A day in the life with a 10 month old
We did it - we have finally struck a balance!
My baby has been in daycare for 2 months now and within that time, she went from crawling to standing to walking with support and growing more teeth. It’s amazing how much she has developed in a relatively short time, but what I’m most grateful for is that we start daycare right when she was 8 months old and all of this was starting to happen.
On weekdays, I take her to daycare from 8:30am-2:30pm which allows me time to work from 9am-2pm. On days when I need to go to an onsite full day training, I use daycare from 8am-6pm. Most of my trainings happen within the scope of people’s work day (so no earlier than 9:30 and no later than 5:30) so I haven’t had any issues with getting to daycare to pick her up on time.
On days when I pick her up at 2:30, I take her to a facility where we can spend time together. Sometimes we go to the library, some days we go to an indoor playback, some days we do a picnic. I try to change it up each day and also be mindful of the weather. Since she is so active now, it’s hard to take her home and keep her occupied while I’m trying to do other things, so I find taking her out for a bit before we go home is best for both of us.
Around 4pm, we have a snack together (like at Starbucks) and then I pick up groceries and head home. While she’s crawling around the living room, I’ll prep dinner and then around 5:30 I feed her own dinner. We started bathing her in the evenings instead of in the mornings which has been a godsend for helping her sleep. I usually bathe her sometime around 6 or 6:30 (and take a shower myself), then give her a bottle around 7 and she falls asleep sometime between 7-7:30. I realized that I prefer to wait until she’s asleep before I have dinner since it’s a lot more relaxing for me without distractions. Usually my husband is home by then too and we can have some downtime together and watch a show - but we are typically fast asleep by 9pm.
Even though I’m not exactly on a full time work schedule, I enjoy my work life balance a lot more. I realized that before having my baby, I was saying yes to many requests that weren’t really in my interest, but because I felt that I needed to or that I should fill my time with busy work. With a baby and limited time, I am forced to be selective with what I say yes to, which has actually brought more joy in the engagements I have and also the quality time I spend with her.
For me, I find weekends to be the most rough. I don’t know how to keep her occupied all day long without making sure we have places to be outside the home, which for me means that there is no opportunity to really relax. Nowadays it’s hard to just have a weekend where I can relax on the sofa uninterrupted so for now it seems that we will fill our weekends with outings.
It’s all a process but at the moment all is good!