Mid week-day off

My current working arrangements mean that for my 'Work Life Balance' day, I get a day off every other Wednesday, which is great as it means that I have a bit more time off, especially now that Jack is here.

So for tomorrow, we’ll be in weekend mode, as opposed to school-day mode, and I thought it might be interesting to compare and contrast the two types of days that Claire and I appear to have generated since Jack has been born.

(The only thing common to both of these days is the night time feeding/changing nappies/screaming/crying/etc.)

School-day mode

First alarm goes off at 06:00 for Claire to wake up and get expressing milk for Jack later in the day.

Second alarm goes off at 06:30 for Jack and I to get up. If Jack is still asleep, he is carefully relocated to his sleeping quarters downstairs, namely the pram top resting on a rocking Moses-basket stand. If he is awake, then I can feed him, change his bum and try to get him settled down whilst Claire is making booby-juice.

I then rush off and have a shower and shave (if need be – i.e. only every other day!!) and get ready for work, hopefully before Claire is done so that I can swap roles and keep an eye on Jack whilst she has a quick shower. Ideally at this point, Jack is having a quick nap, making the mornings a little quieter, as well as quicker.

At about 07:15, I need to have left the house in order to start work at 08:00.

What happens from here on in is anyone’s guess as Claire and Jack are left to their own devices. I guess that there’s a bit of crying, pooing and a nappy change or twelve during the course of the day, as well as a little mum-baby-bonding-time.

I get home at around 17:30ish, traffic depending, and have time to annoy Jack if he’s awake. Today, incidentally, he’s not and so I have left him asleep in the lounge in the pram-top.

Aiming to have tea at around 18:00 seems to mean that we’re still cooking at 18:30-18:45 and eating at 19:00. Whoever feeds Jack at this point avoids doing the washing up. (Make your own mind up here...)

In the evenings, I try to spend a bit more time around Jack, unless he’s asleep, as:

1. I don’t get to see him during the day.
2. It gives Claire a bit of time to do her own stuff for a few hours.

Sometimes Jack comes and helps me on the computer, laying on my legs and normally playing the bum-trumpet a few times too. It's at this point that I seriously hope that his nappy holds and nothing leaks either side of his legs!

We have been trying to get us all ready and in to bed at around 22:00 – 23:00 each night, with the actual time depending on the time we’ve managed to feed him by really. If we feed him and then get him to sleep straight away, he seems to only wake once in the night mostly, which is good. In School-day mode, Claire gets up and sees to him, so in theory, I can stay asleep in bed. Well, seeing I am not a heavy sleeper and Claire has absolutely no concept of noise-control in the middle of the night, not a lot of sleep actually goes on!

Weekend mode

The last weekend or two, I have been waking up around 07:30 - 08:00, coincidentally the same time as Jack. Normally for me, 08:00 is an extreme lay-in, as I hate wasting the morning in bed sleeping when I can be up doing stuff. Jack and I sneak downstairs, leaving Claire in bed, fast asleep.

At this point, Jack has been waking up and within minutes wants food... well, a drink, namely milk. So, providing I can get it into him, he can have his booby-juice, as well as change of nappy too, depending on how recently anything happened in the night. He then seems to need another nap but this point, which is fine, as I can then get myself sorted for a drink and some toast or something. If he has managed to fall sound asleep after having his bottle, I tend to not bother waking him, as he tends to be in a bit of a grump and is more prone to screaming the house down in a mini-tantrum.

The day from here on seems to disappear in big chunks. The next thing I know its 11:00, Claire is awake and instantly pumping milk into bottles on an industrial scale and I’m still wandering around in my dressing gown. So, as soon as Jack gets a nap in, I can get washed and dressed.

Lunch appears to have been moved from 12:00 to around 14:00, as this is the time that we seem to eat after sorting Jack out. He sometimes sits in the high-chair with us in the kitchen whilst we eat, and sometimes one of us needs to eat one-handed whilst the other hand holds the baby. When I say ‘one of us’ I mean Claire, as she does it so well.

The afternoon drifts into the late evening, with anything that we’re trying to do being constantly interrupted by having to come running to waking and crying baby, or feeding, changing nappies or trying to rock him to sleep. That’s not meant to sound negative at all, it’s just strange how the meaning of the day has changed.

Evening comes along – the food setup is similar to the lunchtime efforts, namely a little later than normal, partly because of Jack, but probably due more to the fact that we have eaten later for lunch.

After food, we try to have a normal evening, watching television, checking emails, me writing these blogs, etc., and whilst we watch television, Jack is asleep in the pram-top in the lounge with us. As I said in an earlier post, it sort of has something to do with us wanting him to sleep through the noise, but also it is so that he’s with us in the same room, so if he cries, we can rock him back off to sleep (hopefully) – if not, we can pick him up and do stuff until he goes back off again.

Bed time is pretty much as before, us trying to get to bed before midnight. This sometimes works, but there’s not much of a rush during a Friday or Saturday night, as I haven’t got to go work then.

During the nights, this is my turn in getting up with Jack when he cries and wants feeding. This seems to take us about 30-40 minutes to do, to get about 100-110 millilitres of milk into him, give him a go at burping and then try to get him back to sleep quickly. This is all hopefully done before he throws up over everything..!

But hopefully, you can see that the days and nights are quite different from those from before Jack came along.

Whilst we were at the NCT Antenatal Classes in Ely, one of the 'games' there was to try to imagine a day in our lives before the baby and a day after the baby. Let's just say that the day that we had imagined the 'after' was going to be, is a little different from how we had planned it, but a lot more fun and happiness than we could have imagined with him.