Rising to the Challenge of Working From Home without Childcare with Susannah Quinsee

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. 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. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and fifty. We'll be interviewing Susanna Quincy, who works for a university in London over in the UK and is in charge of distance learning for them, the transition to distance learning that they did this spring. She's going to talk about that experience of having her job massively ramp up as her whole university went online, as she was also dealing with four children with no childcare. So good times. Lessons learned on how to truly make work in life fit together when both pieces are very stressful. So I'm looking forward to that interview because I know a lot of our listeners went through very similar things this spring, and so I think we'll have a lot of people excited about that. So this is airing in mid June. I always love June. June is great in my part of the world, probably less so in you're part of the world right, so much less so. We've entered like what I call monsoon season, and our house even managed to flood, so we were in you know, honeysuckle and roses here, and you know, days that are generally not too hot, they get you know, eighties during the day, but nice in the mornings and evening. So la la la. I'm enjoying it. Also happy because our lockdowns are lifted to at least some degree. We're officially, I mean we're recording this before that, but officially we're out of lockdown on June five, So lots of stuff starting back up, which is great, very excited about that. You know, our summer is looking different than it was originally. All our camps wound up being closed, but we have a different situation in general for the summer. Our longtime nanny is on leave this summer, so we have a slightly different set of hours. We've got summer nanny working for longer days, so Monday through Thursday, and then my husband and I are mostly splitting Friday. So that's been interesting for us, and you know, kind of a cool situation to try something different and seeing how the splitting is working. I'll probably have to update, but he's been able to take the morning more or less because a lot of places do summer fridays anyway, so that he I mean, he takes the morning to work and I take the afternoon to work, because that's how you can block it in sort of corporate world. So yeah, we've been experimenting with that, and I know a lot of our listeners have also been doing the splitting childcare, although in many cases for many more days than we are doing here. So how about you, Sarah, what's your summer looking like? Yeah, I mean, from my work standpoint, things are ramping up back to kind of normal. I'm still allowed to work remotely if I choose to. I wonder if that will remain a forever thing for some of my work that I do, although who knows. But for my clinical work, I am primarily back in the office, in part because I'm seeing some patients in person, and in part because I do have a resident with us, and I'm not going to have the resident to come to my house and see telemedicine from my bedrooms. So we yet in an office setting. So things are just kind of slowly going back to normal, except for the fact that, of course, you know, as we're recording this, the school year is still coming to a slow drawn out clothes and we're doing that virtually. Yeah, So, I don't know, I sort of felt like I was hitting a little bit of a wall this morning, and I don't know exactly what it is. I mean, I know our nanny is fully more than capable of keeping the kids occupied and well cared for during the day while I'm at work, but there's a bit of a mental block where I just feel like, especially as school has gone on, just hasn't been an ideal supervision. I mean, I was having like wild, crazy thoughts like maybe I'll just take an entire year off of work. Then I'm like, no, no, I think you would be not happy not working and spending your time supervising kindergarten zoom. So I'm just throwing that out there. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be the smartest move. I mean, it's a move, but not one that I was seriously considering. But to even be having those kinds of thoughts is odd for me. So I guess I don't know. I just need a few days. I need a few days before work is going well and it feels rewarding again, and then maybe I will feel better and I'm sure that will happen soon. That will all right. Well, let's listen to what Susannah has to tell us. We'll be back at the end of this episode. Hi, Hi, Susana, welcome to Best of both worlds. We're delighted to have you. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. Yeah, So tell our listeners a little bit about you, Okay. So I am a mother of four. I have a four year old, eight year old, twins and a thirteen year old. Three girls and a boy. Had to think there for a moment, I forget myself. Once you get over a few kids, it's like how many are there? And they've all got very long hair at the moment as well, So you know what, my poor son always gets mistaken for a girl. And I'm also professor of Educational Development and director of Learning and Teaching enhancement at City University of London wonderful, and so prior to mid March we explained that Susannah has you know, taken on a lot of extra work because of helping her university go to online learning. But so prior to mid March, what would your daily life have looked like? So I worked part time, So I worked three long days and then I had two days in the week at home with my youngest daughter and doing kind of mummy things and occasionally a bit of work on those days. I worked kind of flexible schedule, but generally that was the pattern. So I was in the office sort of Tuesday to Thursday. I tried to keep one day where I worked at home so to do writing and all the other stuff that you don't do, because particularly when you're part time, I think you find that you're in a lot of meetings. Universities love meetings and committees and that kind of thing. So yeah, so my days were kind of you know, that was the structure of the week, and there was you know, you'd be planning ahead, so sometimes you'd be like, Okay, I'm going to a conference or I've got a really important meeting that I can't miss, so I'd need to kind of box and cocks on childcare and swap days. And my youngest daughter was in nursery for at preschool all day on the days that I worked, and then we had after school childcare as well on those days till sort of six. So, yeah, that was the kind of pattern of the week. There's no normal week, is there, But you know, that was roughly what it was supposed to look like. And then around mid March, as the pandemic is taking over, and I know the UK was probably about a week behind the US of where the panic points are. So describe how you learned that everything was going to go online and sort of what that realization was like, both in terms of your work then massively scaling up at the same time that your childcare was disappearing. Yeah, so I tended to not work weekends where I could avoid it. In the before as I called it before life, I remember that I think it was on the Saturday morning for some reason, I picked up my phone and it was just like my email was just rammed with messages saying that we were going to move everything online. By about the twenty third of March or preferably earlier, and that's what my team does, like we support the staff in the university to use online resources to develop their teaching, and so it was a moment of kind of okay, so we're doing this now. So yeah, that all weekend we were trying to work out what our approach was and what it really meant, because it's one thing to say we're moving online, but what does that really mean? And then students had been told that we were, so then we were trying to work through that, and there was just a lot and I just remember that whole weekend was spent just trying to write emails in between juggling children and family life. And my partner works at the same university and he's in it, so he was also getting slammed at the same time. And I think we finally just went out for a walk on the Sunday afternoon and it felt so good to just kind of get away. I hadn't realized how stressed I was until we sort of actually left the house, So yeah, that's how I found out about it, and then went in. All the next week was just rammed, and at that stage we still had childcare, but then we weren't sure, like when lockdown was actually going to start, there was quite a lot of uncertainty and then who would be allowed to work and who wouldn't, So that was sort of just evolving. We didn't know what was happening with schools either at that point, so that was that was kind of very up in the air. That happened very quickly as well, Like my oldest daughter's school just she went in in the morning, came home that afternoon like we shut Yeah, that's kind of how a lot of places happened. Well, hopefully you were able to help your professors and students transition with a bit more you know. Yes, yeah, great, mind than that. So how did you do that? Like what sort of support did you provide for teachers too? Like, wait, I've never taught online before. Yeah, so my team were absolutely amazing and just stepping up, and so my kind of head of educational technology instantly over that weekend produced a kind of wiki page that then we just put all the material content on and we just started to update that as quickly as possible and get that message out there. So as soon as we had that link, we were able to send that around to staff in the university to say okay, this is where all the information you need is here. And funnily enough, like that morning, I've just been kind of before this all happened, I've been thinking, oh, I really think we need a sort of plan of things how we're going to manage this as a directorate, And so I just emailed my senior team saying these are the five areas that we need to focus on, like that morning, and then by the afternoon I was like, okay, those changed a little bit slightly differently. So yeah, that's what we did, and then we went so my boss is the deputy president of the university, and so then we had like various structures to manage how you change policy because there's a lot of policies and kind of contractual things that you have to do with students. So we had to kind of feed into committees around that, working with colleagues across university to support staff. In particular assessment. That was the big thing because were about to move into the exam period. That's where the UK University's had exams from starting April May, so that was a big transition point to move over to as well, and every other university in the kind of world was doing it at the same time. So you're trying to share good practice as well between different institutions, and so what did you come up with. I'm very curious, like what is best practice for online assessment? Then? Yeah, sure. So in the initial period, it was kind of what we called the emergency response. So we had five principles, see if I can remember them all to talk about. So one was around, you know, try and do as much as you can asynchronously as opposed to synchronously, so not in real time basically because we did I had no idea where our students were. They could be anywhere in the world. We have a lot of international students, so so as much as you can to put up that they can adapt to it flexibly. That was one thing. The other one was around this is not perfect online learning. This is about best efforts to try and get as much as you can out there and really communicate with your students. We said it should be very basic, so you shouldn't assume that anyone has anything more than a mobile phone and you know, a data collect point on a mobile because again, a lot of our students had caring responsibilities or living with parents who suddenly have got other simply at home. So that was one of them was keep it simple as well, so you know, just be communicating with your students and use the university system. So they weren't rocket science, you know that, but there was. It was a big shift and I was teaching. I'm teaching myself as well this term, so again I had to go through the same process of trying to redesign everything and it is it's the head space thing as well, definitely, But that was the initial phase. Moving for September. What we've now done is we are planning again to keep offering as much as we can online because we're not sure how the campus will open and you know, what facilities will be available. We're still trying to work that out in terms of our programs and our student needs and our staff needs, where the staff can get into the university because being in London, our staff travel from quite a long way away. So again we've changed. We've just agreed a set of principles around that which are more detailed than the first step we had. So they talk a bit more about how you can manage synchronous and asynchronous responses, so how you can do like lectures online but also then follow up with a lot of tutorials that might be you know where you get that interaction within students and really focusing on engaging students because they want to come to the university, but they just they can't. So that's that sort of challenge that we're looking at at the moment. So your work was exploding. This reminds me of like there's like a telehealth team where I work, and you know, they were always fairly active, but it's like their job went from like this little side project to like the aticenter. Like they were all of a sudden, like working all night long, and you know, they did a fantastic job ramping things up quickly because the need was there. So you're like the telehealth equivalent at your university. So things are exploding and you lose your childcare, and you have to detail us a little bit how did you survive? Because I mean, the whole thing that got us very excited to speak with you is not only were we interested in the angle of the online learning, but like how you said you did this successfully. We're excited to hear what were your secrets, what made it work? What did you learn and I would love you to include how your partner, if you have one, played a role in all this, because that can be an important component for some people. Sure, thank you. So yeah, I think I think we've managed it successfully. Yeah, well we're still here and we're still smiling. So that's the same thing, and the work is happening. I love a spreadsheet, so I started off with like, right, this is these are the weeks, and this is the blocks of time. And I prayed this beautiful spreadsheet and my partner looked at it and when I have no idea what you're talking about, and could you just explain it again? And so so then I went through it again and we basically blocked out the time and I kind of worked out a rough total of hourt It's really but it wasn't so much abouts. It was about concentrated blocks of time. So and then I publicized that very openly to my manager other people in the university. I put it in my out of office, I put it on my on my emails intues, these are the times when I can have meetings and I am working, and these are the times that I'm not available. And it's been really hard. It's worked most of the time. You know, there's been the time when you have to kind of thumb wrestle a bit. You don't want to go into the sort of whose meeting is more important conversation with your partner. So you know, generally we've tried not to trade too much, but there have been some things that were in the diary, say all day events or things like that, which just didn't work. But I think being really clear has been like really really important from the outset because then it meant that we could just plan it for the next sort of two months and then as this is carried on, just kept going. And it's helped me realize the flow of the weeks as well, I think. At first of all, so I moved from working like some days to working every day. So I was like, I'm working more now than I was before. But that's you know, that's fine, that's what needs to happen. But it was I realized that the week still followed the same kind of flow as they had before. So like Mondays was quite a good day to kind of do some catch ups, it was quite quiet, or you know, do some more development work, and then you know, the rest of the week got busier and so yeah, so that was I think the really crucial thing. And my partner's not he's not a planner. He was a bit more like you know, I was like, this is what I have to do, and he fits in around it, and it kind of you know, in order to sort of get all the work time in. I I'm quite happy to get up early and put in a good couple of hours, you know, sort of first thing. And I found that's really helped as well. And I've sort of played around with different things like thought, oh, no, I'll use that time as me time and do sort of you know, yoga and things like that, and then I realized, no, actually that just getting up focusing on what I thought about doing the night before for the next day, that's been brilliant to just kind of crack it on. And then I've realized I felt that I could relax a bit more with the children and you know, not be distracted because I found that if I get you know, if I haven't sort of finished off what I'm doing, or I kind of just know that there's something that I've got to focus on later in the day, I can't really give my time to the children. Then you just get end up being a bit grumpy with them, which is, you know, sometimes you can catch up with things, but generally you just need to be present, even for a little bit. So yeah, my god, I hear you on the grumpy. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. All right. Well, we are here talking with Susanna Quincy, who is a professor in London who has also been in charge of helping her university move to online learning, and she is discussing how she managed things with four children and their child care disappeared this spring. So could you just spell out for us, like what hours you did and what your partner did, And I mean I'd love to hear how exactly people did split the week. I mean, you say you split it, but what did those hours wind up looking like? And include how school was supervised, because I think you know, in some families it's certainly more autopilot than others, and it can play a role on how your time has to be allocated. Sure, so split the day from roughly kind of nine till one it was a morning session, and then from one till six it was a kind of afternoon session, and then that allowed a bit of time, certainly for me in the mornings to kind of get up and crack on with a couple of hours before I sort of took over on to the kids at nine or potentially in the evening if you wanted to then catch up later, although they've all just been going to bed at ridiculous times, Like the evening stuff hasn't really happened as much, but yeah, it gives you kind of a good sort of four or five hour block. And we also kind of tried to do lunchtime as a bit of a transition point in the day so that you know, we could kind of do handover. And so one of us will work just the way that meetings fell, literally, so one of us will do like Monday Tuesday mornings. I do Monday Tuesday afternoons, and then I do Wednesday Thursday, then Friday's we alternate, and actually Fridays is really nice because it's normally meeting Free Free Earth, so you know, you can kind of get a bit of work done at the end of the week. And I found like just being very very focused and clear about what I need to do is that time, and you can get through quite a lot of stuff. I mean, there's also the odd meetings that obviously fall out of that time, and sometimes you just have to go, I've just got to do it. And the children are either roaming around free in the house or they're you know, on device, and you know sometimes as well. I take I did chuckle about this because we let them have TV at five o'clock or like you know, screen time at five o'clock. So I'd be arranging meetings around my family's screen time and going, I can talk to you at five. So that's what the days really look like. And then we decided that we would do homes school in the morning and nine to kind of twelve ish, so we had when the school's closed. It was two weeks before the Easter holidays in the UK, and so we started off that kind of worked for two weeks, and then the Easter holidays happened and we were just going to keep going and the kids were like, no, it's our holiday, and then after that it's all sort of fallen apart bit. So it's gone very free range, partly the way the schools have managed it. So Eldest Daughter School, which I think woul be equivalent to middle school to be in like seventh grade. I think they've done a lot of online work, so she's pretty much self motivated now. She will do that and do her weekly schedule and she does it on Microsoft Teams and all the rest of it. Whereas the primary school, the younger children's school, the eight year olds, they've put a lot online and they've done the teachers have done an amazing job, but I think they've struggled hard to sort of just really engage with it and on a daily basis, so we you know, we're doing a bit, but not huge amounts. And then none of the schools have lives streamed, which has been great in a way that you don't have to have loads of children in front of devices, but I think, particularly for the eight year old, they missed that interaction with their teachers. So yeah, we've gone very I decided that I didn't want to have them sitting in tears over over schoolwork, and that happened one morning and I was like, do you know what, We're just back off and they've done been doing so much independent learning, and I was kind of I went upstairs the other morning to have a shower and came back and the younger three were sitting around the table drawing books and making their own books and all that. So I was like, my work is done exactly, this is fine, It's fine. So yeah, I think we've kind of moved down that as the longer we've gone on and there's not much chance at the moment of school's reopening here for the ages of my children, we've just kind of accepted it and gone, okay, you know, they're having an adventure. Have they become better at entertaining themselves in the course of this, Definitely, definitely, I would say, so. You know, I think it took them a while to transition to it, and I think one of the hard things for children is although they don't necessarily have the same concept of time, they like to know what the summer's going to look like and you know, when they can go back to school and when they can see their friends. And we haven't really been able to answer that yet. So as they've got to accept it and as we've kind of all relaxed a bit more, I think they're definitely working together. And I think that's an advantage of having a bit of a gang as well, like they do, you know, their social interactions. They all play Minecraft and you know, so, yeah, I think that they've definitely been and a huge Lego play zone this week where one of them was making things for the other one's houses. And yeah, I think they've definitely got more coptive as we've gone on, Berney, That's what I felt very grateful for having, like, especially my older two having each other. I think it must be really hard actually to have one kid unless you have some good neighbors that you can hang out with them. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm curious what you think you've learned about productivity. I mean we've had some email conversations before this about you know, managing schedules and productivity and all that. I mean, what what do you think you've learned about yourself and how you work and how you can work during this whole experience. Yeah, I think I think you go through phases, like certainly now, I was thinking about this today and thinking that, you know, I think at the beginning, we thought it was just going to happen maybe for a few weeks, and as you've gone further on, you realize that you have to adapt differently. And I think I've learned that a lot of the kind of habits that I knew that I have a kind of been reinforced in a way. So the planning. I love planning, but sometimes I plan in a very optimistic way, so I'm very guilty of the sort of you know, I must squeeze in one more thing. And certainly, what I've noticed about being at home during this period is with you not having the transitions and things like a commute or anything like that that you know, actually those factoring in a bit of a buffer to just convert what you're doing in work into the homeless has been really really important. So again, like you know, the sort of wrapping up rituals at the end of the day, which I just sort of usually dash out of my office and dash down the road to catch a train. I've been really making sure that I kind of stop meetings a bit earlier and just have that thinking time to plan, because I don't want to wake up the next morning and go what am I supposed to be doing? I've got, you know, an hour and a half off and I can't you know, and then end up going through email and that kind of thing. So I certainly think that that's been something that's really reinforced is the importance of kind of planning, but also being flexible around that, thinking about being really focused on and very clear on what your priorities are. So I had to, you know, I had to write my ort least to priorities and sort of staple it onto the desk because I get drawn off into other things, but in the early stages, but also as part of that, making sure that your priorities include your own professional development and things that you want to do, because I think in this kind of emergency situation or really high pressure, it's really easy to just get really caught on the treadmill of all the tasks you've got to do, which are interested in engaging and important. But if you don't take a bit of time to read and think and you know, do some things that perhaps are look like they're optional but actually really important to your own professional development, then you just don't do the other things as well. So at first I felt really guilty about doing that, and now I'm like, no, it's really important. I've set aside time in the week to do that because this will pass, and which when you need to pick up those things again or I've kept them going and again things like relationships with colleagues and networking has been hugely beneficial in our approaches as well, which is something that I did before, but it's about translating that online. And I've also learned, I think how I work kind of. I realized that I talk through a lot of things in the office with people, and I couldn't work out while my calendar was so busy when we moved into this remote work, and it's really because I'm trying to recreate the same meetings and have those kind of corridor conversations, you know, on zoom or on teams or something like that. So again then those are the things that those relationships building are the things that also are really important to getting the job done and getting things accepted. So some of the things that we're doing across the university, and it's really important that we get buy in from everybody to make them work. And by doing some kind of relationship building work as well in terms of getting stuff done, that's really been helpful as well. That's very important. I think that what a lot of people find is that when that time crunch happens, that you start doing those long term career investments, the building up of your own career capital, because it's always the things that as if they are important but not urgent. Now you don't ever have to reach out to a colleague to see how they're doing. You don't have to, you know, learn this new skill. But if you never do those things, then eventually you have a problem. You hit a wall in terms of your advance. And I mean one one other topic to cover here, because I think this plays into it. And certainly our podcast is aimed at professional women who have children, and a lot of people have had some trouble creating a equitable situation within their families. And so what we've seen happen is that you have let's say two academics, the woman takes on more of the childcare and the homeschooling. He now has more time for research because it's like, well, I'm not dealing with all these interruptions that you know the university, so hey, I can just do all these research projects. It's great, and I advance my career. Where she's lost all time for that, she's only got the time to do the things right in front of her. So I wonder you know what you've seen broadly in your university as well, if you've talked any about this with people and then obviously you managed to create a very equitable situation within your own home. Was that just the assumption, or if you've seen other people around you, you know, also stumble into that eventually. I'm just curious what you're seeing. Yeah, that's really interesting. Certainly there's been some some work coming out of universities or academy recently that, Yeah, the publishing the rates of submission to journals hire for men, and around not just childcare but also dealing with some of the past oral issues. You've got clearly like a lot of students that are struggling, and that there is a view that perhaps it's more of the female academics that are picking that up rather than the male academics as well, which is just exacerbating the situation. I think I was really determined at the beginning of this that, you know, that I had to be able to work. There was no way that, you know, and we had to be very very clear about it. And my partner and I, you know, have always kind of co parented anyway in that respect, and although I do think at different times in our lives depending on how many children we've had and where they are. Some of the shift has been more towards me than but certainly recently I've been like, you know, know this is balanced, but you have to let go of some of the things. And I think sometimes I think I take things on and I've noticed this with colleagues as well, when you don't have to, just because you just kind of gone, oh, I'll order them shoes and I'll do this, and I'll do that and everything, and you realize you're carrying this huge mental load. So that has meant walking past paths and stuff in the house and things like that and just completely ignoring it. I mean, I was talking to We've got a parenting channel in our team site, and I was asking I was saying I was coming and doing this podcast and asking colleagues what they thought, and all of them were saying that they had they tried to put in that real planning side of things, and partly it depended on their partner's jobs. You know, who had more flexibility, who didn't, whether they you know, were able to look after children. And I think it does, in some respects exacerbate any kind of differentials that you've had before. You know, so if you're seen as a primary parent, you know, they still come to you, and that does still happen. Sometimes there are other parenting units available in the house, you know, you can go and see that are the bear and down there with these lego instructions. So you know, I think it's being very clear at the beginning, but it does. You know. I have seen it with colleagues as well, where they are really struggling and really trying to you know, fit things in. But we've also kind of tried to be very open in particularly my team and other parts of the university about you know that a lot of us are looking after children, you know, men and women, and that Joe's children will pop up at various times and that's okay. You know that will happen, and you know you try you try not to, but you know, you've got to make sure that your children's well being is there. But I think if it always falls to you, and that you're always seems one, then that is a problem and it's quite difficult thing to address one sometimes as well. Very true. All right, well, Susanna. We always end our interview with a love of the week, so something that is exciting for us I know you're a listener, so you know we do this, but we can go first to give you a minute or two to think. So, Sarah, you got yours, you know what I need to look back? Why don't you do yours? Well, I looked back at my note like no, no, wait on it. I free wrote free ride on Sarah here inevitably because she, uh, she is coming up with it. I couldn't print my Normally I always print my notes, but somehow these ones didn't get printed. And that is because in part I was having some power out of issues. So I said, my love of my week was the fact that when you have no Wi Fi you can link your cell phones data to your computer and still get work done. It's kind of we were all coming up with various hacks for our internet. We we actually got a new network system here a week or two ago that is just like turbo charged all over the place. So the the spots of the house that had limited Wi Fi now have it perfectly because there are these things plugged in the wall all over the place. I mean, you know, we've got four kids on Zoom at the same time, like plus then my my husband might be on a video chat too, and then you know there might be a movie streaming that like two doing it separately. So that's good. We get this system. I'm glad we you know, took this opportunity to upgrade our homes data system Susanna, how about you. I think mine has to be Lego, so I love Lego anyway. Lego is great, and I'm a Lego serious play facilitator as well, which is a whole other conversation. But the kids this week have just got massively into the Lego and just been off. It's kept them amused for hours. It's kept me a muse for hours. They've gone through about all through the old kids, so keeping all those instruction books has been worth it, and they've well, you know, all these amazing things. In fact, my partner even then built a Lego table to spread the Lego out on because because he was like, there's not enough room. It's all over the place. So yeah, that's definitely been our our love of the week, and it's really encouraged that independent play, which has been great. They could be fun to do together. I have to know, something, are your kids like organized, like like okay in our house, like all the Legos are already one jumble and yeah, we may have a booklets, but you wouldn't be able to find like specific So did you keep your kids? Did you manage to schools in separate and if so, how do you do that? Well? No, so I don't have you know, I know some people keep them in the boxes and everything, but I did do a few years ago. I color coded it. So we've got these units with the drawers in from Mika and I put like different colors in and you know, Mike laughed and said that'll last about five minutes, but actually it didn't. So they do so they're not you know, it does still mean a lot of sorting through pieces, but they are color coded, which has been fab so there's a lot of rainbows get built as well because that they can. They're like, I'm taking one from each dure that is that is amazing. I you are the lego guardess here. So thank you, Suzanna, thank you so much for joining us here and best of both worlds. Thank you. It's been great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, that was great. And now we have a question from a listener who says that she just had her third maybe so her kids are five three in infant and she returned to work for I'm Home. She experiences before, she says, where she does not seem to have time to work out during the day. She would typically do a thirty minute online workout or run outside. She says, I am full of loopholes and excuses that seem valid to me, like I'm too full of milk in the morning, so it's uncomfortable. I don't want to pump at five am. Lunch break is lunch, evening, dinner, bedtime rush. I should spend time with my three kids in the evening. She needs downtime. So what are your thoughts, any creative ideas for when I can exercise well? First, I think she needs to do some self exploration and figure out how important is exercise to her right now and what would be the minimum effective dose that would kind of need her criteria for feeling like she's doing it enough, Like I don't think she needs to do it just to check off a box. If she really feels like she's missing it from her life or she just otherwise doesn't have a good sense of well being and wants to bring it in, and that's fine, But I just I also feel like, you know, sometimes you need a month or two of like not doing that much, and that's okay. I've done that towards the end of some pregnancies. I've been slower to get back into it on certain pregnancies compared to others. I think Cameron's Cameron's in particular, I kind of took it easy for a while. So like, first, just make sure you answer the why, because there's no like hard and fast rule that says, you know, after giving birth you need to exercise for thirty minutes a day every single day once your baby hits the six week mark or something like. There's no nobody's checking you up on that. So remember that you can take your time. If you're in that phase where you're waking up and your boobs are full of milk and you don't want to pump at five am, and I don't blame you one bit, I don't know. At the same time, if you're like I am dying to exercise, which I have felt on other pregnancies, then you're right. You got to be creative. I mean, could you do like a two minute pump to just take the edge off at five am so that it's not enough to impede that morning feeding and doesn't take very long, but it's enough to make it so that you're not like dying during your workout. I mentioned on a very recent episode, taking walks, you know, during zoom calls. So even though that's not like a hard workout, that could be something. So I don't know if there's a way to bring it in and if you have childcare, which I hope that you do because otherwise working from home with all those kids unless your partner is also unless you have some sort of patchwork schedule, but hopefully you have some coverage for your kids, and then I would say, like, do a little break built into the workday, even if it's like twenty minutes, or even like the seven minute workout, you know, like I'm sure you could. Anybody can find seven minutes, even if it's like during the lunch hour. I don't know, those are my thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I'm struggling with the same thing as we talked about in the intro to last week episode, figuring out when with around feedings and with being warmer during the day and work being very busy and the evenings being also filled with kids stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's a tough season for it. I think, you know, limiting your expectations that if you're not going to get through a full thirty minute online workout, that doesn't matter. You can do ten. Just do something, do some strength training as we've learned, you know, walk around outside a little bit, have the older kids chase you in the backyard. I mean, that's it's still something. And then you can feel like you're spending some time with them too. And you know, if you can sort of think of some of it as a bit of a mental health break too. You just give the baby to your partner or your sitter or whatever for a little bit and just go outside and walk for fifteen twenty minutes and clear your head. Again, it's something and you probably need that something given that you have, you know, three children at home and working from home and all that as well. All right, well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking with Susanna Quincy about working from home without childcare as her responsibility is ramped up. So we will be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram and you 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