Enough with the sleepless nights and not fitting into any of my clothing... Enough with being a walking breathing milk dispenser... Enough with not being able to do anything that requires concentration. Whatever I decide to do, it's going to have interruptions every couple of hours, or even every half an hour, or sometimes the entire plan is clouded with a constant interruption.The main thought on my mind in the past few days has been my doctorate year validation. Tomorrow I'm going to have to stand in front of a jury and describe what I have been doing in my first year in PhD studies. Until a few days ago I had no idea. My mind was blank. I did... uhm... STUFF.
All sorts of stuff! There was the 6 weeks I spent in San Diego... There were the couple of months that were wasted on small things. There were some experiments that I know I did but I couldn't even remember if I can use any of them in my article. So I had to make sure I know what to tell that jury. I spent a couple of days going over my data to find out what I've done and what I still need to do for my article. You can probably imagine it's pretty stressful to make an overview of your work progress when you haven't really thought of it for a while. It appears I've been quite a busy bee
and I definitely shouldn't fall short on my list of achievements for this year. I didn't create a cure for cancer but I'm sure my achievements are enough for a first year PhD student. Also I didn't quite reach the most optimistic goal I had set for myself - I didn't finish writing the article - but the year definitely didn't go to waste. I will talk about the best parts of the school year tomorrow and then I can go back to not thinking about school for a while....And a good thing it is that I don't have to think about it for a while because I want to chill and relax! I want to spend all my free time on myself! It seems I don't have much of MY TIME anymore. I hadn't really thought about it much but now that I needed some time for schoolwork it became clear how tight my schedule really is. Once every hour and a half I'm feeding the baby. That takes up to 20 minutes. About every other time baby girl won't fall asleep after feeding and wants to be played with. That's the best part. She's really cute when she's playful
and it hardly feels like work but it still takes about 20-30 minutes. About the same amount of time is spent on baby-grooming (diapers, washing, changing clothing, admiring cute baby hair 
). That leaves me roughly 40 minutes during each feeding cycle. Then there are the times when she won't settle in any position. I change her positions for 40 minutes and then it's feeding time again. And then there are times when she will only sleep in my arms so those 40 minutes are spent with only one hand free.Oddly, it doesn't usually feel very restricting. I have learned to eat with one hand even if it's my left hand. I spend more time using the keyboard with one hand than with both hands and I have even learned to use mouse with my left hand. I have my tricks for getting everything done. It only takes a few minutes to speed-clean the apartment and I can usually find the 15 minutes to also wash the dishes. When I'm feeding the baby I use the time to watch stupid housewife shows on TV and I read housewife forums and write my very own one-handed typo-rich posts. Oprah is quite entertaining but I cringe every time she tells a sob story and asks people to harass politicians for a bill to be passed. I even watched John Edward's medium talk show Cross Country a few times and it seemed SO REAL! That's the real housewife trap! This guy John Edward was really talking with spirits!!! But then I watched it with Erkki and he told me how the scam works. Now I can't watch it anymore and I keep seeing right through John Erdward's mind play. I haven't watched even one episode of any Mexican soap opera yet and I doubt I'll be that desperate for daytime entertainment any time soon.
In short, taking care of a baby is the best excuse to spend time "doing nothing". Just staying in and not doing anything noteworthy no longer makes me feel guilty for being so lazy. There is a charm to this kind of life.
The busy baby schedule wouldn't be that bad assuming I can spend all the free time on things that really matter - Internet, TV, and tidying myself or the apartment. But when schoolwork takes away all this time my chores suddenly become very tedious. It's annoying to leave intense Excel tables to go and change a diaper. A simple task suddenly starts to feel so restricting. And it's not very easy or fast to make scientific graphs with only my left hand.
Actually that's fun to try. So when does baby business become too much work? After a long day I go to sleep. All of us are used to treating night time as a break from everything else. Whatever you were doing and how long it took doesn't matter after you go to sleep. It doesn't even matter if you're going to have to wake up early because the time between going to bed and waking up early belongs to you! Now imagine going to sleep knowing you will be woken up 1-3 hours from now! And you might be woken up 1 hour, 2 hours and 3 hours from now. You can not plan to have a good night's sleep because even the night isn't yours anymore.
But tomorrow after the validation I will play Sims3 while balancing a baby on my shoulder and I will use MY free time during the day because I know I won't have any of that at night time.
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