Juggling baby + work

So my leave is up in 2 more weeks, and baby will be 10 weeks old. I’m an essential worker, so I’ll be returning to work at that point.

I’ve been back on the bike since 2 weeks after baby, and regularly since about week 4 with the typical 1 hour T/W/Th weekday rides and a little longer Sat and Sun.

Now my question…how did you all juggle your training and returning to work full-time after a baby? Did you keep the usual weekday rides? Did you feel like you were missing out on time with your baby?

I, selfishly, want to maintain the same schedule. I’ll be getting home from work by 4pm and can ride 4:15-5:15pm. But I just don’t know if I’ll have FOMO with baby!

Tell me your schedules please!

You should never juggle babies. Leave that up to Gallagher.

Now back to more useful postings.

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Do whatever you can to give your spouse a break when they want it. For me that’s right when I stop working, but for others it may be different. Making sure they have personal time and feel supported will do more for your bike time than anything else.

We’re at the 6-month mark with the youngest, and I was essentially just trying to ride the trainer 1-2x per week for the first few months. Prioritized weights during the workdays because our building has a gym. Have recently started back low volume SS base, with nighttime rides after kids go down. On weekends I shoot for an outdoor early AM ride (try to be home within an hour of when kids wake up) or late night ride outside if possible to go past the 2hr mark. 1:45 on the trainer is about my psychological threshold.

I’m in the zone+n defense range (i.e., 3 or more kids), and in the long run, that’s the only way to have bike time.

As long as you hold them by their head it’s okay I thought :face_with_monocle:

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Should I be ashamed that I had exactly the same joke in my head when I saw the thread title?? :flushed:

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That’s what I’m hoping to do as well; however, I don’t function well without adequate sleep. At this point, baby doesn’t sleep the long hours just yet. But I definitely plan to ride later evening when she starts going down for longer stretches.

She’s currently 7 weeks and will sleep a 6-7 hour stretch at night. So fingers crossed she keeps progressing this well and will be sleeping 10+ hours in another month!

You’ll get there, but can’t emphasize enough how important sleep training your kid is for your health and their development–i.e., you’re giving your kid the gift of self-regulation.
(I’m married to a child/educational developmental psychologist, so she’s been all over this with our kids). We normally have them in our room the first 4 or so months (just depends on where they are with a number of factors) and then transition them to the crib around 5 months. Do your check-in with increasing intervals if they’re crying, and they’ll be sleeping 10-12hrs/night in no time. That’s when you’ll actually have time to read, exercise, etc. again. The sleep habits will carry on as they get older–it just sets you and them up for success. Owning your 7pm-7am window again is a treat when they hit 5-6months.

Exactly…I cant recommend this strategy enough. We were a bit lax about it for a while until I put my foot down and said ‘we’re doing this’ with our kid. Around six months, her sleep schedule was really bad. Up at all hours, tears at 3 in the morning…etc.

It took two weeks, which was NOT fun…but after 2 weeks she got with the program, and slept like a baby from ~8am to 7am like clockwork.

Seriously though…doing this is hard, but its for the best. Kids have to learn some self reliance techniques, even at this young age. Especially at this young age. And don’t pretend that it will happen on its own either…my wifes sister has an 8 yr old that refuses to sleep still unless she’s in bed with her mother.

We are definitely trying to focus on good sleep habits with her. She puts herself to sleep in the bassinet on her own many nights. She will grunt and grumble while sleeping, which I never realized how loud babies are when the sleep! But I never get her to feed her until she is actually fully awake and crying for food.

I know letting her cry (when nothing is wrong of course) will be difficult once it starts happening, but I’m really going to do my best to get her on that schedule! I know she’s still a little too young for it at the moment, but we are doing our best to lay the groundwork.

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@anon67840561 how did you work on getting on that ideal sleep schedule?

Can’t recommend the Taking Cara Babies (https://takingcarababies.com/) course enough. We have 14 week old twins who have been sleeping through the night for the last month or so

I think we roughly followed the guidelines of a new parent book we were given. But the gist of it is spend longer durations letting the kid cry. Start with 5 or ten minutes, then increase it slowly over a couple weeks to where you’re waiting 30-60 minutes before going in to check on them. I dont think thisnis recommended for newborns though…they are expected to get up in the night to feed i believe.

Unfortunately, I can’t justify purchasing a schedule from them. I follow their ig though.

Oh yeah, not when they are too young. They are still crying because they need something still, especially food :joy:

have a 10 week old also. it has to be the morning workouts for me, generally up around 5-5.30am depending on length of workout, need to finish by 7 when our eldest wakes up. evenings are family time.

I’m sleeping in the spare room so I don’t disturb wife and baby and get a full night’s sleep. usually in bed by 9PM.

its important to to discuss each other’s needs with the wife, fortunately my wife understands I need to train, otherwise I’m overweight and miserable!

Unfortunately, I’m the one nursing her for that middle of the night feeding. Which cuts into that sweet sweet sleep. I may look into riding before work but that would entail 4:30am rides!

With the first couple we didn’t start it until 5-6 months, but we went to the early to mid 5-month mark with the last couple. Similar setup of 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 8, 10, 15, and 20 minutes. 20 minutes was the maximum time we’d let them cry without a checkin-in, then just keep it up until they fall asleep. After a few nights, they’ll get it.

Other big benefit not mentioned yet is that if your kids are really sleep trained, it’s so much easier to know when they have a real health issue like an ear infection or virus–because they’d be sleeping otherwise.

Also, don’t push yourself too hard. Your body just did some amazing work, of much greater stress (and value!) than the biking.

I wonder what the TSS rating should be for giving birth?

I read somewhere it’s equivalent to running a marathon for calorie burn wise. For me, I was so restless after birth I was out of bed immediately after. But I didn’t want to eat. However, the following days I consumed all the food everywhere, constantly hungry. It was so crazy! The stomach and lung expansion immediately following birth was mind blowing :laughing:

I’ll keep in mind that time frame for the sleep training. I don’t want to force something like that too early but don’t want to go too late where it’s even harder to enforce it.

Thank you for all the input! I may reach out to you in the future for my baby troubles :joy:

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I think you just have to adapt to whatever you feel in different phases. I wouldn’t plan on doing x or y hours exactly here or there until i knew it would work out well both for me and my partner/spouse. I know for myself that it is not only time with my child that concerns me, but time me and my wife have with only eachother after the kid is asleep as well. To each his/her own i guess, but if you are set on getting x hours of training and it proves to be difficult, it might be a harder blow on self esteem than not having too much ambition and just adapting.

Sorry about messy language!