Picture this: it’s Christmas Eve and I'm in the kitchen helping prepare Christmas dinner and I’m watching Violet at the same time. In my left hand, I'm attempting to rock her to sleep and in my other hand, there's a hand-mixer whizzing away inside a crockpot, whipping buttery potatoes into mash. I could've been more patient and waited for Andrea to finish up whatever she was doing at the moment, but I’ve never been a very patient person.
All I could think about at that moment besides that it felt slightly dangerous, was that I needed to get myself more organized. More often than not these days, I’m finding myself juggling more tasks than I ever have before, as multitasking has officially taken on a whole new meaning for me.
It goes without saying that taking care of a baby is a lot of work, but I think I underestimated the way it would change how I handle the simplest of day-to-day tasks. Our days seem longer, but at the same time, they feel like they have fewer hours in them, and more time in a day is something I feel like we both need.
I start work at 6 o’clock in the morning and I wake up at 4 am. I only live about three minutes from my job, but it now takes more steps to get there on time. Before Violet was born, I could easily wake up at 5:15 am, chug two cups of coffee, brush my teeth, comb my hair, throw some clothes on that I picked out just a few seconds earlier, and walk out of the house two minutes before my shift started and still make it there on time. But not anymore.
Now I need at least a two-hour head start, even with most of my morning routine being started the night before. A good morning starts with Violet hopefully waking up at 4:30am and not a minute sooner, which allows me to get at least one cup out of my much needed three cups of coffee in. The morning is made up of 90% feeding, changing, and rocking Violet, 5% getting dressed and the remaining 5% driving to work after I drop her off at her daycare which luckily is nestled right in between my house at my job. I arrive to work at 6:15am and immediately start planning out when I leave at 2pm to pick her up. I’m fortunate that I can make my own work schedule so I don’t have to worry about being late.
Back at home where Andrea spends her days consumed between zoom meetings, washing countless nursing bottles, and bagging breast milk, we try to make the rest of our post-work day as fulfilling as possible. We might try to catch up on a new episode of our favorite TV show that we’ve been trying to watch for a week and then we’ll throw something together for dinner which doesn’t consist of chips and leftover Chinese takeout.
Our nightly routine is probably the most crucial part of our entire day. The steps we take during the hours after we’re done eating dinner will determine, usually, how well Violet will sleep at night. Starting at about six o’clock we do our best to keep her up for as long as we can, usually to about 9pm. During those hours we give her a bath, feed her a few bottles of milk, and dedicate a couple of hours for playtime. If we do this right and consistently, putting her down to sleep for the night is fairly easy and she's pretty good about not waking up until our much desired 4:30am wake up time.
Although it can be pretty demanding trying to maintain a strict schedule and stick to our routine, especially when things go wayward, the payoff is totally worth it. And no matter what time she wakes up or how much sleep we lose, the best part of my day is just spending as much time with the two of them as I can. Yes, it now takes seven days to watch a 25-minute Netflix show; and yes, I’ve recently burned and overcooked more food in the past three months than I ever have before in my life, and our living room looks like a warzone, but I wouldn't change this for anything.
As I write this, the holidays are coming to an end and in just a few days Violet will be four months old.
Richard De Fino, a freelance writer by night, first became a father at age 34. After losing his first-born son Louis, at birth, he was determined to keep his memory alive the best way he knew how; through words. Now, with the birth of his daughter Violet, he plans on continuing to share his fatherhood journey each month with WNY Family readers.