Our baby is 25 days old today! And I've been feeling mentally capable of getting back to work on my job letter and some chapter edits for over a week now... too bad the newborn isn't always cooperative. When you're exclusively breastfeeding an infant, you have to be ready to feed her on her schedule. And sometimes that schedule is every hour on the hour. Holding a nursing newborn is, as yet, still at least a one-handed operation for me, and editing my dissertation requires two hands and at least half a brain. Thus far, I've mainly been confined to tasks I can accomplish one-handed-- reading articles, minor edits on my job letter, emailing, etc. Only over the last few days, as her 3-week growth-spurt feeding binge has subsided a bit, have I been able to do any serious work on my chapter or my own articles. And then only as she's napping, which is rarely for more than an hour at a time during the day.
It should become easier to find time to work during the day as she gets older and needs to nurse less frequently and for less long at a time, but this has been a surprise-- to find myself mentally ready to get back to work, but physically unable to do so because my hands are tied up with a nursing baby.
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