baby | 23 weeks, time management, and thoughts on going back to work post-baby

Not much to report this week from a pregnancy standpoint, except that baby J had a case of the hiccps a few days ago and my formerly innie belly button is well on its way to being an outie. Oh the adventures of pregnancy. :) Btw, it's super convenient that my pregnancy week rolls over on Sunday (it's usually the only day we have a chance to take a picture anyway) because that means the likelihood of snagging a picture on a day I've actually washed my hair goes up drastically.

On a slightly more serious note, I thought I might share a few of the things on my mind lately.

Here's the deal with my job - I really honestly look forward to going to work in the morning. I never thought I would love working as a nanny this much, or at all really, but I do. I definitely didn't want to be a nanny when I first started looking for jobs here in Fort Wayne. I wanted a job that would fit with my past work experience and would be a stepping stone to a potential career. Instead God provided a job working as a nanny. Which has turned out to be a stepping stone to the "career" I really wanted all along: motherhood. I couldn't be more thankful. Like any job, working as a nanny has its benefits and downsides. The money is good and completely supports our little family while Isaac is in seminary (really, can we even ask for anything more?!) but it's probably not what I could make at a "real" job. I work 50 hours a week and leave the house around 6:45 am every morning (which was certainly an adjustment for me), but I get home at a good time every day and never have to work nights or weekends. I'm not building my resume the way most would accept, but I've learned more about flexibility, discipline, and balance in my 9 months as a nanny than I thought possible (and aren't those valuable skills at any job?). However, the greatest benefit of all is that I get to take my sweet baby girl to work with me once she's born. I've told Isaac that I feel like I get to experience the best of both worlds. I get to be a "stay at home mom" in the sense that I get to be with our daughter even if it's not actually in our home, and I get to be a "working mom" in the sense that I get to help provide for our family in this current situation to which God has called us. On a side note, I think that's the biggest thing people miss in the working mom vs. stay at home mom debate -- God doesn't call everyone to the exact same vocation. Thank goodness! Some he calls to give some of their time outside the home to a traditional job helping to provide for their families. Some he calls to other jobs outside the home, Sunday school teachers, school volunteers, VBS leaders, etc. Some he calls to serve full-time in the home -- not an easy job by any means. And to further complicate things (but in a good way) none of us are called to just one vocation. I'm called as a wife, mother, employee, daughter, sister, friend, etc. How silly that I might try to limit the work God has for me by only accepting certain "titles". Now, lest you think me completely unaware of the reality of life, I know it's going to be rough (Really rough? Super crazy rough? Guess we'll see in a couple months...) at first while we adjust to having a new baby and attempt to get all three of us out the door on time every morning. And while I have yet to experience the utter exhaustion myself, I've heard from plenty of moms about the trials of being up all night with a fussy baby. No one ever said it was going to be easy, but most people tell me it's totally worth it. :)

Ok, back to my main point: with Isaac's workload at the seminary and me working longer hours as a nanny, we have this ever growing recognition of the need for balance in our life. Balance between home and work, and once we are home balance between housework and rest. Pregnancy has made this all the clearer because as much as I sometimes hate to admit it, rest (not even sleep necessarily, just honest to goodness rest) is becoming an ever greater priority. Finding that balance between doing enough but not overdoing it is tough. Sometimes it means leaving the laundry unfinished and going to bed a little early but sometimes it means staying up anyway to pay the bills, finish the dishes, or make sure lunches are ready to go for the next day. I can't do anything to add more time to my day so instead I've been trying to be more efficient about the way I spend my time. Especially when there are lots of baby projects I want to work on too. :) I find that having and sticking to a plan helps the most when it comes to housework. Housework is one of those things where you can survive, if you have to, with very minimal effort but your quality of life is seriously reduced.

Since I know I'll have even less time for housework once the baby arrives, I've been trying to streamline the process and create new routines and habits right now that will hopefully help calm the chaos once I go back to work with the baby. I have a couple Martha Stewart printable cleaning lists that I love (you can read about them here), but they have one flaw. Although they tell me what chores need to be done, they don't tell me how to find the time to actually do them all. I recently found a really simple, straightforward cleaning list with each high-traffic room in your home assigned to a day of the week and a list of things to do to keep that room clean and maintained.

via

Now I have my what and my how. The way she organizes the list only assigns specific rooms to weekdays, but I'm not sure if it's entirely practical. I usually have to do some catch up on the weekends but the basic idea and organization is excellent. Also, since we don't have a "kids bathroom", instead I work on our office/spare room on Thursdays. My favorite part is how your work for each day is separated into a half hour of overall home maintenance and then a half hour of specific room cleaning/organizing. I've been doing my maintenance half hour in the morning before work and then my specified room when I get home because a half hour of chores after work seems so much more doable after a long day than a whole hour. Now, as she says in her post, following this list won't give you a perfect home. However, this whole idea of efficiency and using my time wisely isn't in the pursuit of perfection, it's in the pursuit of serving my family to the best of my ability with the time and resources God has blessed me with. For us, following this list gives us a livable, pleasant home. Actually, when I started using this list I didn't happen to mention to Isaac that I was doing anything different. After about a week he commented on how nice our home was looking and how I had been really on top of laundry lately (as opposed to my usual method of "crap, I really gotta put a load in.....tomorrow"). It was so encouraging that, even without him knowing I was doing anything specifically different, the effects of my efforts were apparent. Now that he knows about the plan, we've been tag teaming the pre-work half hour and getting twice as much done (or on some especially busy mornings, the same amount but in half the time). Score one for marital teamwork!

My sister-in-law passed along this cleaning schedule from the Time Warp Wife. In some ways I actually like this one more because it's a little more detailed and includes laundry. However, since it includes more duties it also requires more daily time, something I can't always do. I really like being able to mentally check off a day and know that I did everything on the list instead of thinking, "well at least I did most of it". However, I definitely think I'll be using this list as a reference sheet for days when I have more time to clean or want to put in a little extra effort like before company comes.