Question: I’m so impressed that despite having a baby and being a full-time mom, you’ve still managed your business so well. Do write more about how you set up your day to make it all work. I hope to learn and to apply some of this to my life.
Thanks! I should mention right away that while I don’t have a nanny, I have a very supportive and helpful husband who takes equal responsibility in our household, does much of the cooking, looks after Jude over the weekend, etc. I know that a lot of women don’t get this support from their husbands and I’m very very lucky that I do.
So my first bit of advice– marry well!
Also, as far as my husband and I are concerned, I am a working mother. Therefore, it’s a necessity for me to put in a certain number of hours each day or week, which I do. I’m just like any other woman who has to go to work, except that I’m again extremely lucky in that I’m able to do this from home, so that I can actually watch over my son while I work.
That’s another thing– I’m one of those mothers who while very hands-on in certain areas, am pretty chilled out and relaxed when it comes to keeping the apartment or the child spotless. A little dust and dirt is good for them.
I don’t freak out each time a bottle of milk is spilled on the carpet or the mashed peas end up on my walls. They’ll get cleaned up sooner or later, probably five minutes before we have house guests. I don’t fret about these things. Instead, I really encourage independent play, even if I know it’s going to be messy, and we are reaching that point now where I can leave Jude alone with a book or a favorite toy and know that he’ll be able to entertain himself from half an hour to an hour easily.
So, with all those caveats out the way, here’s what my schedule typically looks like:
I’m woken up anywhere between 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. by my son, depending on how well he slept the night before and my husband feeds and changes him and then he lies between my husband and I, making noises and lately, climbing on top of us and just playing. I try to get him to sleep for about an hour again until 9 a.m., which is when my husband leaves for work and I get showered, dressed, etc.
At 11-ish, I put Jude down for a nap and again, depending on how many times I had to get up through the night, I either take a nap with him or get an hour of work done. At noon, my son wakes up and I give him a bath, make breakfast, play with him, and try to stop him from french kissing the puppy.
Around 2pm, it’s nap time again and I get in another hour or so of work.
When he wakes up, we sit outside, the dog, the cat, and the two of us, in the garden and I try to catch up on email, do some light reading, or if Jude is being particularly good, work. If not, I just spend this time with him, doing whatever he fancies. My husband comes home at 6 and we might go to the park, talk about our day, and just hang out with the kid, and then I put the child to bed at around 7.30, after which I’ll go for a run, have dinner, watch TV with my husband and things like that.
Around 11 p.m. is when I really get into focused work. This is my real work for the day in which I’ll tackle the writing and research and other things that need my concentration and full attention. I work from around 11 p.m. until 2 a.m. (though it’s increasingly 3 a.m. these days) and then I hit my bed, usually pretty exhausted.
So that’s my day in a nutshell, with little variation.
It’s not an ideal schedule by any means– for one, I need much more sleep– but for now, it works. I catch up on my rest over the weekend, which is when my husband takes over, so as long as no one’s ill or needing special attention, I’m able to get through the week in one piece.
I don’t think I’d actually recommend this schedule to anyone and I know that my family’s expecting me to burn out any day now. But the truth is, I’m very very self-motivated and for me, not only does this schedule work, it’s absolutely perfect. I get to spend as much time as I like with my son and I still manage to work between four to five solid hours a day. However, this intensity may or may not work for you, so take what you like from this and discard the rest.
Oh, and experiment. I think it took me quite a while to get to this schedule that I’m comfortable with without sacrificing time with my son and I’m sure that as he grows older and his demands change, my schedule will have to change with him.
Flexibility, as they say, is key.