Having Fun as a Working Parent. Ep 13

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of two and soon to be three and a practicing physician. 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. I'm not sure when you may be listening to this podcast, but it will be airing for the first time on Halloween on Halloween October thirty first, and so Halloween is one of those holidays that you don't necessarily have to deal with all that much until you are a parent, unless you want to dress up as like a sexy bumblebee to whatever fun parties you're going to as a young single person, as one does. I will not be a sexy bumblebe this year. Are you going to be one? Sarah? No, I've never been a sexy bumblebee. I just remember seeing that as like the stupidest costume ever. It's like everything has to be you know, sexy whatever. It's like a bumblebee. Seriously, I think I'm lame, but I have never had a particularly like sexy costume. My favorite costume that I ever was was I did dress up as Sarah Palin. That's awesome, and I was pretty convincing. I had like an ID and like I had her glasses and like I was really really proud of it. I think I was more like Tina fey as but yeah, but it was awesome. Well, so what are you guys doing this show? Do you have yours? I mean, we're recording this prior to the thirty first, do you guys have your costumes yet? Or we have them? We did, well, Cameron's has not come yet. So I tried to be like, let's all do something the same, you know, like in the same theme or something, but that the kids didn't want it. So I didn't push it because I really didn't care very much. And so Cameron is gonna be this show is called well it's a little Lizard basically a little lizard costume. Oh, PJ Max, there you go. And so he's gonna wear the lizard costume, and I'm gonna just wear this black shirt that has a little baby skeleton on the bottom so that I'm festive. I actually really don't like most Halloween costumes. Annabelle is going to be a giraffe with a tutu, and Josh keeps changing his mind, so yeah, we're set. What about you guys, it's such a little girl costume. See everything with the two too, right, Yeah, I think the two tube might have been the selling point, but yeah, that was what she picked. And I am all for, Like, look, if you enjoy doing DIY, then please do DIY. But that is I do not, So I'm like, order from a catalog makes me so happy, it's done, it comes in the mail. It's just very pleasurable and no stress, and I love it. I told the kids they have to choose by the end of the week so I can order ahead of time for Halloween and have those come because some of the catalogs, Yeah, it takes a little longer than like Amazon Prime. With the two days, Amazon can get kind of picked over and not have the best stuff. Although we did get this absolutely awesome inflatable dinosaur costume off Amazon last year that I mean the head was huge. It was like a sort of like an air mattress in that it was like constantly blowing, so it stayed big. He was seven then, but he it was the best costume I think at his parade at school. I was definitely are you guys able to like hand down and save costumes or do they always want their own? Although that one may have broken just because it was so elaborate, we'll see, but yeah, we can hand them down. So certainly if you wish to be some sort of princess, we have a wide but unfortunately I only have one girl and the others have not expressed a huge interest in being princesses, so that's not gonna have it. We have a couple of Star Wars related things, but you know, it's part of the fun is getting a new one, right like yeah, and doing what like you know, the kid has picked themselves, Like you know, I'm sure it's really fun to get to actually pick it out, whether you're gonna make it by hand, if you're that kind of family, or if you're gonna pick it off of a picture from a catalog or online. I have no ability to make a Halloween costume for me. I read these magazines where people like, look at this cute costume. I would never like look at a pillowcase and think I could make that out of that. I mean, it's just not not happening. If my kids want to do it themselves when they get older, like, if that's fun for them, I'm all for it, but I'm not doing it not very crafty. But you're so we have our show notes here, and I'm just laughing about Sarah's note. She says, I'm planning on handing out organic candy this year. Maybe you want to unpack that for us a little well. I so, again, this might be a hazard of my job, but I feel kind of hypocritical. I tend to be a little more stringent than you are on things like I definitely let my kids enjoy birthday cake if we're at a party, but I try to avoid like GMOs and food coloring and all that kind of stuff. So I decided that it would be hypocritical to hand out what I don't typically buy to stock our home, like, because that feels wrong, like, oh, I buy the good stuff for us, but I hand out the cheap crap. So I am going to order some and I need to do this soon. There are some candy that is still like sweet and delicious, but made with like better ingredients. So that is my plan for this year. We'll see how it goes. The only problem is we are in Halloween Central, and when I say that, I'm not kidding like people. It feels like people get busted into my neighborhood. Like there are hundreds and hundreds of kids that come through. I mean, people have joked about like selling parking spaces in our neighborhood. It's that crazy. It's actually overwhelming. So it could get very expensive if you're doing the organic candy. Yeah, I mean, because it's really this is this is not about like filling up two pumpkins and handing them out like I need to buy like probably twenty pounds of candy and we'll still probably run out. So we don't get any trick or treaders. I mean we don't. It's it's jealous. Partly it's that my road doesn't have sidewalks, and so we bring we go to our neighbors and then we go around the corner to a little subdivision that has it's easier to walk through without risking getting hit by a car, and and so that's where we go. And I assume that they get a fair amount of trick or treats precisely from that rason. There's also another street in our neighborhood that's like that that also gets hundreds of trigger treaders. I think it's just where your house is has a lot to do with it, So it doesn't really matter what we get. I mean, I'm going to buy a bag of candy at Costa. This is this happens every year. We buy a big bag of candy at Costco. Whatever they have, some mix they have, we put it out, nobody comes, so then we wind up with, you know, pounds of candy that so you better pick something you like. I know I'm gonna pick something I like because I'll be eating it and my kids will be eating it. So I've got to be something we actually enjoy. So I guess that's what we're what we're going to do. And I'm also all about the selling it back to the dentist thing, which I think is awesome that a lot of dentists office are doing that now, because to me, it's just like, oh, you know, I let them have some that like I think I last year, I said, you can keep. I'm a jerk, so whatever, don't judge. I let them keep three pieces each, and then I was like, and we're gonna sell the rest back and get a toy, just because I don't want them eating that every night. I can't say it's funny. What we do is, you know, they can have some that night, and then we wind up putting the bags up and then they can take out a few pieces each night for desserts or something, but they kind of start forgetting that it's there, and especially after the first few days, their favorite pieces are gone anyway. So within a week, like nobody's asking for the bag anymore, and we wind up dumping a lot of it anyway. So I mean, I won't judge you on your three. We have more than three pieces of candy, I will say, but it might have been five, I don't know, but it was like not a lot. But they don't wind up eating all of it, and so I mean, it is what it is. But it is what it is. And I just don't put up too much of a fight either. I feel like if they know they're getting something out of it, and they might forget about it, but I'm sort of not willing to risk it so or I might end up eating it and then, you know, have a ten pound baby. Well, I like my candies. Speaking of other fun things in life, so our episode this week is on having fun as a working parent and whether life can actually be fun. And this is based we had a question from a listener come in. This is anonymous, so I'm trying not to read many identifying details, but anyway, this woman is an engineer and a mother of a fifteen month old baby who we will call See for the purposes of this post or this episode. And she says she's been feeling constantly and extremely exhausted for the past you know time, since Sea has been born. She says the objective things don't seem to be the issue. Like she eats healthy, she exercises, she sleeps more than seven hours a night, even though it's often tempting to sleep less to work more. Sea is a very active but other than that happy and easygoing baby, her husband is great, Like he actively participates in childcare and home chores, and he took a solo paternity leave when she went back to work. So we're not talking, you know, a husband who's pulling his weight around the house. They have a cleaning service. She's, you know, works in high tech industry, so of course it's one of those offices where they serve you breakfast and lunch and all that great stuff. She only has a five minute commute, so like also pretty good stuff. Daycare is convenient, she says, So obviously all this subjective stuff. I feel rather lucky, but yet I feel so tired, running behind at home and at work. No serious performance issues yet, but it's really not like what I did before, and certainly much less enjoyable. And she's saying, I am not sure why this is so hard? What is going on here? And so her schedule that she shared with us is she wakes up at six every day to play with the baby, drops him off at daycare around seven to ten in the morning. She and her husband exercise at the gym at work. Sorry I meant to mention, they actually work like right by each other, possibly in the same place, I'm not clear from this. They shower there, eat breakfast, work, eat at lunch. They leave by four to ten to pick up their kid. After playing, eating and all that good stuff, doing bedtime, which is somewhere around seven thirty, then their second shift starts. Because they didn't work the full eight hours during the day, they try to stop working by nine or nine thirty so they can have some time to themselves. They're usually they work until ten it's time to clean up, pack for daycare, and go to bed. She says their weekends are filled with playing, eating, getting some chores done, going to church. They're kind of tiring because they have a fifteen month old baby. But her question is, you know, is there something I'm missing, some tip that can make this time easier. Why does she feel so overwhelmed? When does it get better? She says, I want a second child, but I can't imagine having one when I feel like I'm drowning with one easy baby. What are your thoughts on man, this reader, and my heart went out to her. I just I kind of I think a lot of what this is coming from is sort of the morning period that people don't really talk about morning and yes that many people go through. When you go from being an independent person with nobody who needs you all the time to someone who needs you all the time, even if they're in childcare, you have that, you know, constant pull of like I am no longer just in charge of myself. And that is such an incredibly hard adjustment, both from a mental standpoint and from a logistical standpoint, because even though her life actually objectively does sound like very nice and like well ordered, I'm sure it's very very different than it was before. Yeah. No, I think that's a big chunk. I mean people always ask us who like, oh, well, it's going from two to three kids hard, or three to four kids not compared to going from zero to one. I mean that's the real lifestyle adjustment, and all of a sudden, your life is a lot less fun. I mean, you can't just up and go to dinner if you want to without making arrangements. You can't just decide to go to the beach for the weekend without making arrangements with the kid. You know how you pack up a million stuff and all your bottles and toys and diapers, and you know you won't get to sleep in on weekends necessarily, and you can't have downtime on weekends without you know, deciding which one of you is with the baby and which one is not. And and so I think that's really hard, and we don't necessarily talk about how hard it is because we assume that, you know, parenthood is wonderful and like you're having a baby is a great thing, and everyone's there's there's this narrative. You know, you're always sharing those joyful moments, and there are joyful moments, and I'm sure that this person really really loves her fifteen month old, as I did too. But at the same time, what you're getting back from a fifteen month old, you know, it's beautiful, but it's not much. I mean, you know, I think it's this talk to you yeah, yeah, exactly, and they're still screaming when they want stuff they may not be I mean even if they are sleeping. Well, like it's you know, the half of getting them the bad and you know, dealing with that and uh yeah, I mean toddlers. I think, I honestly think that that age is like all of the hard work and you know, much less of the rewards than you get from even like a three and a half or five year old. I should I would love to like go back in my own blog because I don't think I suffered like this, but I think there was a little bit of an undercurrent of like Okay, like, I really worked hard for this, and I'm really excited for this, and I love my baby, But am I a great like toddler mom? And is this like truly fun? And you know, I feel more comfortable answering that question now because I feel like, you know, that wasn't necessarily well, it wasn't my favorite time. Like, I am much happier parenting older kids who I can converse with and teach and read to. And the funny thing is, now that I'm having another one, I'm not so dreading of that because it's like, well, I'm kind of already parenting and that one will just join into the mix. Versus back then, you were sort of expected to put all of your focus into a fifteen month old, which is mentally and physically really really draining. Yeah, it's definitely draining. And the other thing I would say is I this, this woman's life doesn't necessarily sound like it has that much fun in it. I mean, you know, even if it is one of those fun, high tech places where they have foosball tables or ball pits or whatever it is that they do, you know, it's she works, she does chores, she takes care of her baby and she flaps and that's about it, and that's not really actually all that fun, and you are, yes, that is. She's very practical and you can tell because by like fitting in the workout, like she's very regimented. And I'm not saying that it's spontaneity that she necessarily needs, because like for me, spontaneity is not necessarily fun. But it's more like that personal like just what's the word, like I don't know, like luxurious stuff that's just for her that she needs some treats, She needs some treats in her life. Yeah, And so I think that's the first thing we would suggest in this situation for any you know, new parents who are listening to this and are struggling with this new identity and new schedule and new life with actually as the kids are in that toddler stage, is how can you have your stuff still happen and your fun still happen. We have all these narratives about like, oh, well, mothers need to sacrifice themselves for their families, and it's not actually really all that true, Like you don't have to get rid of everything you want to do, and there's all kinds of things people say, well, moms can't do X. I mean, there's very few things that X actually is true. So you know, if you wanted to go to skydiving, go skydimmer. I mean, if you want to. But it does have to even stuff like that. If you want to join a book club with your friends, do that. If you want to go out to lunch some day with friends instead of you know, being efficient about getting it done at work, like go for it. You know, if you want to go out with your husband some night, get a babysitter. It's okay, even if your kid is in childcare all day, It's okay to have a babysitter afterwards, Like it will be all right, yes, because remember, you know, get rid of it. First of all, a fifteen month old is not going to remember if you spend one night a week or two nights a week out with your friends. They're gonna they're gonna absorb the love that you give them the rest of the time, especially in this person's schedule, Like just objectively one hundred and sixty eight hours, right, there is time for both here, Like this is a wonderful situation and that we have a willing husband, we have the ability to hire extra help if we need to getting in some dedicated time for things that are just pure joy, or even couples time too, which can it's they sound like they may be missing a little bit. I think is really doable, but there's there might be something stopping her. And I wonder if it's again that sort of cultural analogy narrative that like I'm not allowed. Yeah, are that because I'm the kind of mom who's, you know, putting my kid in daycare from eight to four point thirty every day. Therefore that's all the time I get. And I think part of it, you know that she is doing their workouts during the day and somebody that's just convenient that the place has a gem. So yes, that makes sense, but it doesn't have to be all about that efficiency. Like their time is vast, as you said, and there is space for other stuff too, And she's obviously very in a dutiful too. I mean thinking about the fun stuff she's doing, she's exercising at work, she's going to church. I mean you could do other stuff too, That is how I would, you know, think about weekends not just being chores, weekends being time for adults to have fun. Stuff as well, and if it's feasible now that the child is I'm okay. So two things about breastfeeding, because I'm assuming that this mom is she didn't mention breastfeeding, so I'm assuming that that's over for her. Number One, Hopefully it may be if she's recently shifted from breastfeeding, that she's having some hormonal shifts. Could because while you are breastfeeding a little under chronology lesson, your prolactance very high, and that suppresses the hormones in your brain that tell your ovaries to make estrogen, so you're sort of like, you know, you have less like sexual drive. You may sort of feel things less intensely like it is kind of an altered state. So maybe she's going through some flux there. The other thing is that if she's no longer tethered to the baby, based on that, it seems it's like a great time to maybe think about a week and away with her husband and whether you know, having no a lot of times I'll hear people say, well, I have no family around, so there's two options. You could fly the kid or drive the kid to where the family is so that you can leave them there and then travel from there, or you could hire a responsible and caring person to help care for your fifteen month old, who again may have some initial separation anxiety, but like is not going to remember it well. Fifteen months is a rough time for separation. And that's true, a clingy toddler thing, it's true. But it also I mean, maybe you can talk about this too, that the adjustment to parenthood, the altered mental state. I mean a lot of people do go through this, yes, in terms of like postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression. Now, fifteen months is a little late. Usually there's two peaks, like right after the baby and then I think within like six to twelve months, but it certainly could occur later, and it's incredibly common, and I think it's it really is partially situational and partially very bio logical and hormonal based. And this person also might benefit even though she seems very stable and very functional, there's no reason that adding in a therapist appointment or even you know, formal check ins with a friend that can sort of serve the same purpose, similar purpose, not the same purpose, might be really beneficial to her. I am really pro therapy. I have I only went once in my life, but there are definitely not one session but like one period. But there have been other times that I look back and I'm like, duh, Like when I was struggling with infertility, it was so clear in retrospect that that would have been very helpful for me, and I didn't do it. And I'm sure it's because of that stigma. You know, you're superwoman, You're supposed to do everything. But as I've gotten older and maybe less caring what other people think, I did seek out when I was going through a similar challenge and it was just a several sessions, but it made me feel a million times better. So I highly encourage others to get a professional voice involved if they think that that would help at all. And the other thing is that the toddler stage is short and it really does get better. I mean, yes, there are tough things with kids later on, with teenagers and all that, but in terms of the sheer exhausting physical nature of caring for children, that definitely improves within a few years. So she's really yeah, like you've experiencing that now, right, Like, think about your life now versus a year ago. What's different? Oh? No, it's definitely. I mean, well, some things are depressing in the sense that I read through an old journal entry from almost exactly a year ago. I'm like, when will these sleep issues with my toddler every Apparently not within the next year, So whoops on that one. But on the other hand, I can do things while he's in the house and I can not be watching him constantly, and I think that is huge. Like this weekend, I had some you know, my husband took the older two kids to go see a football game out of town, and so I had the two little kids for big chunks of the weekend, and I was able to actually run on the treadmill in our basement while they were watching a TV show. That is amazing a zone. It's a milestone, or that he can just you know, play in the basement by himself for a few minutes without it being a total disaster. Like I trust that he's not going to eat something at this point, because he's getting towards almost three years old, and you know, little things like that really change the nature of caring for a kid. Like you can catch your breath, you can read, because it's true with a fifteen month old, it's you literally you can't even go to the bathroom. I mean, like there's not really a second unless you have somebody else helping you at that moment, Like there's there's no downtime, and that the stairs, like if they work on the table, they'll stick it in their eye, Like I mean, there's nothing. I mean everything is turned into something dangerous. With a child that age, it's really a rough time. But the months from twelve to twenty four only last a year. Well, and she was mentioning about having possibly another child, and I think I love the way you put this in our notes that there is actually not gonna be a whole lot of difference between having a fifteen month old and then having another kid, because it's still all all consuming. Yeah, no, absolutely she might as well, I mean go ahead and have twins. And I'm just kidding, but like, yes once you. In fact, I did it this way the first time around, where like I was pregnant by the time my first was thirteen months, so I never actually had that like real freedom because she wasn't even two when he was born. But really two wasn't any harder than the one fifteen month old, because how can you do more than everything. You know, how can you be more engaged than one hundred percent? You can't. You're only one of you. And then you realize that you actually sort of can handle both at once, you know. I actually it's gonna be much more of a shock this time around, because I have had a break from those hard years. But in her particular case, I don't think she needs to fear adding another. I say, if she want the only thing I would say is if she feels like mentally she just needs a break and she wants the kid to age out. But I don't know. In some ways that might be. Yeah, I mean, there's no need to rush that, you know, especially if people want to have a family with two kids. You don't have to pack them all into two years. You can definitely unless you started at you know, age thirty eight, thirty nine or something, you can probably wait a year or two if you wanted to and have that break. I mean, there's upsides. We've talked in previous episodes of having them close together, there's upsides and having them farther apart. So that's really a person But I do feel like that. But the setup that this person has, like adding another to the mix isn't really going to change. No, it's not going to change anything that she's she's doing really so, and you said you you'd write a book. I'd certainly heard of this book in the pot What was it that? All All Joy, All Joy, and No Fun by Jennifer Senior. I think it came out maybe twenty fourteen or so's It talks a lot about this, and it does focus a lot on the early years of parenting. And you know how you see all these joyful Instagram Instagram pictures and but no one's having any fun and why is that? And how have things changed over the years. And I think that this reader and anybody else going through something similar could definitely benefit from reading this book, because her tone is not that that's how it should be, but that maybe a lot of that self imposed and the nature of parenting has changed a bit in the recent decades, and with every change, it's generally made things harder on the parents and not necessarily better for the kids. So I think kind of looking at that and looking at what our expectations are can be really broadening to maybe think about how things were done thirty years ago and people still turned out okay. Yeah, you know, not all moments will be great. And part of the issue of going from zero to one kids is these expectations that I don't know, people grow up with Hallmark cards around then that motherhood is going to be this fabulously wondrous, fulfilling, you know, angels and choir singing. Social meanings not helping because people do not really post pictures of like the bad moments. They post the highlight reel, and so not all aments are great. But on the other hand, not all moments should suck either. So if they do, then you know, that's something to definitely address because life can still have fun moments. I think there will be more fun moments when you don't have a fifteen month old baby around, but there certainly can be some. And so it's a question of figuring out what do I need to get through this with, you know, feeling like my identity, my life, my joy for living is intact. How can I make that happen and then know that in a couple of years things may look different. Yeah, so this podcast will be really interesting as we see my descent back into the descent, back into the carriers. I'll have to revisit this post in approximately seventeen months, so when I have a fifteen month Well, so again, since we're airing this on Halloween, going to our love of the week, you have a specific candy that is your love of the week. Yeah, and I'm not going to give us out on Halloween because it would bankrupt me. But I'm really obsessed with the maddic Cass brand and m ad c Asse of dark chocolate. It's from Madagascar. It is amazing. They have all kinds of different flavors, including like really dark ones and ones that have like sea salt and nibs in it. And I like it better than all of the other ones right now, so I recommend checking it out of you like really intense dark chocolate. And I also wanted to give a shout out to those little squares of the endangered species ones with the animals on it. You can get them like a you know, regular grocery store or whole foods, but they're actually really good. They're good ingredients and my kids like them too. So when do you are you one of those people has the single square of dark chocolate at night after dinner? When is your something? Well, especially now I have something every night I mean lately I've been more in the ice cream coick. But if I'm not eating ice cream, then yes, I'm usually eating like a piece of dark chocolate. And I've trained, not trained, but my kids have picked up on the habit, so they will ask for milk and peace like that's their dessert before bedtime. It's like piece of dark chocolate with milk, so they love it now. I remember every time I've been pregnant, I've been heavily into chocolate ice cream, chocolate, peanut butter ice cream. Oh, we have some of the under freezer right now. The intense craving ever, like driving out to wah Wah if we didn't have it. Well, my love of the week is these similarly dark chocolate covered frozen bananas. So and you can find there's these that like they're sold is like one hundred calorie packs. I think dull. I'm gonna say it's dull. I could be wrong, but they're sold as Dippers is the name of the brand, and they're in the freezer case at major supermarkets. But it's like four slices of frozen banana covered in dark chocolate in a package. And one of the things that I like about them is it's kind of this ritual because they actually have to thaw for five minutes for them to be the best experience. So you take out your package of these frozen bananas and then you have to sort of wait for a few minutes to for it to warm up a little, so it's not retipation, adds to the anticification, adds to the experience, and sometimes that's what you need with a dessert with a special food, is that it has this kind of bill in Ooh, I'm about to get this and ooh, I'm going to make a whole event out of it, which I actually appreciate for these. So do your kids like that too, because mine would. I'm going to look for it because they would love so I haven't told them about it because then they would eat mine out of the freezer. So I put them high up in the freezer and no one has figured it out yet. They go for easier stuff to find, like popsicles or something like that. So that's my stash. Yeah, so our Q and A this week, I'll read it because I think this was addressed to Sarah in particular, which gets us back to the whole infant thing, which I guess maybe we should have done the order of this differently. Well anyway, so our listener writes in Hi, Sarah, you look great, which she does by the way, if anyone's get her bump photos on her blog, she looks so cute. She says, I hope everything goes smoothly great for the rest of your pregnancy. I have a podcast topic request that might be relevant to you in a few months. I would love to know how you and Laura have dealt with the challenges that's in quote marks of infant sleep, especially when choosing to breastfeed. Do you split night wakings or do you have any other strategies for coping with loss to sleep? Did you eventually sleep train or did you do anything different with subsequent children? So I guess, Sarah, for you, what what did you learn with rounds one and two about this that you are going to implement with number three? Yeah? I mean I assume you know they were fairly similar, and so I don't plan on like making big changes. I feel like what we did worked. But okay, so number one, I didn't really split night wakings per se. I mean, I'm the one with the breasts and has them with the milk and the one with the maternity leave. So generally I would get up to feed, like you know, to every two to three hours. That's the kind of kids mine were. I tend to be very paranoid about milk supply, especially when I'm starting to get ready to get back to work, because pumping is hard for me. So I sort of can't ever rationalize sleeping through a feed if it's been a couple hours and my baby's hungry, because I know that biologically, hey guess what, that's how your body knows to make more milks. So I didn't have Josh wake up if it were feeding time. However, we did keep our babies in our room for about four or five months each time, and if they were to wake up like thirty minutes after a feed screaming, which didn't happen very often, I'm jinxing myself. But then that would be something that I'd be like, please help, because I know I'm gonna have to get up in two hours anyway, so now it's your turn. So that's the way I would say we split, But I did the bulk with them because I was fairly I'm really am jinxing myself but I was lucky and that usually like they would wake up, they'd make a little whimper, they would eat pretty quickly ten fifteen minutes, and then they would fall asleep in the end of the feed and then sleep for another two three hours. So it wasn't like there was like much to do other than feed. And again, I'm kind of the one that can do that, and for me, pumping's very slow and laborious, so I know some people would rather get up and pump and sort of share those duties, but no way, like I would take a baby on me any day rather than the pumps, So that made sense for me. Sleep training we did do it with my my older one, because she was like seven months old at the time and liked was clearly growing very very well, and it felt like it just felt right, like it was felt like, oh, she's trained us like to be waking up, not that she needed it, and so I think we did like two or three nights that were difficult and then she was okay. I kind of anticipated maybe having to do that with Cameron, my younger one, but he sort of did it on its own on his own around the same time, like he just sort of started sleeping, so that made it easier. And again, everything in those days, and I'm sure it will be the same way with this one is centered around like feeding them milk supply. It's like that ends up dictating so much of what happens that it's almost like the rest becomes like fades into the background. So that's why I never like hired outside help or did anything else, because it was like, how would that really be a help to me? What about you? Yeah, I mean, I it was a long time ago. With the first two, I'm having trouble even remember I was just young, stupid. I didn't know any at the time. I mean, certainly the first one. I mean I breast that all of them. It was a lot harder with the first one because I didn't know the whole you know, mechanics of milk supply, and so we started giving him a bottle pretty early to supplement, and so that was, you know, something that that could be split if I needed to, but for you know, something to consider. And I didn't have any idea how this worked. When you know, I had my first few kids, but then some of my friends had kids and had hired a baby nurse or a night nurse to help out, and so just to explain how this works for people if they are considering that, especially if your partner travels a lot for work, which is definitely what I was dealing with, and you know, then you can't split it with a partner because that person's not there. But what I did, especially for number four, since this is the most recent I can remember, this, we hired a night nurse to come a couple of nights a week, usually coinciding with when my husband would be gone. She would come like nine thirty ten, so I'd just fed the baby. If he was still awake, she could put him down, but I could go to sleep, and then she would feed him a pumped bottle at you know, the one thirty feeding or whenever that was. And then she would wake me up at like four, the four four thirty feeding, and I'd do that. And then what I would do is I would get up before the next feeding, like so I'd get up at six ish or something like that and pump so I had, you know, some supply come in and you know, overnight make more milk as it is, so i'd pump, so i'd have that bottle then for one thirty in the morning, pumped at six in the morning of the day, and so I'd have that milk ready to go then for the next night because then I could still feed maybe an hour or two hours after that when he was ready for his next feeding. And so that's how I sort of shifted it slightly, but was able to often sleep from nine thirty to four thirty, which is pretty awesome when you have an infant to be able to get that. Now, that didn't obviously happen every night. We didn't have her every night because it is an expense. Of course, you know, I could try to get naps during the day because we did have the childcare during the day. As with Sarah, just because you're on maternity leave doesn't mean you need to not have your childcare. Yeah, I think that's that mean. And maybe I would have done things differently with the night if I didn't have the help during the day. But we had our nanny the with cameraon the whole time that I was on maternity leave, So I mean that, yeah, and it's incredibly Yeah, I would there are there are places to economize in life, but I would I would not necessarily cut back on that during your maternity leave just because you want to be able to nap during the day. Also, like I mean, it's if you want the same caregiver, it's just not going to work. Like who wants to take a sabbatical like for two months then come back Like that's just not going to happen. It's a retistical thing too. Yeah. Yeah, so so then you can you know, use some of that time to n apple somebody else has the kid during the day, yes, yes, yes, yes yeah. I was also just going to put a shout out for going to bed really really early because that quality sleep and the usually that's your baby's longest stretch is probably I mean, maybe not, but I would have no shame in like going to bed at eight thirty when the baby goes to sleep for that long stretch, because then if the baby like miraculously sleeps till twelve thirty, like you've already gotten four hours, Like how bad can the rest of the night possibly be. I recognize that takes away from like time with spouse, but during those that you know, that early period when the baby's like six to twelve weeks old, I'm willing to let other things go in order to sleep. Otherwise I'll turn into a psycho basically, and I mean obviously once you go back to work. This has the issues of then you're tired and you have to perform at work during the day. But you know, definitely weekends, you know, asking your spouse or family to help with the other kids and the baby so you can sleep some on the weekends is key as well. Yes, definitely. All right, Well, hopefully that was helpful. We'll see how Sarah deals with us in a couple of months. Yeah, I'll have much more first and experience. I'll have to really a memory. It'll be backly all right. Well, this has been Best of Both Worlds episode thirteen, where we're talking on about the joys and fun of parenthood haha, when you have toddlers and how to have more fun in your life. But we'll be back next week, so please tune in then. 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.