Working Mom

My 2 Year Old Isn’t Sleeping Through The Night and It’s Driving Me Crazy

November 20, 2017 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

I’m back at work after maternity leave. The baby is finding a rhythm now and consistently waking about the same time each night. But the 2 year old? She’s waking up 3 times a night! Every night! And yelling so much that she wakes up the 4 year old in the basement. I’m so angry and frustrated by it that I swear and criticize my husband in the middle of the night. Of course I blame it all on him. It’s the middle of the night. And I can’t go back to sleep right away because I’m so frustrated. Why isn’t my 2 year old sleeping through the night?

My 2 Year Old Isn’t Sleeping Through The Night and It’s Driving Me Crazy - Just Getting Things Done

How did we get here?

Ivy slept through the night earlier than either of our other two kids. At two months old she was sleeping through the night and it was awesome. Then I went back to work when she was 3 months old and that was the end of it. It was devastating.

It was hard because she woke up at random times every night and there was no rhyme or reason. I knew she could do it, she just didn’t. One night she would be up at 10pm, the next night it would be 1am. She did this until she was about 9 months old, when she started sleeping through the night consistently (again).

She seems to always revert back to waking up during the night though. If she gets sick and wakes up once during the night, she’ll continue doing it for weeks until we finally realize she’s not sick anymore. So we talk about it with her and then we don’t go in her room for a night or two when she calls out. It’s hard to listen to her calling out and not answer, but we know she doesn’t need anything and if we do what we say we’ll do she’s back to sleeping through the night.

This time around the problem has been a long time coming. When I was pregnant with Clara, our youngest, Ivy was calling out pretty often. At first she said she needed medicine. Then later it turned into “I need a drink.” At some point she didn’t need anything. My husband would go in, tell her to go back to sleep and then cover her back up. That was it.

She went back to sleep right away so it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. I got upset about it sometimes, but it was one of those things that I would say needed to change, but nothing changed. I wasn’t usually the one getting up so it wasn’t that big of a deal for me. Sometimes I didn’t even hear it. But when you have an infant that’s sleeping better than your 2 year old, who doesn’t actually need anything, you realize it’s time to put a stop to it. [Read more…] about My 2 Year Old Isn’t Sleeping Through The Night and It’s Driving Me Crazy

Going Back to Work After Maternity Leave – Week 1

November 14, 2017 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

As a working mom, returning to work after maternity leave is a time of major changes and major emotions. There are so many thoughts and feelings that go through my head, I wanted to chronicle it because, well, it may never happen again. I hope my journey can provide some comfort to other women that are going through the same thing. (This is the second post in this series, the first post is here)

Returning to Work After Maternity Leave - Week 1 — Coming home from daycare pick-up with the big girls

Weekend

Sunday night I feel totally unprepared. I don’t know if I even have enough clothes to get through a whole week. Sean doesn’t know what to do at drop off with Clara. He doesn’t know what she has at school already and what she doesn’t because I’ve done it all on my own. (Of course, he’s done this before too.) We discussed who was going to drop off who, but that was awhile ago. Don’t we need to talk about it again to make sure we’re on the same page?

I got my clothes for Monday morning ready and put them in the bathroom. I packed my breakfast, lunch, snack. I put my computer and pump in the Gathering Place. I put my phone in my purse (instead of sitting right by it) so I wouldn’t forget it. I’m doing my best to make sure I have everything I need when I leave the house tomorrow. [Read more…] about Going Back to Work After Maternity Leave – Week 1

Going Back to Work After Maternity Leave – 1 Week To Go

November 9, 2017 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

The weekend

Over the weekend I said more than once, “I don’t want to go back to work.” But it’s not as simple as that statement makes it seem. I don’t want to go back to work because right now I get to stay home all day and snuggle my sweet baby. I don’t think I’m going to care at all about work. It’s not going to seem important compared to my baby.

I also know that I can’t stay home with (just) the baby forever. We have two other kids and we couldn’t keep sending them to daycare if I wasn’t working. I wouldn’t want to. But I also know that I wouldn’t want to stay home with all three kids every day.

I don’t really like saying that, because in some ways it makes me feel bad. I feel like I have to justify it by saying they’ve been in daycare and they’re used to spending all day with other kids their age in an environment that is tailored to them. Our house isn’t like that. I also just don’t think I’d be great at it. I love my kids so much and I think they’re amazing and beautiful. I know myself, though, and at some point that just wouldn’t be enough for me. [Read more…] about Going Back to Work After Maternity Leave – 1 Week To Go

How Do Working Moms Get It All Done?

October 30, 2017 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

Working Moms Get It All Done - Working Mom — © Meredith Moran Photography www.meredithkmoran.com

I remember when I went back to work after my first daughter, Emma, was born. I was overwhelmed with questions. How do I focus on work when I left my baby with someone else? How do I know if I did the right thing by coming back to work? How am I supposed to remember everything? Am I a bad mom because I’m excited to only be responsible for myself for the next 8 hours?

So I did what anyone does these days when they have a question. I turned to Google.

One of the biggest questions I had was “How do working moms get it all done?”

So I googled that and “How do working moms do it all?” The search results were filled with articles telling me that I couldn’t do it all. They said things like “just accept that you’ll have dirty dishes” or that “your laundry will never be done.” They told me I would just have to lower my standards. That was the only way I would be able to get by as a working mom.

But that didn’t work for me. What if it makes me happy to cook dinner every night and to make sure we don’t ever have piles of dirty laundry laying around the house? What if mountains of dirty dishes would make me unhappy? As a working mom, what am I supposed to do then?

There was no good answer that I could find.

Be More Productive At Home and Still Spend Quality Time With Your Kids

October 5, 2016 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

The 5 strategies I’ve implemented to get more done at home and still spend quality time with my kids.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently working on my time management and I’ve come up with 5 strategies that really help me get stuff done while still spending quality time with my girls. You’ll probably recognize a couple of them because they are basically my foundation. But a couple of them surprised me and I’ve been told they surprised others too.

You can read the whole article over here on Lifehack.

How Cleaning Up For 5 Minutes Makes You Feel Like Less of a Failure as a Wife and Mom

August 9, 2016 by Rachel Bowman 23 Comments

We need to talk. It’s about all that stuff you’ve accumulated in your house since you had kids and how it’s affecting you.

Almost every mom I talk to says they just have to accept the mess even if it bugs them. They deal with it even though they don’t like it. They just don’t look at it. They don’t obsess about cleaning anymore.

There are places in our homes we don’t go because we don’t want to see the mess! I’m guilty of this too. For me it’s one of the rooms in the basement. It’s like a thrift store threw up down there. There’s stuff everywhere that we’re not using.

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