Making time work for me is a major challenge

I’ve been spending a lot of my commuting time lately thinking about the amount of time I spend with my kids, and how best to balance that against my requirement to provide for them, through making a success of my career and my personal self.

I should start by saying that I’m an ambitious person – I don’t want to simply do a job for 8 hours a day and for that to be the end of it.  I have nothing against people for whom that situation works – truth be told I envy it a little for its simplicity – but for me, I need more.  I need a career, with continuing opportunities to learn, grow and do and be more.  I need to feel as though I have a purpose and some control over how what that purpose might be.  The issue here, is how far I go with this drive, and still maintain the involved and close relationships I want with my children.

I love my current job, I really do.  After a couple of years of a job I knew had a shelf life and limits on how far I could go within that organisation (but still offered some valuable experience, it wasn’t all bad), I was fortunate enough to be approached about a new role with a bigger and more successful organisation within the same field.  It was the perfect opportunity for me and I was excited to take it on.

What it has meant though, is that I have spent a lot more time focussed on work, and indeed at work.  A by-product of being someone who wants to be successful is that you don’t simply clock-on, work and clock-off.  My hours now are longer and my time spent at home has reduced.  Where I once was leaving the house at 8am and returning about 5.45pm, I now leave about 7.15am and get back about 6.30pm – 7pm.  I often then have anywhere from 1 – 3 hours work which I do after dinner, and can thankfully do by remote connection to the office.  I choose to do that work that way so I can be home to have a bit of a muck-around with Leo and tuck him into bed.  Gus is too young yet to have a regular routine, so I see him every night when he wakes for a feed and we have a cuddle on the couch most evenings also.

On top of working longer and harder – in a job I love and with a company I can see a strong future and opportunities with – I’m also trying to do a couple of uni subjects each semester, including this one.  I have 6 units to go before I finally finish the qualification I started 9 years ago, and have been doing part-time by correspondence for the last 5.  To do this effectively, I’ve been trying to spend one evening a week in the library after work, but what it means is that I don’t get to see my boys that night, and potentially not see them awake for 36 hours.  I don’t like that, and often I choose being at home over studying, to the detriment of my study success.

It’s fair to say that I am battling a little with what kind of father I can be – one who is home a lot more but enjoys work less, or one who enjoys his work and is successful, but spends less time at home than he’d like.  In the tradition of those who do try and eat the cake they have, I am going to try and chart a middle road – being home most nights, but working hard and studying hard in the time I am away from home.  It sounds easy, but it isn’t, and I haven’t yet made it work.

I need to get the career vs. home life balance working a bit better before the boys are at an age where they acknowledge and remember absence more than they do now.  It’s going to be tough, but I am determined to make it work.

I am a little sad today, as tomorrow I return to work. The past three weeks I’ve been at home, as my wife and I welcomed our son into the world and set about starting our life together as a family unit.

It’s been an amazing time, a lot of ups and some small downs, but – and here’s the thing – we have a baby boy now! He is here, he is ours to raise and love, and we are excited. Tired, but excited.

Our boy spent 5 days in hospital before coming home. Being a caesarean baby, 4 days is standard. We needed a fifth though… apparently most babies tend to lose up to 10% of their body weight after birth, it’s standard. Our boy though, lost a bit more than that; he was a little too underweight. When we were told this, my wife and I got a bit upset.

We felt like the first test of being parents was one we failed, that he was malnourished and it was our fault. The midwife assured us it was a common thing and not to be hard on ourselves, the wife especially.

I went off to get us both a coffee and headed to a quiet corner to have a bit of a cry. Was a bit of a release of emotion following the whole childbirth adventure and this just triggered it. Had a good cry, got us coffee and cake and went back to the room, giving my wife a big hug and kiss. We’d be fine, I knew, just had an extra night before home is all. It would also mean we’d need to use a bottle as a top-up for the lad but that was something we were OK with.

The next day was homecoming day! I stayed up most of the previous night and got the house nice and tidy for the big event. My wife is a bit of a ‘Captain Clean’ so even though the place looked great, I was worried I’d miss something…

I drove to the hospital and helped the wifey pack her things and we headed out to the car.

I felt like such a man right there – walking out of a hospital with my wife and our baby son, it was such a clear and tangible moment of achievement. Might sound silly but right at that moment I felt so alive and so very, very happy. Nothing much of my life till then mattered so much, it was less important now that my wife and I had a young person to raise and love.

The rest of that first day home was pretty special. We just held him and walked him around the house, showing him his home. While we are only renting for now and will one day have our own place, for the next year or two, this will be home. It’ll be where a whole bunch of his ‘firsts’ take place! We had that day to ourselves, no visitors dropped in (as requested) so we were really able to sit back and try settling in.

I’ve been pretty terrified of harming the baby – not in a ‘psychotic episode’ kind of way, but in an ‘accidental’ one. I hold him so carefully and am so awkward when I do anything, even if it’s just change a nappy. It’s gradually subsiding but when I carry him around, I’m so worried that I’ll slip on something and hurt us both. Others tell me this is pretty normal for first-time parents and that it fades away completely – I hope so!

We learned the lad has a tongue-tie, which is a small flap of skin between the bottom of the tongue and the base of the mouth.

The ramifications of this are that he can’t extend his tongue all that far out, which means he hasn’t been able to feed as easily as is usual and explains why he lost a bit much weight in the days after birth. We were told it’s as simple as snipping this thin flap and over a few days, his tongue will adjust and he’ll suffer no long-term effects.

So we made an appointment with the recommended doctor and headed off for the procedure (as his Nan kept referring to it). It was pretty quick and easy, no crying and only a small drop of blood. He did gain full movement of his tongue in the 48 hours following the snip and now loves flicking his tongue in and out of his mouth.

What the tongue-tie did have an effect on however was the amount of milk his mother was able to supply him with. Those first few days where he couldn’t get as much as he needed (due to a limited ability to suckle properly) meant that a full feed’s worth wasn’t created and this reduced amount was biologically programmed as being “all that is required”. To combat this, we’ve been topping him up with formula, in bottles. To be honest it’s probably worked out quite well. My wife will return to work after 3 months and breastfeeding during the day simply won’t be possible. Having the lad used to a bottle form the start will make things a lot easier in that respect.

The places for things and routines and all that, have roughly established themselves now. The lad’s feeding cycle is every 3 hours or so, even through the night at this stage. The wife is such a trouper, she hasn’t had more than a couple of hours of unbroken sleep in a while and she’s soldiering on; what a woman.

I also am quite tired. What I knew as my normal schedule has been ripped up and thrown away, so it’s taking me a bit to adjust. I’ve long been a big sleeper, able to sleep until midday on weekends and take it pretty easy. That simply isn’t possible anymore, so I feel as though I’ve been hanging out for a ‘catch-up sleep’ for a couple of weeks and just can’t actually get it.

Tomorrow I return to work. I’m thankful I work for a progressive company, who give fathers two weeks paid paternity leave. I took an extra week’s leave and have enjoyed being home for these weeks, especially as the wife had a caesarean and was a little less mobile than would be usual.

So back to work I go, to earn money so we can buy a house and build a home for our family.