Chris is away staying at a hotel for the next two nights because his company is having their annual kick of here. And the company is requiring everyone to stay at a hotel even if they live in New York City because they wanted to create a Covid bubble to ensure that everyone remained safe. This is a little bit ridiculous when you think about it because when you have colleagues who are traveling from literally around the world who have not seen each other since before the pandemic, it is highly unlikely that you are going to prevent and police them from socializing with people that they know outside of work as well as each other outside of work events. And also, if you are at work events, you will be mingling with your colleagues, so how is that any different than mingling with them at a bar or at a restaurant? 

Needless to say, I was pretty annoyed at this… who decided on such a stupid and senseless set up? This also meant that I felt even more overwhelmed without him around, even though he had already gone back to work technically and was working from home. So we arranged for our night nurse to come three nights in a row, which we have never done before. In addition to that, my very good friend offered to come and stay overnight to help out with the baby’s daytime bottle feeds. 

I was grateful for my friend’s help. But it also made me even more cognizant of the fact that I have no family nearby to help when situations like this come up. And when you think about it, you can really only rely on your friends to help out this way just so many times before it becomes a bit tiring for them. For example, my friend was super eager to help out, especially because she had not seen me or the baby since the day after we came home from the hospital because she didn’t want us to get exposed to her potential exposure to Covid. And while she said she was happy to help with the first and second bottle feed, every subsequent bottle feed, you could tell that she was a little bit less excited each time and saw it as a bit of a chore.

I don’t blame her. It is a chore, especially when you have to do it 7-8 times a day. It’s not fun anymore and is just something that has to get done. It has diminishing marginal utility like most things that we enjoy. But that is life with a child – there are things that are not glamorous that you just have to get done for them to grow and be nourished.

And if you don’t have family or friends nearby, you’ll end up having to spend a lot of money on paid help. And well, we don’t have Jeff Bezos’s bank account size, so that ends up adding up… REALLY quickly.