PhD: Parent: have Daughter

Week two and some things are going well and some thing need a little more work. ThesisBaby is getting used to going to nursery 2 days a week now, so tends to start the day with a smile and not a scream- yey!  I also find now I have predefined baby-free time (2-3 hours at night and 2 mornings a week, as well as a few hours at the weekend) I am managing to be more focused and actually getting work done, almost as much as before! On the downside ThesisBaby refusing to drink at nursery which leads to a very tired thirsty baby in the afternoon and I'm struggling with expressing enough milk for her when I'm at work. I suppose it's useful she doesn't want to drink much while I'm not around because an hour pumping usually only produces 100ml of milk. ho hum. TB has a tin of formula at nursery now to make up the shortfall, and we decided that post nursery-afternoon is a feeding cuddle zone- no work. I have given  myself permission to focus on just her. I tend to carry Th...

So far my longest solo adventure with ThesisBaby has been a 1.5hour train trip to grandma's, during which I accidentally sent my winter coat, the week before it snowed, to the other end of the country. Whoops. However I do know a very seasoned travel baby, and his mum has agreed to share her wisdom here in a series of guest posts. The thought of flying with young children is enough to give most people nightmares- the screaming, cranky, inconsolable baby and frazzled parents stuck on an aluminium tube for hours while all the non-parents passing judgement and make disparaging or snarky comments..... But it doesn’t have to be like that, and as FlyingKiwi has just taken his 31st flight in 11 months I thought I would share some hints and tips to help flying with your wee one a bit easier and less stressful FlyingKiwi was only 3 weeks old when he took his first flight. Fresh from a traumatic emergency C-Section and trying to work out where the manual was to run this tiny human, our ...

111 words; this is how many words I need to write every day between now and next March to keep my thesis on track. I went back to work properly this week, and it was full of mini-challanges: leaving ThesisBaby at nursery without crying ( it was close but I managed), organising access to the breastfeeding room at work (sorted with the help of my supervisor) and working out how I'm going to fit everything in; baby care, housework, writing, sleeping, eating etc and making myself sit down to study every evening after a full day of the afore mentioned stuff. My brain feels like someone has replaced it with mash potato- previously easy to recall references have fluttered off in a haze of baby hormones and chronic sleep deprivation, and I have so much to do before our experiment next year I nearly crumpled in a heap and sobbed when my supervisor caught me up at our back to work meeting. I came home and mid melt-down my husband reminded me that a PhD is a marathon not a sprint. Sure,...