Ah, thinking back to our first days in Costa Rica….Reed sleeping peacefully by my side as I attended meetings, networked, spent time in the GIS lab, and enjoyed the precious moments of having a sweet little baby cuddled up in my lap. Both Casey and I continued to enjoy fairly regular work schedules, and we started feeling like we really had this parenting thing down.
Fast forward a few months, our little guy has become quite the busy little baby. His current quest is to escape our cobbled together “safe area” onto the hard tile floors using a mixture of crawling, rolling, and slithering along the ground. He is also getting particularly good at snatching out of our hands whatever mobile device we are trying to sneak a few minutes of work in on. Of course this is on top of the fact that teething pain is now getting him up several times throughout the night and he has decided that he only wants to sleep in between us, in our small Costa Rican sized bed. Between the lack of sleep and the challenges of corralling our newly mobile monkey-man, its safe to say that we’ve had to make some adjustments.
Something that I’ve struggled with is combatting the notion that time spent making silly baby noises and chasing Reed around making sure the little guy doesn’t crack his head open on our tile floors is “unproductive”. Sometimes I catch myself trying to figure out a way to be “productive” while also being in mommy mode. However, these efforts usually end with Reed crinkling up whatever paper I’m trying to read or slobbering on whatever screen I’m looking at. It’s been hard at times, but I’m trying to remember that raising a child is important, productive work too, even if I’m not checking things quickly off my short-term to-do list.
One of the advantages of being a grad student is having a super flexible schedule, so I feel lucky that I can take this time when I need to. Reed has also been coming along for some of my interviews and still enjoys charming new people. Although the recordings of my interviews are starting to fill up with baby chatter and giggles in the background 🙂
After a few weeks of building stress about our inability to get as much work done as we needed too, we came to the conclusion that we needed help! Luckily, we live next to a really great family and our neighbor Cristina has graciously agreed to spend a few hours with Reed every day during the week. It is amazing how much my “productivity” has improved- I never thought I could get so much done in a few hours 🙂 Reed is always happy to go spend some time next door with his Tico family and I think it will help him on his journey in becoming a bilingual baby!
It’s been really great to live in a place where family, friends, and neighbors really come together to help raise children. We are already starting to think about how we will handle childcare while continuing to work/ write a dissertation when we return to the U.S. Do other grad students/ academics (or really any women in the workforce) have advice on how to achieve this balance?
