Day in the Life: Working from Home

You.

That time again. Time for another day in the life. So often you all are asking for work from home parents. And so today that's what I'm bringing you. Tim and Emma are parents to a 12 week old baby girl. They both work full time. There's no options for daycare right now due to Covid. They live in New York in, in an apartment. So there's not a lot of room for big bulky baby equipment. And yet they're making it work and we get to hang with them today. Some fun facts about them. Emma is a children's author and so you'll see her, she's working on writing her book and they're also raising this little baby girl to be bilingual. So I hope you enjoy this day in the life.

Okay, I think she's awake. Yeah. Hi everyone. Sorry for the cold start. We use our baby as an alarm clock. So I didn't get a chance to introduce myself before. My name is Emma Otegi. I am a children's author, a New Yorker, most recently mom to a three month old. My husband and I are both working from home today. We alternate taking that first wake window. So today is a Tuesday, so he has been with her since 6:00'. Clock. It's now almost 7:30, so I'm gonna get ready for the day and go grab the baby. All right. So she has now been up for about 90 minutes. We had had really great luck with 90 minute wake windows in the newborn phase. Now we're trying to stretch her to about, you know, an hour and 40. An hour, 45 minutes because we found that our naps were getting shorter, not long. So she actually still sleeps in our room. But an idea we got from another day in the life is in order to give us more space in the apartment to work so that I can have room in our bedroom to work. We move her into her bedroom during the day and this is her bedroom and we're gonna get her ready for bed. I'm gonna close those blinds so that it gets nice and dark in here and show you our bedtime routine. Nap time routine. I'm sorry. So obviously the air conditioner is in the way of the blinds. So what we do is we try to run it a little higher when she's not sleeping and then we turn it off for naps so that's that. We can get it pretty dark in here. So I'm using this first nap time to eat, of course, and then also do a very quick 10 minute exercise video. I was so eager postpartum to get back into the things I used to like to do like jogging in the park, going to the gymstrong. And that's working out a lot better for me. So I can actually show this is the program. I just do it on my laptop. And again we're in a, you know, reasonable size apartment but not huge. So I'm actually gonna work out. Right on. Baby is up. She ate around 6:15, so it's time for her next bottle. I'm just gonna make a bottle quickly. So we find that we need to get about six feedings in per day for her to, for her to be to get enough food in milk in. So what we do is we usually do a feeding around, you know, 6, 6:30, another one around 9, 11:32, 4:37. Obviously it varies a little bit based on schedules and how hungry she is. Sometimes she really, you know, needs to eat after 2 hours and 20 minutes and sometimes it's more like 3 hours and 20, 15 minutes. So it we just sort of adjust based on her hunger cues and nap schedule. But it's around that. A little bit of tete or pacifier and upright time after feedings usually helps us with spit ups. So we're going to use this time to read. Little you little wonder, little wish, gentle thunder, you are mighty, you are small, you are our after all. Es Venus, es Venus la bella es un alma o es una estrella das tummy time strengthen up your cue. Yo y brazos let's take. She's asleep. So now it's work time. That's my husband. He's working at the living room table. And we are going to go to my office, which is my bedroom. So we are still in the land of short naps. I'm hoping they'll start to lengthen in the next month or two. But for now what works is moving to her into her own room for naps is really helping this week. And then also having a really clear plan for what I'm going to do during those short Sunday evenings. I've been doing this since before my daughter was born. I sit down and I plan out my week. I use an app called Todoist that I'll show you in a minute. It's an app where you can schedule tasks, you can schedule emails as tasks, which really helps me and plan out your weekend. Chiquitita linda yate de pertate yate misiello. Okay, okay. She took a nice full 6 ounces which is super exciting for me. We had a little bit of weight gain issues between months two and three. So it's always great when she takes a full feeding. And now I gave her. Her. Her pacifier. And we are going to read a little bit. This is our favorite awake time activity. Right, See? Right. Right. Hanging out with daddy. See grabbed the activity mat from the living room. We're gonna see if she wants to do that for a little while. And I also grabbed my laptop and my notebook because you never know, I might be able to type up my notes from before. She had her bottle at 1:45. We played a little while, and now my husband had a break, so he just took her for a short walk. And I'm gonna quickly clean up the lunch dishes to get ready for our next nap. Okay, so headphones are in. I have the link to join the call. And I gave the baby monitor to my husband and set up a fresh sheet in my notebook. And I'm ready to go. Call is done. I'm gonna go see how that baby's doing. So we are in a tiny bit of a pickle because her last NAP ended at 4:15. And based on when her last bottle was, which was also right around 4:15, we're shooting for a 7pm bedtime so that we can roll in the last feeding and all at once, but we can't. It's a long time to stretch her to get till seven. And it's. We can't really get in a full nap now. So I'm gonna put her in the stroller. I'm bringing my portable sound machine. She's, you know, I have a little blanket on her just below her, just below her legs so that her legs don't get the sun on them. And if she dozes a little bit in the stroller, that would be perfect. We're just gonna see what happens and make it work. We are back from our walk. We did not get that cat nap in, but I at least got some sun and got to get outside, and she seemed to enjoy it, so I think she's okay. We're just gonna keep her calm and start bedtime a little bit early. So the reason I love bedtime so much is because not only is it really peaceful, but my husband reads to the baby and I while I give her her last bottle of the day. And this is really important to me because back when I pumped for the first six weeks of her life and she never latched, unfortunately. But one thing I really loved about pumping was that I had so much time to read because, you know, seven times times a day I would have 20 minutes where I would be sitting there with a hands free pump and I would read and I got a lot of. And now I, you know, when I stopped pumping, I had more time for her, which was super important to me because I wasn't sitting there seven times a day for 20 minutes. But what I didn't have time for was reading. And that was super sad. So now I get at least my 20 minutes of reading in a day. When my husband reads aloud to us, we read books that we want to read at some point. I assume read books that make sense as a family, but for now we just read adult books and it's just a really lovely part of the day. Time is falafel. I'm not going to be working at night every night and I'm not going to work at night forever. So right now, today, for example, partially because I've been recording, but also just because of the day that it was feeling a little bit less energy. So I am gonna call it a night early. Other nights I might choose to work a little bit longer and other nights I don't work at all. And we are really hoping that once things improve where we live and hopefully our childcare situation gets sorted out, that will even decrease the need for working, you know, into that later part of the night even more so if you've stuck with me until now. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this little peek into our lives. Working from home right now with a three month old. And that's it. Have a good evening. Sam Sa.