Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Communications Manager in Arizona

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For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader O, who lives in Phoenix with her husband and daughter and works as communications manager. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! — Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics About This Working Mom…

Name: O 
Location: Live and work in the Phoenix area 
Job: Communications manager for a well-known franchise 
Age: 27 
Home Situation: My husband, 6-month-old daughter, our two dogs, and I live in a 1,500-square-foot house in the Phoenix area. We bought the house last year when we found out I was pregnant. My husband is currently in school, paid for with the GI Bill. He goes to school 15 hours a week, and I work full time. We live very close to his school, but I commute about 30 minutes each way to work.
Childcare Situation: My mum watches our daughter during the day while my husband is in school and so that he’s got quiet time at home to do homework. She’s with my mum from about 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. most days.

How is the work-life balance in your industry in general? What are common ways of juggling responsibilities that you see your colleagues and coworkers doing?
It’s pretty good, I think. A lot of my coworkers are parents to young kids. We actually are just coming out of a whole host of us having kids around the same time! I’ve got two other coworkers whose kids are a week older and a week younger than my daughter, and a handful of other people have kids under a year old. There’s also a lot of mums in leadership positions. We’re a very small office, so sometimes there’s pressure to take on more, or answer your phone/email after work hours, but for the most part, it’s very flexible.

A lot of the other mums in higher-level positions have a partner that stays home. It’s actually more common in my office for the dad to stay home, which I think is pretty cool. For the folks at my level (manager), both parents are typically working, with some trading off on who stays home when the kid is sick, etc. Our office is generally pretty flexible on working from home when needed.

How do you handle household chores, such as laundry, grocery shopping, housecleaning, etc.? Who does what, and when — and how often? 
My husband does a lot of the house chores since he’s at home more than I am. It’s still a challenge keeping on top of things with a small baby. I handle the grocery shopping, meal planning, and cooking. He does a lot of the cleaning and the laundry. We try to keep the kitchen clean every night, with moderate success, and to do all the laundry on the weekends, as well as do the grocery shopping. My husband will do the vacuuming, mopping, and bathroom cleaning throughout the week.

A Week in My Life

Sunday

5:00 a.m. Baby wakes up to eat, goes back in her crib to sleep for another couple hours
8:00 a.m. The baby wakes up, I bring her into bed to eat, she is babbling and wakes my husband up. We all hang out in bed for a while
8:30 a.m. Husband takes the baby to change, I put the coffee on and empty the dishwasher, and put on the news. We drink several cups of coffee each and watch some YouTube (which is kind of like our cable — we’ve each got channels we follow that release episodes of different series we like).
10:30 a.m. Baby nods off for half an hour but wakes up when I go to put her in the crib, so we get the baby gym out and play on the floor while my husband fills the dishwasher, tidies up the kitchen, picks up dog poo in the yard, and changes the sheets on our bed. I text our friends/the baby’s godparents and invite them over for dinner.
12:00 p.m. Husband gets in the shower, I feed the baby, and she falls asleep. She goes down and I make a grocery list and a meal plan for the week and make myself some lunch — chicken and green bean stir fry leftovers from a few days ago.
2:oo p.m. I run to the grocery store to pick up the things I need for meals that week. We did a big grocery shop last week, so I don’t need much, just a few vegetables and a couple other things to finish out the recipes.
3:00 p.m. I unload the groceries and set aside the things I’ll need for dinner tonight. I text our friends to let them know they can head over whenever. The baby has nodded back off while I was at the store, and she’s asleep in her bouncer while my husband is playing a video game.
4:00 p.m. Our friends arrive, we crack some beers and catch up. The baby wakes up, so we all take turns entertaining her.
5:45 p.m. I start dinner, white pesto pasta with salad and garlic bread. I open a bottle of wine and set the table.
7:00 p.m. I plate the food while my husband makes the baby a bowl of sweet potatoes and gets her in the high chair. We all sit down to eat, and take turns feeding the baby.
8:00 p.m. Dinner is done, our friends start rinsing the dishes, I give the baby a bath, get her in her jammies and join everyone on the couch to nurse her before she goes to bed. She doesn’t even last 10 minutes before she’s out.
8:10 p.m. Put the baby down, hang out on the couch til our friends leave.
9:45 p.m. Say goodbye to our friends, round up the last of the dishes, and head to bed.

Here’s what O told us about splitting household tasks with her husband: 

We’ve never had an explicit discussion of who does what; things have just kind of fallen in line in what feels like an equal way. I like cooking and grocery shopping, so I take that on. I also do some of the life-admin stuff: calling the pediatrician, dealing with the insurance company, etc. He handles the day-to-day cleaning since he’s home more, and honestly, that stuff bugs him more than it does me. Plus, if he handles it during the day, we can both concentrate on spending time with our daughter and each other when I’m at home.

Monday

3:00 a.m. Baby wakes up to eat, comes into the bed with us.
4:45 a.m. My alarm goes off, I get up and put the baby back in her crib, let the dogs outside, make coffee and a bowl of cereal, and watch PBS NewsHour Weekend from Sunday night and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. I get up crazy early so that I have an hour to watch the news and drink coffee in peace before work
6:00 a.m. Get dressed, do my hair and makeup, put my backpack with my laptop, notebook and lunch, and my pumping bag next to the door.
6:45 a.m. Get the baby up and spend 10 minutes snuggling before waking up my husband and passing her off to him to get dressed.
7:05 a.m. Load up the car with my backpack, pumping bag, baby, and her diaper bag and drop her off at my mum’s house around the corner. We’re unbelievably lucky that my mum is so close and available to watch our daughter during the week.
7:20 a.m. Leave my mum’s house and head to work.
7:50 a.m. Arrive at work, make another coffee and a frozen breakfast burrito, and start answering emails
8:30 a.m. Pump
9:00 a.m. My boss is gone today and tomorrow, so I’m handling all the communications that need to go out on Tuesday. Spend the morning emailing and chasing people down to get final details and approval for draft communications.
11:30 a.m. Eat lunch at my desk, read my personal emails.
12:15 p.m. Knock off a few quick things on my to do list.
1:00 p.m. Pump
1:30 p.m. Spend the rest of the afternoon working on a communication draft and an ongoing project.
2:30 p.m. My husband picks up our daughter from my mum’s and takes some shawarma chicken out of the freezer to defrost.
3:00 p.m. Leave work to meet my husband for our daughter’s six-month checkup. It takes me about 25 minutes to get home, so I have just enough time to change into more comfortable shoes, put the expressed milk in the fridge, and turn around to go to the doctor’s
5:00 p.m. Leave the ped’s office, head home. Play with the baby, watch some TV.
6:00 p.m. Make dinner while my husband entertains the baby and gets her dinner ready — peas and carrots tonight for her, lemon tahini broccoli and shawarma chicken thighs for us.
7:00 p.m. We all sit down to eat. Baby’s in the high chair, and it’s my husband’s turn to feed her tonight. I scarf my dinner while she gets hers, then I take her for a bath while he eats his and cleans up.
7:30 p.m. She’s bathed and lotioned up, then I read her a story — Sleeping Beauty tonight — and nurse her to sleep. She’s out in 10 minutes and I put her in the crib.
8:10 p.m. I pour a glass of wine and get my things together for the morning. I pack my lunch, clean the pump parts and bottles and set them out to dry, and transfer the expressed milk from the fridge to bags for the freezer.
9:00 p.m. Join my hubby on the couch for an episode of GLOW on Netflix.
9:30 p.m. We both gather up any straggling cups or dishes, brush our teeth, and head to bed

We asked O how pumping has been going and how long she plans to continue: 

I am feeling ready to be done pumping at work — it’s a huge pain. I mean, I love that I get to keep breastfeeding, I know if I wean off pumping during the day, it’s likely the breastfeeding is soon to follow, but argh, I hate spending so much time in that room! Work had been so accommodating, and the room we have is pretty nice so I don’t want to complain too much about it, but I hate that an hour of day is lost to that little room. My goal is to make it to a year, and I think I can make it, there’s only five months more to go, but there will be MUCH rejoicing when I’m done.

Tuesday

3:30 a.m. Baby wakes up to eat, and I bring her into the bed to sleep until my alarm goes off.
4:45 a.m. Get up, transfer the baby back to her crib, do my morning routine, let the dogs out, coffee, news.
6:00 a.m. Get dressed, get my stuff together, get the baby up and dressed. My husband gets up, gets dressed for school, gets the baby in her car seat while I load up the car
7:00 a.m. Head to my mum’s to drop the baby off and head to work.
7:45 a.m. Get to work, make a coffee, and look through my emails.
8:30 Pump
9:00 a.m. Start pushing out communications, chasing down last-minute info.
10:00 a.m. Get on a call for a professional group I’m part of.
11:00 a.m. Pull together the next two communications for the day, schedule them to post, heat up my lunch and eat at my computer
12:00 p.m. Head into a meeting, schedule the next few communications.
1:00 p.m. Give a training on our communications platform to a group rotating through our corporate office.
1:30 p.m Pump
2:00 p.m. Meeting to touch base on the logistics for an in-office event as part of a communications/engagement strategy.
3:00 p.m. Finish out the communications for the day. My husband picks our daughter up from my mum’s.
4:15 p.m. Head home.
5:00 p.m. Arrive at home, change out of my work clothes, rinse out my lunch tupperware, put the expressed milk in the freezer, clean the pump parts, and hang out in the bedroom for half an hour, reading stuff on my phone and playing a game.
6:00 p.m. Trade off baby duty with my husband. He takes a bag of Trader Joe’s orange chicken out of the freezer, cuts up some green beans to stir fry, and puts on a pot of rice while I feed the baby and sit at the counter with her as she plays with the bowl of fruit on the counter.
7:00 p.m. We all sit down to eat. It’s my turn to feed the baby, so hubby eats, I feed her, and then he takes her for a bath while I eat and tidy up.
7:50 p.m. I take the clean and lotioned-up baby, read her a story, get her in her jammies, nurse her and put her down for the night
8:45 p.m. Watch some TV before heading to bed.
9:30 p.m. Hubby and I wrap up for the night and head to bed.

Wednesday

3:00 a.m. Baby wakes up to eat, goes back in the crib.
5:00 a.m. I get out of bed, let the dogs out, make coffee, put the news on.
6:15 a.m. I’m running behind this morning, so my husband deals with the baby while I get ready.
7:15 a.m. Leave to drop the baby off at my mum’s and head to work.
8:00 a.m. Get to work, make a coffee.
8:30 a.m. Pump
9:00 a.m. Spend the morning in meetings.
12:00 p.m. Lunch at my desk, work on a data analysis project.
1:30 p.m. Pump
2:00 p.m. Work on a variety of things for the rest of the day.
3:00 p.m. My husband picks the baby up from my mum’s.
4:15 p.m. Head home for the day.
5:00 p.m. Get home, change out of my work clothes, take salmon out of the freezer for dinner, and jump in the shower.
6:30 p.m. Start dinner for us and for the baby. She’s having corn tonight.
7:00 p.m. We all sit down to eat, I eat while the baby gets fed, then trade off for bath time.
7:45 p.m. Story time, nurse, and in the crib for the baby.
8:30 p.m. My husband plays a video game, and I head to the bedroom to read for an hour before falling asleep.

Thursday

3:00 a.m. Baby wakes up to eat, we both fall asleep in bed, but she wakes up several times to eat more.
4:30 a.m. She’s finally fallen asleep, but I’m awake now, so I get out of bed, let the dogs out, make coffee, put the news on.
5:45 a.m. I get dressed for work, get my lunch together and my pumping stuff.
6:30 a.m. Husband wakes up while I’m getting ready to leave. I have an 8:00 a.m. meeting today, so he’ll take the baby to my mum’s so I can leave early.
6:50 a.m. I leave for work.
7:25 a.m. Arrive at work, make a breakfast burrito and coffee, and get through as much as I can before the meeting.
9:00 a.m. Pump
9:30 a.m. Work on a variety of things, answer emails.
10:00 a.m. Realize I left my lunch at home.
11:30 a.m. Head to Panera for lunch, decide to eat there rather than at my desk.
12:30 p.m. Back to work, wrap up a couple projects.
1:30 p.m. Pump
2:00 p.m. Meeting with my boss.
3:00 p.m. Husband picks the baby up from my mum’s.
4:15 p.m. Head home, stop at Target to pick up a swimsuit for the baby. Her old one barely fit over the weekend, and we have swim class tonight so she needs a size up.
5:10 p.m. Get home, put all my stuff away. and get myself ready for class while my husband gets her in the new suit.
5:45 p.m. Head out for swim class.
6:00 p.m. Get in the pool. I love taking her to class — she has such a great time, I really enjoy hanging out with the other parents, and she’s always asleep early on swim nights.
7:00 p.m. Get home from swim class, and my brother comes over. He comes by once a week to walk the dogs and have dinner with us. My husband made dinner and I’m starving, so I eat with my brother while my husband gives the baby a bath and a bottle.
7:45 p.m. She’s sound asleep, my brother is out with the dogs so my husband and I cuddle on the couch and chat with a beer
8:30 p.m. My brother comes back with the dogs and heads home.
9:00 p.m. I call it a night and head to bed. My husband stays up for a while. I don’t wake up when he comes to bed.

Friday

3:30 a.m. Baby wakes up to eat, I bring her into the bed to sleep until my alarm goes off.
4:45 a.m. Get up, transfer the baby back to her crib, do my morning routine, let the dogs out, coffee, news.
6:00 a.m. Get dressed, get my stuff together, get the baby up and dressed. My husband gets up, gets dressed for school, gets the baby in her car seat while I load up the car.
7:00 a.m. Head to my mum’s to drop the baby off and head to work.
7:45 a.m. Get to work, make a coffee, and look through my emails.
8:30 a.m. Pump
9:00 a.m. Work on the final things for the week
12:45 p.m. My husband is done early today, so he brings the baby up to the office with lunch. We sit in the cafe area in my office, and everybody at work gets a chance to hold the baby while we eat.
2:00 p.m. I feed the baby in the pumping room at work, and he heads home with the her while I finish out the day.
4:00 p.m. Last-minute meeting with my boss.
4:45 p.m. Head home from work.
5:30 p.m. Get home, get changed put all my stuff away, and head to Costco for our monthly Costco date night. We stock up on whatever we need, I wear the baby and get some cuddle time, we wander around for an hour or so and grab a slice of pizza, a soda, and a churro.
7:30 p.m. Get home, unload the groceries. I get the baby in her jammies, feed her, and put her down for the night.
8:30 p.m. My husband and I sit down on the couch with a couple beers and watch a movie, which I fall asleep half way through.
11:00 p.m. He wakes me up and we both head to bed.

We asked O how much time she typically gets to spend time with friends:

We have definitely made a point to keep that aspect of our lives as close to intact as possible since having our daughter, even when it’s pretty tiring, and we definitely say no to a lot more events and get-togethers than we did pre-baby. We have an active group of friends. And we try and work things into our chores, like the Costco date night — it’s not exactly romantic to wander around a warehouse, but we have to be there anyway, so we look at all the new stuff, catch up with one another, get a slice, make a night of it. And it’s important to us that our friends have a relationship with our daughter. We’re the first in our group to have kids, so it’s a learning process for sure.

Saturday

5:00 a.m. Baby wakes up to eat and I put her back down.
8:00 a.m. Baby wakes up again, and this time there’s no going back to sleep. Husband gets up with her, and I lie in bed for another 20 minutes looking at my phone before I get up.
8:45 a.m. I sit down with coffee on the couch to watch the news and a few YouTube videos.
10:15 a.m. Decide to get in the pool. Husband goes to get changed and skim the pool, I get in my swimsuit, get the baby in hers, lather her up with sunscreen and feed her.
11:00 a.m. She falls asleep, so we seize the opportunity, put her in the crib, and get in the pool for an hour and a half (!!!) before she wakes up.
12:30 p.m. Take the baby in the pool to practice the stuff we learned at swim class. Lots of giggling and splashing.
1:15 p.m. She’s done being in the water, so we all get out. We sit by the pool to air dry while I feed her.
1:40 p.m. We all need a shower, so I get in the tub with the baby, wash her while my husband tidies up. I pass her off to him to get dry and dressed, I wash off and take her back so he can shower.
3:45 p.m. Plop down on the couch to watch an episode of Law & Order
4:45 p.m. I get ready to go out. It’s our friend’s 30th birthday, and he’s going out for a big dinner and then heading back to his house. I’m going for the dinner; my husband is going to hang out after.
5:15 p.m. Head out for dinner.
7:50 p.m. Get home, get myself and the baby changed into our pjs, my husband gets ready to leave, and I feed the baby and put her down.
8:20 p.m. Baby is down, my husband leaves, and I pour a glass of wine and watch some TV before heading to bed.
11:00 p.m. Husband gets home and wakes me up on the couch. We both head to bed.

Thanks so much to O for sharing a bit of her life as a working mom! Readers, what’s your biggest takeaway from her week of work as a communications manager as well as her general work/life balance?

Stock photo via Stencil.