Sleepless in Swansea

I am so lucky to have a baby and toddler who both sleep through the night. There is no better feeling in life than to wake up from seven hours of unbroken sleep.

But it’s not always been like this. When toddler was a baby she used to wake up several times a night (between 0-7 months) and after several weeks of this I felt like death warmed up. When I was sleep deprived I felt dizzy from tiredness, which made the difficult parts of the day seem impossible. Reading/replying to emails was the only academic-type job I could do as any task requiring concentration was a waste of time. It helped to go out for a walk and get some fresh air. I can empathise with InBabyAttachMode and I too turned to sleep training guides which offered some help.

In the (mother)hood

Love this! It is sooo me at the moment...

Let go and call it a day: Review of 2012

As 2012 draws to a close, I am left wearily pondering all the pressing tasks I needed to finish this year.

In April I went on maternity leave and I left with a list of a few academic tasks I needed to do during my time ‘off’. Not a long list – just a few tasks that would keep my brain from disintegrating under the weight of nappies and vomit – but suffice it to say that most of these jobs have not been completed. Like a complete nubey mum, I utterly underestimated the exhaustion and lack of free time (and space) that comes with having two children under 2.

Other mamas will understand my lack of irony when I admit that my greatest academic achievement this year has been managing to grab an hour or two away to do some reading. And with only two weeks left, and a toddler who is off nursery with conjunctivitis, I am ready to let go and call it a day for this year.

It’s nearly Christmas! Let’s celebrate!

But then I stumble across Tanya Golash-Boza’s account of her prolific writing of 2012 and my festive indulgences leave a bad taste. Not to diminish the fact that I have given birth to a baby boy, but have I really been so unproductive this year?

I’ll fast-forward over the disappointments to remember the good things (it is Christmas after all): one book chapter published, two journal articles in press and another in an embryonic stage. But nothing tops this: I managed to present at the BSA conference, whilst being 200 miles from home and 8 ½ months pregnant. I am sure that the rest of the delegates were as relieved as I was that baby didn’t arrive early.

Merry Christmas everyone! Here’s to rest, relaxation and family cuddles

Bun in the oven

I can’t believe the Great British Bake Off has finished for another year! We’ve been glued to the screen each week and after each episode I’m inspired to try out a recipe. I have zero skill but I somehow imagine that by simply tuning in to the programme I will manage to emulate these yummy creations. But my good intentions have unsurprisingly not yet reached fruition…

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I looked forward to having some time on my maternity leave to bake cakes and learn new recipes.

Fat chance!

With sleep deprivation and a constantly crying baby I had barely enough time to get dressed and leave the house. For a few special occasions I have managed to make bustrengo, a cake I’ve made hundreds of times before. Jamie Oliver’s original recipe takes too long these days, though, so I save time by:

• Buying tins of chopped apple rather than chopping these from fresh apples myself
• Leaving out the lemon and orange zest
• Baking in bulk (rather than making one cake, I now make about three and freeze them)
• Making the recipe in several stages so that when my toddler gets bored I can come back to complete the cake later

Here is something I managed to russle up for a birthday party (please excuse the mangy sofa):

My toddler is getting to an age now where she becoming interested in baking and she often helps to make cakes at nursery. But at home she can’t reach the worktop in the kitchen. There is a clever (but expensive) gadget that could help with this and I am tempted to splash out if it means I am able to get some things done in the kitchen more easily and introduce her to the joys (!) of cooking with mama.

It's International Babywearing Week. Here's an interesting post written by Victoria Ward from Babywearing UK.

Sling your hook

The BBC 2 Babies in the Office series showed parents working on computers or on the telephone whilst looking after their children and toddlers. But I'm surprised no one used a sling on this programme. Most of the parents held their babies in their arms or balanced them on their laps.

For babies aged 0-6 months, baby carriers or slings would be useful for working on the computer. They would allow the parent some hands-free time whilst making sure the baby is secure and getting cuddles at the same time.

Whilst working with my son, I’ve used three types of carriers to help me get some work done: 

1. Ring slings were convenient when my son was newborn, because they allow quick up and downs. I would put him in the ring sling when he was awake to do some email checking or reading online, and when he fell asleep I would put him back in the moses basket. I couldn’t really do typing because ring slings only really allow freedom of one arm (and typing one-handed is much too slow!)

2. I used a stretchy wrap (like jersey material) on my front when my son was newborn, but in this position it’s quite difficult to have mobility of your arms for jobs in front of you, as the baby is in the way! 

3. Now that babba is 4 months, I’m using a woven wrap to carry him high on my back. Newborns can also be carried in this position but when he was younger I was too afraid to put him on my back if there was no one to help.

Now this is my favourite position for him because I have both hands free and can do all the jobs I need to do on the computer in the house (and I can even chase after my toddler and pick her up when she is having a melt down!) whilst he is cwtched up and able to see the world around him.

Babies in Office

I really enjoyed watching the BBC 2 Babies in the Office series.

As a mama of a 4 month old and a toddler I really don’t think this idea would work for me (or my colleagues!). Listening to the parents who featured on the documentary, those with toddlers spent the entire time chasing them and dealing with meltdowns.

It was those with very young babies who were most successful at getting work completed, probably because they could work whilst the baby napped for long periods of time. But I think for it to work with my newborn, I’d have to bring so much stuff with me to the office (pram, slings, bouncer, mat, toys etc) that it would be easier to just work from home.

Biking with a bump

Like many fixed term researchers and permanent university staff members, I live far away from my work place. I don’t have a car so I take the train and bus. My commute from home to my office in Bristol is a seven hour round trip. On the days when I don’t work from home, I tend to stay in Bristol for a few nights at a time to limit the travelling and cost.

After lots of googling and forum reading, I decided to buy a bike! I hoped a bike would:

•    save time commuting to/from the train station

•    save money. Each week I was spending about £15 on bus fares alone and over the course of a year that’s at least £500

 •    help me to lose the baby weight and stay active

I decided to get a folding bike as this would fit easily on the train. I took the plunge and bought a bargain Dahon bike on ebay for £150. I would have preferred a wonderful Brompton but I couldn’t justify spending all that money when I didn’t know how I would take to cycling.

I also bought a helmet, D lock and chain lock and as I’d be riding late at night I also bought bike lights and a reflective vest.

Like Melissa Terras I would have preferred a more sophisticated ‘look’ at work but faced with an hour of cycling in strong winds and heavy rain I opted for an Overboard waterproof bag to keep my laptop, dictaphone and papers dry. And as a research assistant doing interviews with students, there is much less pressure on me to look smart as compared to tenured teaching staff.

The advantages were that cycling whilst pregnant was helping me to keep fit and prepare for the birth and cycling along the promenade was much less monotonous than a bus ride in heavy traffic.

However, after only a few weeks, things were becoming difficult...  

1.    I was three months pregnant and was too exhausted for an 8 mile bike ride after a tiring day’s work. Though there are many advantages of riding a bike whilst pregnant I was new to cycling and I found it harder to keep my balance, especially whilst carrying a heavy bag. I also learned the hard way that commuting in all weathers and late at night is also different from cycling for pleasure.

2.    The Dahon is marketed as lightweight and I imagined it would be easy to fold and carry around the train station. However, the bike is very heavy (it's about the weight of a toddler) and not so easy to fold.

3.    Carrying a bike up and down steps is not fun and certainly not quick and I struggled to make the train connection in time

4.    The bike is impossible for hills (Bristol is not flat!) and isn’t particularly fast on flat roads either (though that could have been my lack of fitness!). Because I was such a slow cycler, the bike was adding to my commuting time rather than making my journey quicker

5.    Due to my lack of experience riding a bike (I am very wobbly at the best of times) I was too afraid to cycle on busy roads so ended up pushing the bike alongside as I walked on the pavement

So despite my best intentions the bike is now gathering cobwebs under the stairs. I might sell it on ebay to buy a more powerful bike to use with a trailer for the children. I have given up wanting to cycle to work – I would rather just be lazy and just get the bus.

Housework short cuts

Inspired by the amazing accomplishments of my dear friend Sara Lloyd, who has just written up her PhD alongside being a full-time mama, I am following some advice she gave me: get all the housework and errands done during the day.

So, if this goes according to plan I will then be able to focus my energies on writing for an hour or two when the children are in bed, rather than catching up on housework (and I might also be able to get to bed at a decent hour). The author J.K. Rowling had a similar strategy, though apparently hers involved not doing any housework at all.

 

I would love to cull all the housework chores. But there are time-consuming things that just need to be done (laundry, washing up, food shopping). I have already sacked off all the non-essential jobs (ironing, dusting, etc) and I have saved myself heaps of time:

1.      I order a weekly Asda home delivery 

2.      We buy easy-to-cook food (ready-chopped onions/tins of chopped fruit etc), have lots of quick meals (eg biscuits and cheese; sandwiches) and cook in bulk so that meals can be heated in the microwave the next day. We make up ready-made bags of frozen veg (using microwave steam bags) which is much easier and healthier than boiling. 

3.      I give the house a good spring clean once/twice a year (!) rather than every week

4.      We have tons of washing. It comes from having two kiddoes in cloth nappies. Each night I put the nappies on a long wash cycle so that the washing machine is free during the day for shorter cycles of washing

5.      We have a tumble dryer which I use for clothes, sheets and towels. I have four (!) airers for the cloth nappies. I would like to stop using the dryer altogether but I’m not sure where/how I’d dry the mountain of clothes
 

sun in September!

The downside to concentrating all my time on finishing housework during the day, of course, is that I suffer from guilty mummy syndrome.

When I’m focussing my energies on cooking or laundry, there is no time to properly play with toddler or spend quality time bonding with squish. After the housework and all the other jobs of the day (15x nappy changes; 8x milk feeds; 4x changes of clothes; 3x meals; 2x baths; 1x park run and lots of cuddles), there isn’t much time for sitting down and concentrating on playing.

A room of ones own?

The advice given to PhD students is to have a dedicated place to write each day.

Before the babies arrived I used to write on my laptop in the dining room. I enjoyed working at a clean desk with all my papers in order. It was a quiet space with no interruptions.  

Now that I have two babies, working this way is impossible. There is now very little space in the house - a few weeks ago I gave birth to squish in the dining room - and now this room is used as a storage room for the birth pool (which I should get round to selling on ebay!), the buggy, spare toys and three airers for drying the reusable nappies. It is no longer my writing haven… 

Having a dedicated work space would be great but the practicalities of snatching time to write with two small children means that I write in short bursts of half an hour, wherever I may be in the house. Like hooeycritic, most of my writing happens late at night when the house is quiet. When I’m feeding squish, I read or type one-handed with the laptop perched on my lap.