The Nap-Time Hustle

Something I did not fully appreciate for my first 28 years on earth was the luxury of free time.  Time that was truly free, whole days stretching out, malleable and unformed.  I could decide what I wanted to do with a day, and then, barring laziness or catastrophe, do it.  With a baby, time is a completely different beast.  Babies are demanding of time, but not of action.  In fact, babies seem to resent any action that does not directly relate to them.  (Perhaps we all do?  We just learn to live with it at some point?).  So, in a day full of baby minding, the nap is a very precious thing.  

I was thinking about this the other morning, when I was experiencing a violent cake-baking urge (it happens, from time to time).  E was due for a nap, and the moment she went down I RAN to the kitchen to begin mixing things up.  I had mulled over which recipe I would choose all morning, as I changed diapers and sang Baby Beluga for the seven-millionth time.  So I measured and stirred and poured with an urgency all out of proportion with the actual gravity of the task.  I stuck the batter in the oven, sat down, had a sip of coffee, and then heard E wake up. 


So that was one nap.  But I'm curious about how other people approach these glorious little windows of free time.  My mother-in-law (who raised 5 children) told me, a few weeks after E's birth, that she always tried to do all of her housework while the kids were awake, so that when they went down for naps she could take a few moments for herself, to read or drink a cup of tea.  I thought that was an excellent attitude, and promptly stopped doing any dishes during naps.  But then what?  Do you put your feet up and read People magazine?  Try to dash off twenty e-mails?  Do yoga?  Take your own nap? 

While it can all seem a bit hectic and stressful, I think the positive light to shine on this is an increased intentionality with time.  If you only have an hour to yourself, how do you really want to spend it?  What are your priorities?  While I was pregnant with E I felt like I was really ready to have a baby because I felt so sick of only having myself to think about.  Sure, the unfettered days were nice, and I now long for a day in which I could both run and go to the grocery store, but the new preciousness of time, the rush of the efficiently used hour, the huge smile greeting me when E does wake up...a worthy exchange. 

Curiosity

I remember one of my sister's friends describing some tenet of Buddhist philosophy that required  you to meet each apparent setback or bump in the road of life (even Lesotho-sized potholes) with a disciplined sense of curiosity.  When facing potential catastrophe, you were to sit back and muse, "I am so curious about how this will all turn out."  I have no idea if this is a legitimate element of Buddhism or not, but the idea has returned to me many times through the years as an ideal reaction to stressful changes.  Either that or massive numbers of chocolate chip cookies washed down with red wine, the whole concoction shaken up on the dance floor of Boatclub.  But alas, Boatclub is no longer with us and E's presence makes gallons of red wine a less viable option.

So yes, when I realized last week that it was either quit my job entirely or come back full time (an option neither desirable nor even advisable, given my paltry salary and the cost of childcare in DC), I took a deep breath and tried to be very CURIOUS about how this next stage in our life will unfold.  And lo, I am feeling very Zen about the whole thing.  The very next day, R was offered not one, but two, part-time positions--an immense relief.  And I feel enormous joy at the prospect of the days ahead with E.  There are little frissons of anxiety, too--what will we DO all day, will we never see R again, what about health insurance??--but what more can you do but go with what feels right and have some small confidence that it will turn out in the end?

Meanwhile, E is more delightful every day (though not, come to think of it, every night).  She goes through phases of determinedly practicing her rolling, then gives up the enterprise when she realizes that all it does is get her someplace she doesn't want to be.  She loves oatmeal, squash, and apples; adores bananas; and detests avocados and green beans.  She wriggles in excitement every time we open the dryer (why??).  She is, in my completely and utterly biased opinion, the cutest baby that ever rolled the earth.

She Doesn't Do It

Well, for the past 6 months (!) I've been consumed by a real-live illiterate peanut, so thinking that this blog might be expanded to include her in its nascent considerations.  Pre-baby, I was all about reading; post-baby, I am all about reading about babies. 

My sister-in-law recently loaned me a copy of I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson, a "chick-lit" book about Kate Reddy, a London-based hedge fund manager and mother of two.  The book was predictably (based on the hot pink cover) page-turnery, but it also still has me thinking, several weeks later.  This raises some questions about the fairness of the chick-lit designation, but we'll let that issue be hashed out elsewhere, for now.  Anyhow, Kate spins (and appears to have been spinning for some time) very close to out of control, trying to manage both what she perceives as fundamental motherly responsibilities and her demanding, testosterone-heavy, stimulating job. The titular question, asked many times throughout the book by various acquaintances and family members of Kate, is finally answered in the book's final chapter: How does she do it?  She doesn't.  She opts out.  She quits her job, sells her house, moves to the country. 

What does this mean?  What does it mean that even narratively, in a friendly fictional place, we can't figure out how to reconcile these things?  Granted, Kate's situation is extreme.  My current 30-hours per week job can't really compare with the demands of a hedge fund.  I work with other women, many who have children.  I work at a university, which would seem to be the height of flexibility and family-friendliness.  If I had read this book before I had Eleanor, I think I would have dismissed many of Kate's concerns as monsters of her own making--she chose that super-stressful career path, and I didn't, so why would I experience similar conflicts?  But STILL, the work place is much less friendly than I had naively assumed it would be.  The thing is, no one else wants to pick up your slack, whether you work in a coffee shop, law firm, or hedge fund.  And there is suddenly a much-heightened awareness of your availability--sure, everyone takes off for an occasional doctor's appointment or has a sick day, but when you are a new mother all of the sudden these things start to seem a bit symbolic.  Like, oh, so this is how things are going to be now.  The slippery-slope phenomenon.  The fact that you have likely just come off of a several month maternity leave serves to make you appear even more unreliable. 

So what is the answer?  How do we do it?  The fact is, most women with new babies don't want to work as much as they did pre-baby.  Time is precious, development is fast, and life has a whole new element of chaos that is grossly magnified when trying to coordinate job responsibilities with mothering responsibilities.  And let me go back a sentence: the not wanting to work as many hours in your former position has absolutely nothing, lest you labor under a very rosy picture of motherhood, to do with the amount of work you suddenly find yourself doing everyday.  (More on this in another post).  But yes, in my anecdotal experience of my neighborhood mom's group, nearly every woman changed her expectations and plans about how much she wanted to work outside of the home once the baby arrived.  This, of course, is not always possible, either from the perspective of the family or the employer.  But why does it come as such a surprise?  Especially to the mothers themselves?  Is the problem that we don't quite understand what motherhood entails, us highly-educated women who perhaps haven't touched a baby since our middle school babysitting days?  Or that the system hasn't really changed much to accommodate women in the workplace?  It's a beaten horse, but since I am just newly experiencing it, it boggles my mind that women worked so hard to get equal rights, and the result is a system that allows us to do exactly what men do, as long as we also do what women do and don't ask for exceptions to be made. 

Ah well.  If you have any solutions, let me know.  I'll close with a gratuitous baby picture, just so it's not all doom and gloom here. 

All is well.