Maps?

00:20:26
Speaker 1: It's been days on Google Apps.

00:20:28
Speaker 4: I guess, how would I drive from here to Yellowstone if I were going to do so? See what's how many subways are on the way. So yeah, I enjoyed Digital Minimalism Cal's book partly because of the approach it took, not just like you should be off screens because screens are evil, because that's silly, Like they're not, and it's a tool like anything else, and you want to find how it works in your life. And he made the point that you should look at how you are spending your leisure time and figure you're out cool things that you can do with your leisure time, because when you are doing that, then the screens are then just generally less compelling. So if you sing an a choir that is two and a half hours that rehearsally that you are not on your screen because you are doing something else that is you know, more interesting and more constructive. You know, if you have you know, a lot of the time we're on phones is because we're like half supervising our kids. But you know, even that sort of time, you could come up with ways to make it better. Like what if you win a friend meet up at a park, right, and then you can talk to your friend and your kids are all playing together, and so you're not kind of half on your phone looking at stuff and texting your friends. You're you know, you're you're having the real world interaction and then it winds up being sort of less screen based. But it requires a lot of thought, right that you have to put effort into your leisure time, and a lot of people find that sort of challenging to do.

00:21:57
Speaker 1: You know, we're tired, so but you know it's I think it's worth doing.

00:22:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think I mean from anybody listening to our podcast, and we've you know, all of our one hundred dreams and like things we want to do, and how we are proponents of like planning stuff because otherwise it won't happen.

00:22:11
Speaker 5: You can tell where we fall on that side. Of the spectrum. Yeah, I love the Oh go ahead.

00:22:16
Speaker 4: You know, I was gonna say, well, last thing before we take one more ad break and then do our question, but I.

00:22:20
Speaker 1: Think we should.

00:22:21
Speaker 4: You know, it does help to come up with activities that you can do during low energy times. If you would like to minimize the time on screen, you need something else to absorb that time when you are not at your best. You are not going to be you know, solving worldwide problems. You are not even going to be able to do much on your own life. I mean, you just you're filling time almost. What do you have that is fun, rejuvenating that fills that time as opposed to scrolling through one hundred comments on somebody's bad dating? Right, So for me, it's puzzles like I do one thousand piece puzzles.

00:23:04
Speaker 1: I do a ton of them, like.

00:23:06
Speaker 4: I will sit there and those are probably more compelling to me than the social media comment threads that I will get really really into it and can find you know, I keep making another fit and you know, spend hours on it if I had the time available on any particular day.

00:23:24
Speaker 1: So figure out what that is for you.

00:23:26
Speaker 4: It might be you know, ideas that could be something creative, like some people really like needle work of various points. You know that it's you can see yourself making progress. Obviously, if you're knitting a scarf, like there will be more of a scarf after you've been doing it for fifteen minutes than there was at the beginning of that time. You know, it could be sketching, It can be reading.

00:23:48
Speaker 5: Obviously, there's that's my puzzle equivalent.

00:23:51
Speaker 3: And again not hybrill literature here, like fun stuff that I don't have to use a lot of brain power to enjoy, but never leaves me feeling that same way that that the scrolling did.

00:24:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, and if you can't even get your head around books, like you're not in a book mode.

00:24:06
Speaker 1: You can get books that are like magazines.

00:24:08
Speaker 4: I mean I go to the library and get like books on garden design and I'm basically just looking at pictures of.

00:24:14
Speaker 3: Flowers or actual magazines or actual magazines. Yeah, I still get real simple, we get consumer reports, we get Runners World, and I love.

00:24:23
Speaker 5: Mindlessly kind of flipping through those absolutely.

00:24:26
Speaker 1: I like HGTV. That's another good one. I better Homes and Gardens is still out there doing well.

00:24:30
Speaker 4: I will put a plug in here for Southern Living, even if you are not a Southern person. It's just a really well done lifestyle magazine where everyone they quote happens to live south of the Mason Dixon line. So I mean it's but it's about everything. It just happens to have that one caveat on it, and so that's that's really cool. You know, the magazines I like keep disappearing, like Oprah Magazine went away, Martha Stewart Living went away, but so it goes.

00:24:58
Speaker 1: There's often new.

00:24:59
Speaker 4: Ones or they have secial newsstand editions that you know, Oh magazine is now out quarterly that you can buy on newstands, so you know, you can check that out, and I think feel free to splurge a little on that. Don't view it as like wasted money. I mean you can usually get a monthly magazine for about a dollar to two dollars in an issue, which ifits an hour of entertainment, is about as cheap as it goes, right, So yeah, put a plug in for that.

00:25:26
Speaker 3: All right, let's take our break. We'll be right back with our Q and A and loves to the week.

00:25:42
Speaker 4: All right, Well, we are back talking screen time and adults and specifically ourselves and how we interact with screens in our lives.

00:25:50
Speaker 1: But the question we want.

00:25:51
Speaker 4: To discuss today is a little bit different, not about screens at.

00:25:55
Speaker 5: All, really, no, not related.

00:25:57
Speaker 1: So Sarah, you want to read this one.

00:25:59
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, Well, I'm gonna summarize this one because this is quite a long question. But this is basically a woman who has a two and a half year old who is pregnant, so she has a baby on the way, and she's really struggling with getting the two and a half year old to stay in their crib and sleep through the night. And so she's actually worked with a sleep consultant in the past with some success, but still doesn't have like a great solution, and she's kind of, I don't know what the word is, shoring herself up and trying to figure out how she is going to handle this two and a half year old who's still not sleeping through the night, getting out of bed, et cetera. When her new baby is born and she therefore has to be feeding the baby overnight. And by the way, she also you know, works full time in fairly long shifts. So wow, it's a lot.

00:26:48
Speaker 5: Yeah, you go first.

00:26:51
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, No.

00:26:52
Speaker 4: I mean deepest sympathy is when you have a toddler who doesn't go to bed very easily, or who wakes.

00:26:57
Speaker 1: Up in the middle of the night. I mean we're.

00:26:59
Speaker 4: Finally in a good place, which not what's necessarily going to bed per se. Like I still sit in Henry's room while he falls asleep most nights. Some nights I am able to leave and tell him, Henry, I need to go put the other kids to bed. He's like, you'll come back, right, and I'm like, sure, Henry. And then by the time I, you know, would come back, he's asleep, which is you know, I feel like, no.

00:27:19
Speaker 1: Harm, no foul there.

00:27:21
Speaker 4: We had him in a crib with a net overhead for a long time because we were worried about him climbing out because Alex, who's my now eight year old, was is a climber, like he'll climb on anything.

00:27:32
Speaker 1: He's now actually on a climbing team.

00:27:34
Speaker 4: But as part of that, he was climbing out of the crib at like as soon as his little legs and arms could move, and so we're like, oh, well, we got to make sure that that Henry doesn't do that. Of course, then Henry is a totally different child who would never climb out of anything. So it's you know, you never know what you're gonna get. But Henry did not sleep particularly well either. We moved to this house where he's just a little bit farther away from me, and I think that helped because I don't necessarily hear him. And I mean, if he's screaming at here him, but if it's just like the regular nighttime noise, I don't, So that was that was just the thing.

00:28:02
Speaker 1: Anyway, Sorry, getting back to you. This lady mentioned.

00:28:06
Speaker 4: That the two and a half year old likes to have an adult with her. She also put it out that she's going to have the infant and that her husband may not wish to be up all the time with the infant if she's like nursing the infant.

00:28:18
Speaker 1: So big solution here is we put.

00:28:23
Speaker 4: A bed in the toddler's room and her husband goes and sleeps there. And he seemed to be okay with that, like he doesn't have a problem with that as an idea, and you know, he's in charge of the toddler, she is in charge of the infant.

00:28:39
Speaker 1: That seems like a pretty good split.

00:28:41
Speaker 4: She's the only one who's going to be lactating, So that's the right split if you're gonna have one, And that way she won't be worried about the toddler, Like she could just deal with the sleep deprivation that comes from the infant, but she can, you know, co sleep with the infant and so you know, hopefully just like nurse a little bit and go back to sleep and have the baby there and hopefully that will help with some of that. And I think also just knowing that the toddler is cared for is a big part of it, Like that she's not going to be like, if she does get up, it's not my problem, it's somebody else. Plus, my husband's there, and I think the toddler will probably sleep better with her husband in there, because that was part of the problem, is that the child is just frightened of the night, as toddlers often are. Yeah.

00:29:25
Speaker 5: I love that solution as well.

00:29:26
Speaker 3: It has an element of fairness and an element of practicality, and all these things are going to change, you know, who knows, maybe her newborn will sleep through the night at three months. I had a colleague the other day who was like, yeah, We're really lucky our baby does that. So there are babies out there.

00:29:42
Speaker 5: That just do that.

00:29:43
Speaker 3: I didn't have any, but they exist, so, you know, I guess the biggest thing to keep in mind is like, no matter what you decide, be flexible because you just don't know which way this is going to go. And your two and a half year old eventually is going to outgrow the need for someone to be with them. I highly doubt that going to want this when they're ten. So whatever you can do to kind of survive and thrive in the moment when things are at their most difficult, I say, do them. So I like all these outside of the box solutions. I love the idea of getting your partner involved like this and we're thinking of you, we're rooting for you. This is a hard time, but you're going to get through it. And I like the fact that you're planning ahead votes very well.

00:30:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And I think definitely create opportunities during the day for you to get some more sleep, particularly while you're on maternity leave for the next few months. And then you know, even with her schedule, I mean she's a nurse, so she works twelve hour shifts, so those three twelve hour shifts will be hard, yes, but maybe on the days that you are not at the hospital, you could don't be like, oh great, we don't need childcare.

00:30:51
Speaker 1: Like if you've got you.

00:30:53
Speaker 4: Know, they have some help from family, they have a part time daycare for the toddler.

00:30:58
Speaker 1: Like, definitely keep you that ask for more of it, you.

00:31:03
Speaker 4: Know, but have that opportunity that you could then for sure get a nap an early afternoon on the days that were really rough, and if you're not working on those days, that would be an opportunity that you would have. That's somebody who is like in an office from nine to five Monday through Friday would have less of That would be one upside of those three twelve hour shifts.

00:31:24
Speaker 5: Yes, I vouch for all of that. We're rooting for you. You'll have to update us, let us on how it's going.

00:31:29
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, all right, Sarah, I love of the week mine.

00:31:33
Speaker 3: I'm just going to double back on our discussion and say that I really enjoy getting magazine subscriptions never really gets old. I feel like when I was like fifteen, I would get my little seventeen magazine. It was like the best day ever. Sassy mag anybody else sassy so good, and it's it's like not quite that fun. It's definitely not that level of fun. Actually that was more fun, but it's still like a little fun. And we don't have that many moments of random fun in our lives necessary, So being able to go to the mailbox and like maybe having a fun magazine in there for me is a highlight.

00:32:05
Speaker 5: So yeah, I.

00:32:06
Speaker 4: Would say that you can even you know, if you're not sure what titles are out there, which why would you know, Like taking a little I could make this my love of the week is stopping by an airport bookstore or all the Barnes and Nobles have huge magazine sections where they have a lot of random titles as well.

00:32:23
Speaker 1: But just it's not that expensive.

00:32:26
Speaker 4: They're they're cheaper if you subscribe, but they're not that expensive if you buy them. So just you know, treat yourself to three of them at the airport bookstore, get you through your flight to Cleveland, and if you liked one of them, then subscribe and like, hey, now you've got twelve hours of screen free fund over the next year. As you as you read through these episodes of these editions as they come what are they called issues, Issues.

00:32:52
Speaker 1: Issues editions? I don't know what was the word I was looking for.

00:32:57
Speaker 5: I'm not even sure periodical subscription, I don't know.

00:33:00
Speaker 4: Oh no, all right, well, this has been best of both worlds. We have mostly been talking about how we interact with screens. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:33:12
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening.

00:33:13
Speaker 3: You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

00:33:19
Speaker 6: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.