Managing my Day: Toddler+Newborn edition

I am blogging after two years. Sheesh! That’s an awfully long time. What is worse that in that time, Covid has become a pandemic, life’s taken a complete 360 and I’ve cruised through an entire pregnancy along with being Covidified (I know Covidified is not an actual word, but it should be tbh). There was this entire spectrum of things I could have written about in full detail but I didn’t. Instead I let time pass idly by while I binged on super unhealthy food undoing all the work I had put in to lose my weight pre-pregnancy. So, in a sense I am back to where I started physically but this time I have a toddler and an infant keeping me company.

Believe it or not, I get asked atleast once in a week about how I manage my work and my routine with a toddler and an infant. My answer is pretty straightforward, I have help. Loads of it. When I delivered three weeks early in June, my house help and her daughter helped me with the baby in the hospital while my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law took care of the toddler back home. My husband shuttled between the two. After a week when I was back home, my in-laws had to go back to their town but my mum stepped in along with my aunt. They stayed over with me for a month all through July. Things were pretty well sorted but then my house-help was going to go on a month long leave in August and my husband’s work schedule had gone awry so I decided to travel to my mum’s place 2000 kms away. Since the baby was under six weeks, we took the 36 hour train journey which turned out to be pretty uneventful. I stayed there for the next 40 days and came back home in the first week of September.

Back home, it was going to be just me with the kids most of the time. Before coming home, I made charts, lists of things I would need, plans about how I would work throughout the day. So, I was mentally prepared to dive head-on. My house-help had also resumed work and she made sure our home was deep-cleaned before we came back with the kids.

The first couple of days were predictably difficult for us to settle in, especially for the newborn. Her entire schedule was being tested, she was used to being pacified by my mum and my aunt and now it was just me and she was overwhelmed with the sudden absence. She did, however, get used to sleeping in the cradle since birth so rocking her to sleep in it helped immensely. My older daughter was back on home turf and was overjoyed. She got back into routine quite well.

I was planning on resuming work within a couple of weeks so we decided to hire additional help. We, Pramod and I, thought it best to not stress over housework when it could easily be delegated so that I could focus on the kids and my work exclusively. My help that I already had was delegated with cooking, dusting, smaller chores and assisting my toddler in her activities if need be. The new house-help was given the basic cleaning, swabbing and dishes to deal with. I delegated myself the job to oversee and make sure that everything was done well. The entire chores/work system would take a couple of months to stabilise so I gave myself that window to make sure the housework gets tackled efficiently by then.

Typically, my day starts at 7 AM when the first house-help comes in. She cleans the house and the dishes and I get started with breakfast prep. 8 AM, either one of the girls wakes up and ten minutes later the other one wakes up too. Papa wakes up in all the hullabaloo. The next one hour is chaos in the Dadala household. Diaper changes, bathroom runs, brushing teeth, breakfast choices, loud singing, video calls, tummy time, everything is happening all at the same time. 9 AM, my primary house-help arrives. She takes over the kitchen from here. I put the infant down for her first nap and have my breakfast. Baby Hashtag (the name my older daughter is known for virtually) uses this time to watch some television or colour. 10.30 AM, Marvelous Faye (my little’s virtual name) wakes up. She plays for a while with her older sister, feeds and gets ready for her bath. By 11.30 AM, both my kids are bathed and ready. By noon, Faye goes down for her second nap and Baby Hashtag sits down for her lunch. The rest of the afternoon is pretty much a blur where I spend time with the older kid reading books or playing or just talking while feeding the littlest. In the evenings, usually I take the kids downstairs in the apartment for some fresh air and frankly, a change of scenery for me as well. If Faye is cranky, I resort to babywearing. We are back home by 6 PM, I put the baby down for her final nap and BabyHashtag has her dinner. By 7.30 PM, our quota of play is done and we get changed up and ready for bed. I try and make sure I get them both simultaneously in bed by 8.30 PM. 90% of the times, they are asleep by then which leaves me free for the rest of the night. I am up till around 12.30/1.00 AM working, reviewing or cleaning up. I usually am asleep by 1.00 AM since I have to wake up fairly early next day.

So far, this has been our schedule. Having extra help is truly a blessing, best decision we made. Baby Hashtag is going to be 5 years old in a couple of months and Marvelous Faye is 4 months old now, this system so far works. Amidst all this, I try and complete 7-8K steps walking. I intend to increase it to 10K steps in a day and also squeeze in some time for a decent workout. How that works out, I’ll update you on that, in a new post next month hopefully.

Until next time.