💾 Archived View for erock.io › 2021 › 09 › 30 › staying-productive captured on 2022-07-16 at 13:38:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Stardate 2021-09-30
It's 11:56 PM.
9 weeks 2 days and 12 hours since my child was born. He just got his 2-month vaccines a few days ago and he had a rough day today which invariably made our day ... challenging. Restless, fussy, causing us to test our patience. My wife is a champion. She spent the previous night with him and only got a few hours of sleep just so I could sleep in our guest bed uninterrupted. She claims it's the cortisol keeping her going but she's just so strong. It's moments like these that make me realize how smart past Eric was for choosing to be with her.
I went back to work last week, returning from 8 weeks of parental leave. I'm working from home so I try to help as much as I can but my primary directive is to work.
Today was probably one of the hardest days we've had so far as parents so I thought I would reflect on this day. Today is one of those days where it's hard to see the upside in parenthood. We all hear about it from friends, family, or otherwise. Sometimes I feel like parents' affection for their children is the result of Stockholm syndrome [1]. When the child takes a break from their multi-hour cry session and grace us with a smile we are euphoric.
This is the first time since his birth that I felt like I didn't have needs of my own. Everything was secondary to the crying. It was virtually impossible to get anything done and yet we still managed:
I hope things are better tomorrow. We can't figure out if he has really bad acid reflux or his fussy-ness is from the vaccines. Either way we can't do too many more of these days.
It's days like today where I feel like all my motivation to write code goes out the window. I have all these ideas and things I want to accomplish but literally my hands are occupied holding a baby; my mind is occupied with soothing him.
I have to convince myself that my own desires are temporarily on hold and that I'll be able to dedicate some time to my hobbies again soon. But who knows, maybe this is the sacrifice people talk about with parenthood.
[1] Stockholm syndrome is a condition in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors during captivity.
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Want to chat? email me at gemlog@erock.io