But as the little guy rounds toward his second birthday, and as he becomes better able to communicate, it has been so fun to watch the sibling interactions. Older siblings are built-in toddler entertainment. Anything they do is tremendously exciting. They teach him words. He often prefers them to his parents — on one car trip he wanted crackers but refused to take the crackers from me and would only take them from his 6-year-old brother. I have taken the 10-year-old along when picking him up at a babysitter’s house because I know he never wants to get strapped into the carseat, but if she’s there in the car…

They all fight like crazy. On the other hand, they are members of a club that I can observe but will never be part of. It’s fun to see the little guy wear hand-me-downs that I remember from the big boys. And the shoes! Big ones, little ones, all lined up. We don’t have too many more years where they are all under one roof. I try to remember that when lining up seven plates on the kitchen island.

As part of that, I’ve been packing up the infant clothes in bins — to go in the attic for now, though probably they’ll be donated at some point. I realized, going through the bins, that some of the cute baby stuff never got worn this time around.

I’ve been pondering why this is. For starters, we turn out to have a lot of baby clothes. Also, a big part of it is that we didn’t go many places. We wouldn’t have taken a newborn many places during flu season anyway, and then the pandemic began, and so there was much time at home. He wound up wearing pajamas frequently. Very practical — only one piece to deal with, comfy to nap in, and with footy pajamas, no socks to get lost. Making sure he was wearing all the cute outfits we had would have been a lot of bother, and in the midst of the newborn days, you tend to be tired enough that the easy way always seems like the best way.

And most likely it is. But then time passes and it turns out that there’s only really a 6 month window to wear those 6-12 month clothes.

In any case, things do get easier. I’m sleeping better. The little guy is old enough to assist with putting his arms through sleeves. He is going out and about. So the older kid clothes are getting worn. As are the older older kid clothes! My 6-year-old went to camp today in a T-shirt from that camp that an older child passed down. Good to see that get used.

In other news: I turn out to be flexible. Maybe not in terms of personality (though I like to think so…) but like a gymnast. A few children are working on doing splits and I mentioned that I had been able to do them at one point. They were curious if I still had this ability. I tried, and it turns out I do! Not bad for age 42. Also, when touching my toes I can put my hands flat on the floor. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this ability, other than brag about it here.

Photo: A single tiny baby Croc. Sadly, I cannot find the other half of the pair.

Instead, we’ve been welcoming him into the family. We took some really sweet family photos last weekend. You can see Yana Shellman’s blog post about it (with many photos!) here. I’ll also be posting some on Instagram (@lvanderkam).

This week I survived my first solo overnight with five children. It could have been worse. The 5-year-old (feels funny to write that, but he had his birthday this week!) did not fight bed. The baby took a long time to settle, so I didn’t actually get to sleep until midnight, which was frustrating since I started trying at 10 p.m. But I did get a 3-hour stretch from 2:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m., plus about 90 minutes prior to that and half an hour after. I took a 30-minute nap during the day as well. And last night, when I had the night nurse service, I rewarded myself with pumping the 1 a.m. bottle before I went to bed. So I pretty much slept 10:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m., fed the baby, then went back to bed for an hour. Heavenly!

I ran most days this week but realized, yesterday when I woke up from my nap and the temperatures were dropping and the wind was howling, that I wasn’t doing my streak anymore. If I didn’t feel like running…I didn’t have to. Instead I played a rather aerobic game of modified indoor dodge ball* with the big kids and then took the 10-year-old for a 20-minute walk. He regaled me with some description of a video game the entire time. I can’t say I entirely followed but the walk was nice. And the world didn’t end when I didn’t run.

Last year for this upcoming long weekend I took my now-12-year-old to San Diego. He had asked for that as his big Christmas present, and I’m a fan of experiential gifts. It’s been a long year; that seems like a life time ago. But reflecting on it, it was a very good trip. I’d like to do some more one-on-one adventures like that with my kids.

This long weekend my plans are less ambitious. I’ve been trying to assign myself 1-2 little projects each weekend. If I have a short list, stuff gets done. A long list? Not so much. Last weekend I sorted the mail pile and cleaned off a shelf on the back porch so the porch looked more calm and inviting. This weekend I intend to go through my closet to put away the maternity clothes and move my normal clothes back into regular rotation. I’ll probably winnow down what’s in the closet, too, and hopefully end the weekend with a big enough donation pile to schedule a pick-up.

I’m trying not to take on too much work during my “maternity leave” (such as it is when self-employed), but I do have a few articles and projects coming up in the next month or two. For one, I would love to talk with some young people who’ve started businesses without enrolling in a 4-year-college. If you know some folks who are supporting themselves through their entrepreneurial ventures as their main post-high-school gig, and would like to talk about it, please let me know. You can always email me at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com. (The laura at lauravanderkam dot com address also works — I check them both). If you are (or know) a high school teacher teaching an entrepreneurial curriculum, that would be great too.

I also had an exciting conversation yesterday about how I might structure the time diary project that will become the basis of my next book. More to come on that!

*One reason to have a house with a basement

Photo: Yana Shellman photography

Anyway, he’s continued to do his own thing ever since. There are inevitably personality clashes. Readers of Off the Clock know all about our bedtime battles. The good news about him being kid #4 is that I’ve relaxed a reasonable amount. I’m not going to die on the hill of whether we eat crackers for breakfast.

And when he does do his own thing, he’s quite the champ. I am impressed with his physical coordination. He loves his karate class. He once scored something like 8 goals in a game in his 4-year-old soccer league. He’s eager to learn whatever he can, especially (in classic rebel fashion) if one of his older siblings is claiming he’s too little to know something. This morning at breakfast one of the older children was quizzing him on multiplication and he nailed the answers. (Yet another reason fourth children don’t need flash cards…)

He is adjusting to his new role as big brother, rather than the baby of the family. I can’t say it has been easy. There has been a lot of acting out, but when he snuggles his baby brother, it is the sweetest thing in the world (see Instagram, @lvanderkam, for a few pics). And we’re trying to spend some time together, during which I occasionally see the softer side. I took him to his Little Gym class last Friday. On the car ride home, unprompted, he announced “I love you mommy!” The other kids never do that anymore, so I’m totally there for this. Happy birthday little dude!

*I generally don’t put my children’s names on the blog, not because it’s a big secret, but because of the search engine factor. I imagine they may want to create their own digital identities some day; my 12-year-old, for instance, has used his real name when guest blogging here because that’s something he does want to put out into the world.

Then in May of 2019, I learned I was expecting kid #5. This happy news came with the knowledge that most likely the streak’s days were numbered. In the past, I’ve generally stopped running around 8 months into my pregnancies, and of course delivery itself requires some recovery. I set a goal of making it to 1000 straight days, which would occur in late September.

Then late September came and went and I kept running. My third trimester brought some gorgeous October runs. Even as November came and I slowed more and more, I still generally felt better after a run than I did before. In December, I started mostly confining myself to laps around the house and yard (less boring than the treadmill). I made it to December 24 — three years. I decided to run a little the next day too. On December 28, the weather was so warm I decided to run outside through the neighborhood: just a mile and a half, total, but it was doable.

Then, that night, I went into labor. My baby arrived at 5 a.m. on December 29 and I spent December 29 in my hospital room. So I didn’t run. Honestly, I didn’t think much about the fact that I didn’t run. I’d already built into my mental model of birth that the streak would be over so I didn’t spend too much time marking its passage. Nor did I think about it much over the next week as I recovered at home (both from childbirth and the nasty cold I contracted around the same time!) Frankly, I don’t think I would have been capable of much running during the first bit, largely because of the fatigue of whatever sleep I could get with the newborn being interrupted by coughing, so perhaps best I didn’t think about it.

But by the middle of last week I was starting to feel like myself again. I went for some walks, which felt decent. So on Saturday, I decided to try out my legs. I went for a very short (just about a mile) walk/run.* It went good. On Sunday, another unseasonably warm day, I ran slowly for about 30 minutes. That felt good too.

And so now I am pondering my running goals, which I could start building toward in another month or so. As I felt myself slowing last fall, I decided to sign up for the Philadelphia Marathon in November 2020. I wanted something to motivate myself, to urge myself to take the view that while my body was limited now, in a year I could potentially be in the best shape of my life. I don’t see why not. I’d like to start lifting weights more seriously, and since my one marathon time was pretty slow, barring bad conditions or injury, I could probably get a personal record (PR). In the meantime, I’m signed up for a 5-mile race in late February. I’m signed up for a 10-miler in May, and I will likely try to do a half-marathon as a tune-up in late summer/early fall.

I don’t think I will do a streak again. I do intend to run most days, and while I’m on my semi-maternity leave a streak would likely be doable, but once I’m back to work I don’t really have the appetite for waking at 3:30 a.m. to run on a hotel treadmill before a day of flying. I think I could satisfy myself with averaging, say, 5-6 days per week.

But as I ran on Saturday and Sunday, I couldn’t help but smile. These runs felt like the start of something new. I have felt a lot of gratitude for my body over the past year. I am grateful that it could conceive, carry, and birth a baby at ages 40-41. I am grateful that it could run every single day through that pregnancy. I’ll take things easy for the next month or so. But then it will be time to zoom and — running toward possibility — see what I am capable of.

In other news: The baby had his first non-medical/non-carpool outing this weekend. It was 65 degrees on Saturday so we went to the zoo. He stayed in the Ergo carrier, zonked out, the entire time.

*I am aware that the general guidelines say to wait on exercise until 6 weeks, but a lot depends on your personal fitness level, ease of delivery, etc. I’m definitely still taking it easy — slow, not going far, which I will for a while.

Life is going well. The big kids went back to school a week ago, and the 4-year-old started on Monday. So we’re semi back to routine. Our during-the-week nanny takes the baby in the morning and I’ve been doing some work and any administrative things I have to take care of during that time. Then I take the baby around noon when  she picks up the 4-year-old, and they go out and do stuff during the afternoon. They come back around 3-ish, at which point I might take a nap before the big kids get home. Today is a little different and I have the baby now but that’s been working so far.

I have left the house briefly for a few things: a teacher meeting about one of the big kids, a short middle school choir concert last night, a walk. The baby hasn’t actually needed to eat during any of these yet, so I don’t know how the bottle-feeding will go, but I plan to try that in the next week. I’ve built up quite a freezer stash of milk already so I can do slightly longer excursions.

Speaking of excursions…I’m not running yet. The running streak ended with delivery! But I’d like to try in the next week or so. I’ve signed up for the Frostbite 5-miler in late February, which I think could be a reasonable target based on recovery rates. My first few days were pretty rough (even though it was a relatively easy birth). My abdominal muscles just weren’t working right, but then at roughly day 8-9 they put themselves back together, and now I can move normally again.

We’ve had the night nurse service for 2 nights so far. They’ve been very flexible about starting approximately 3 weeks earlier than expected, but that means we take what nights someone is available. The person brings the baby to me to eat for two overnight feedings, usually around 12:30/1 and 3:30/4. Some nights he’s pretty sleepy other than that but I could see the notes from another night where he took an hour to settle post-feeding, so I was glad to have slept through that. On nights we don’t have the service, my husband takes the baby from 10-12:30 p.m. and I make sure to sleep during that first stretch. I usually get a 2-hour sleeping stretch in the middle and at least an hour in the morning. If I take a 30-60 minute nap in the afternoon it’s doable.

We’re taking family photos/newborn pictures this weekend. And it’s supposed to hit 60 degrees here, so we may attempt a newborn excursion — we shall see! It was 17 degrees last night and wow. I’m trying to picture how people dealt with newborns in the winter in cold climates. Lots of blankets, I guess…

That feeding aside, he is doing incredibly well. I have thought, a great many times this week, that based on all my past babies I should still be pregnant right now, and would be so for another week or two! It is strange to think that a week ago my experience of this child was kicks to the ribs. Now I’m getting to know the intense little boy who was contained in my round belly. He becomes more alert all the time. When we went to the pediatrician on Thursday for another weight check, he was back past his hospital discharge weight. I’m pretty sure he’s gone up a lot since then as I can see his little face filling out. He is really taking in the world, studying such sounds as the vacuum cleaner and the wind chimes.

It’s not been an easy week, of course. I haven’t slept much. My own recovery seems slow. I imagine that’s partly my “advanced maternal age” and (possibly moreso) the nasty cold I contracted in the hospital. But I’m trying to soak in this sweet little guy’s face, and this time that I know is passing quickly. I am managing to feel nostalgic for now, even as I am in it! I’m trying to write down all my memories of this holiday break. I’m grateful for my time logs, which are helping to cement memories I know will fade. I am trying to step outside the bustle for a minute to see and savor this time.

Because of course, life continues. The mundane: adding money to my eldest’s lunch account. Signing kids up for camp (to get the early bird discount, naturally. I have now created our 2020 Summer Camp spreadsheet). My husband has been dealing with the older kids, mostly. Today he took all four of them skiing, which has made the house mercifully quiet, but was also chaotic as we got four children into their long underwear and snow pants and made sure that they left with four sets of gloves, helmets, etc.

And then there was yesterday’s adventure. Longtime readers know I was concerned about kid #5 potentially sharing a birthday with kid #4 (in mid-January). Thanks to the early arrival, their birthdays are now actually farther apart than kid #2 and kid #3, so while it will be birthday season, they won’t be aiming for the same weekend for parties. But anyway — in early December, I had spent a reasonable amount of time trying to figure out when to do my soon-to-be 5-year-old’s birthday party. I elected to schedule that for this past Saturday, figuring that would be before the baby’s arrival. Then it wasn’t. So the seven of us, my mother-in-law, and our new Saturday sitter headed over to Chuck E. Cheese yesterday. We had enough adults that the baby could stay in the van with supervision, and thus avoid the unique microbial environment of everyone’s favorite kid casino. My preschooler had a great time celebrating with his friends and…I survived.

I’m sure the next 168 hours will bring more changes. In the meantime, I’m glad the little guy gave me a chance to type up these memories while he’s asleep on my lap!

In other news: Interested in tracking your time? Sign up for the 2020 Time Tracking Challenge and get daily emails from me to guide the process! The challenge starts every Monday, and you’ll get your first email on Sunday. You can do any week you’d like, but this next one (Jan 6-12) is a good one. About 400 people have signed up to track this week — why not figure out where the time really goes?

There are many upsides to this. I have reasonable control over when and where I work, with the ability to scale up and down.

However, if I don’t work, I don’t get paid (to some degree; some stuff is passive). More importantly, since the business is basically my words/image/voice/presence, if I stop working there isn’t much of a business. Given how much time I’ve put into building this thing, and the commitments I’ve already made, and — not a small point — how much I enjoy it, I don’t want to go completely dormant.

All of this means that taking maternity leave as a self-employed person tends to look different from the corporate variety of leave. As I approach my fifth time through this experience, I’m keeping in mind a few lessons learned over the years.

I shouldn’t assume everyone knows I’m pregnant. If I was reporting to an office 40 hours a week, my gigantic belly would be absolutely obvious to my co-workers. But I was reminded again the other day that with virtual work, even people you work with quite closely (as in exchanging daily emails) aren’t seeing you. So why would they know? If there’s going to be a workflow change, best to bring it up a few months ahead of time. (Whoops).

I can ask for a pause. I’ve had various recurring gigs over the years. When I’ve asked to stop meeting regular deadlines for a while, people have generally been OK with it. There’s no guarantee I won’t be replaced, or that the client won’t leave, with the new person having no clue who I am, but that’s the freelance life anyway. An alternate solution is to…

Work ahead. This is what I’m doing with my podcasts. My goal with Before Breakfast is to have episodes in the hopper through March by the time the baby arrives. Best of Both Worlds will also be recorded well ahead, though since I have a co-host who can produce episodes on her own, this is less of an issue.

I can say no to some things. I decided that I would not travel from mid-December through mid-April. This has involved turning down work (primarily speaking opportunities), which is never easy. As a self-employed person, I often feel like a hunter-gatherer. If someone tells me, hey, there’s a mastodon right over there, my inclination is to go get it. You never know when other mastodons will appear! But the funny thing is…they do. In the past I’ve said yes to a few marginal things and this time, especially since I assume it’s the last time, probably best to take it easy for a bit. That said, I can…

Manage the pipeline. Proposals tend to take a while to wend their way through systems. That means that the month or so before giving birth can actually be a great time to put in bids for new work, or to turn in things that will eventually come back to you, but need a lot of other people’s input in the mean time. With any luck, people will be ready to have you start a few months later. If you scale down this marketing and speculative work since you want to take time off, you won’t have a ton of time to work on it in the first few months caring for the baby, and then the pipeline will feel empty right as you’re ready to scale back up.

I can accept that it’s OK to be not completely off. This is the biggest difference between self-employed “leave” and employed leave. If you employ people they are entitled to whatever time off is contractually theirs without you bugging them. As a business owner, though, you might make different decisions. I could stop working entirely, but why? My feeling has always been that since I’m not reporting to an office away from my baby and I’m setting my own hours and choosing my own tasks it’s OK to do a few things here and there. I like my work and enjoy it. In the past I’ve generally been operating at about 25 percent capacity for a few weeks, and then around 50 percent for the duration of what might be a normal maternity leave. I’m probably at about 75 percent for the next few months. So I’m guessing that’s what it will be this time around too. The interesting thing with this sort of work is that while there’s some correlation between hours and productivity, some is just random. I wrote what has turned out to be my most successful product (the What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast ebook) in the 6 weeks after kid #3 was born in fall 2011.

If you work for yourself, how have you handled births or other major care-taking/medical events? Please let me know your discoveries!

Photo: Look what showed up at my house! I forgot how tiny the newborn sizes were.