Most people with babies will tell you evenings are the most difficult time. Children are getting tired and grumpy, adults are getting tired and grumpy. There's the main meal of the day to cook, eat and clean up, and there's bedtime to tackle (often an extremely emotive issue!). Plus you've got to finish work, get home, and crucially stop stressing about it (I'm trying not to think about how we'll manage once I go back to teaching after maternity leave). So, already a lot of pressure on the evening, which unfortunately is ALSO my favourite time to run.
It's not that I'm not a "morning person"...I can go running in the mornings, and occasionally I've even managed it at 6am before work. It's lovely to be out on a sunny June morning before most people are awake. But it's also lovely running at the end of the day, when it's a great time to wind down and process everything that's been going on. I also feel like my body is most energetic and read for exercise at about 5 or 6pm...although that could just be psychological as I'm sure I've read multiple contradictory articles about the "best" times of day to work out.
Until having our baby my husband and I were pretty relaxed about dinner time and happy to eat at 8 or 9pm so that one or both of us could fit in a run first. Maybe this is left over from the fact that we met in Rome...I used to work teaching evening classes so I'd finish at 8:15 or 9pm, THEN make my way to his flat on the metro and bus, and THEN we'd start cooking dinner, so we were often eating at 11pm. It's the south European way...
And up until now, Angel has been a very late-sleeping baby so there hasn't been particular pressure to get her to bed early. In the early months she used to be an evening crier several nights a week on average - we'd do our best to get her to sleep when our friends' babies slept, at 7, but no matter what relaxing activities we tried (bath, massage, story, feed...) from about 8 - 10.30pm was her cry time and we just had to comfort her as best we could and wait it out. She grew out of that at about 3 months thank goodness, and since then she's kept up a late nap at 7pm which means she's a chilled and lovely evening companion until we all go to bed together around 10.30.
However, now at 5 months it feels like we're in a period of flux. I think she's starting to drop the last nap of the day and need bed a bit earlier - it's moved from 10, to 9pm and this week around 8 she's started getting shrieky and rubbing her eyes, clear signals that it's bedtime.
Additionally I'm looking ahead now that she's nearly 6 months to starting baby-led weaning. It's key with this approach that meals are eating together so that the baby learns to eat along with the rest of the family...so that means we'll need to have dinner early enough that she's not too tired, and be ready to put her to bed soon afterwards. This all points to the need for more organisation in the evenings: I'm thinking we need to be eating dinner no later than 7 to catch Angel in a good window, assuming that she's not having the late nap. That means correspondingly getting the cooking done a bit earlier. Now 7pm sounds pretty reasonable, but what if she starts needing to go to bed even earlier? I know babies who are ready for their night's sleep at 7 or even 6.30pm! That would involve major habit-change for both me and my husband, juggling all our other commitments (work/exercise/shopping/socialising...) so that we're home and cooking earlier.
And this is already sounding stressful while I'm off on maternity leave...let along when I'm back working full days of teaching with all the marking, planning and admin that goes along with it! But I know there are a lot of people out there with more children, more stressful jobs, longer work hours and more commitments than us. How do they do it?
Yesterday was a Sunday, so a bit more manageable than a weekday to begin with. Angel and I woke up from a nap at about 5pm, and I was planning a buggy run before it got towards dinner time, while my husband studied. However, just as I was getting my trainers on, the heavens opened. I briefly considered going anyway, in waterproofs. Angel would be fine in the Maclaren with rain cover, but my feet would get wet, and that is no fun. As an alternative, I decided to get dinner (mushroom risotto) ready first, and see if the rain eased up enough for a run a little later.
Sure enough, it did, but what with one thing and another (cooking, nappy changes, getting the pushchair down the stairs...) it was 6.50pm before I set off. "But I want us to start eating at 7!" I told my husband, who sensibly pointed out that I wanted to run and I should do it.
So, I followed my usual route to Southwark Park, as detailed in my last blog post. The rain held off and I made good time with the buggy...5km in 33 minutes according to Runkeeper, which is perfectly respectable while pushing a 7.5 kilo buggy containing a 7+ kilo baby. The evening light was lovely, the streets quiet after the downpour. I felt energised, refreshed and happy...only to notice about 10 minutes in that the motion had proved irresistible to Angel, who'd decided to reinstate that 7pm nap, thus rendering all my planning, scheming and agonising totally null and void. The one thing I'm learning about babies is that you just CAN'T control them!
What can you do? ultimately I had a great run, my husband and I had dinner, and Angel got to bed, just a bit later than planned. If anyone has any tips or magic tricks for how to organise the evenings so that everything gets done and the baby gets to bed at a consistent bedtime, PLEASE post them in the comments!
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