A newborn is no vacation, but it can be a sab-baby-cal under the right conditions

I’m just past one month of being postpartum with my fourth baby. I want to share my story of creative flourishing in the postpartum period, because there are a variety of narratives to the contrary and discovering this flourishing has been an unexpected joy to me given the prevailing wisdom it seems that this period is one to be endured not enjoyed.

I know I’m not alone here – because I have some great penpals and folks in the same house with the same experiences, so I also hope to inspire others in my orbit to blog more on the topic.

Disclaimers

One slice of probability space

I’ll emphasize that this will not hold for everyone, and it may not even hold for me reliably should I meet the same circumstances again. There is a large combination of luck involved, combined with my personal preferences, which in the right proportions can combine to produce creative flourishing. The true reality of postpartum in the human condition runs the gamut, this is just one slice of it for one person.

What Makes this Possible

My husband took two weeks of parental leave, and we have a full-time caregiver weekdays 8-4 to help with the older kids including school dropoffs, pickups, family laundry, light cleaning and shopping. This first month I’ve been focused on the newborn while the help I have – husband and nanny – have focused on the bigger kids. Being a fourth time mom I also have a variety of experiences under my belt and when met with the familiar I’m confident. Finally, with the advent of agentic and genAI capabilities, executing my creative vision is easier than ever (and requires less focused intellectual capacity). I’m positive without these factors my baby creativity bloom would look much different.

Postpartum energy, not expected but welcome

Postpartum with baby 4 I have had a wave of energy. I breastfeed, on demand, and a newborn is hungry every 1-3 hours. Pregnancy prepared me for this, as in the tail end I was awaking every 1-2 hours to pee with the pressure on my bladder and hydration needs combined. Still – the gaps between waking and sleeping were larger in this period than during pregnancy, reducing my overall sleep: my total average sleep dropped a few hours. I manage about 5 hours spread throughout the night, with an additional hour nap during the day.

2am at the Office – with my baby boss

A converted walk in closet, with a window and central air/heat serves as my headquarters for my most important responsibility: the baby as well as the place where I’m enjoying podcasts, youtube, and texting my OpenClaw instance. A friend who saw my headquarters said it would “make a nice bedroom for rent in New York”: AKA it’s small to the point of incredulity while still being functional. Cosy and perfect for an adult and an infant.

I have a hue light bulb which I can dim and change to the color of my choice, and some NFC stickers scattered around to help me quickly set to different settings. There’s a Snoo in the corner – that fancy bassinet that helps kids sleep on their back. These are available for rent, and after my second baby refused to sleep without being held (which is cosy during the day but gets dangerous at night), I swear by them for babies three and four. They also have great resell value for those who buy. Then there’s a diaper change table on top of a small dresser which houses diapers – cloth from a service, a drawer of baby clothes, a drawer of nursing/night time clothes for me, and a drawer of sheets and burp cloths. There’s a small container for wipes on the dresser, and a big container for diapers on the side with a laundry basket on top. There’s a set of chargers plugged into electric candles and an Alexa and a Home Assistant Device (prototyping). That is my world; at night I’ve been in here every 1-3 hours for 15-60 minutes.

I sit in a Poang chair (these are the best!) next to the Snoo and have a nursing pillow, a blanket, and a few hooks next to me along with a small stool that doubles as a table (and contains snacks!). The hook has a pair of bluetooth sleep headphones (I swear by these) and an arm that houses an iPad. At some arbitrary time (2am say), the baby stirs and I go in, set the lights to red 10% and change their diaper. I sit down to feed and enjoy. If I’m sleepy, I stay so, but if I’m more awake I go ahead and listen or watch media or text the OpenClaw instance. I hold the baby for 10-15 minutes upright to get some burps and gas out, and then set them down to sleep. At these moments I feel I’m at the top of a mountain, enjoying a beautiful view. Serene, accomplished, exhausted, in awe. I return to sleep. Or watch the sun rise, open the curtain, turn the hue light from red to white and greet the day.

Baby on Board, Monitors On

We help send the bigger kids off to school with dad and wait for our caregiver to arrive to help with the 2 year old, I read and snuggle the two on the couch and snag my breakfast. Then there’s probably another feed for the baby as the caregiver takes over the older kids, which understandably makes the baby sleepy.

Baby’s well fed fresh from the nursery and could be set down in their Snoo, but why do that all the time when I could wear the baby and enjoy the cuddles? So I strap them on in a wrap and walk around, eat something, touch grass. But they are still sleeping after an hour or two – because what is more comfortable than being strapped to mom, and there’s no way I want to set them down.

My bedroom also has a second converted closet, where I have a large desk, a few monitors, and a cosy chair I can sit back and wear baby sleeping. Here’s where the mac mini for the OpenClaw system lives, and where I do the updates I need to be hands-on-keyboard here. These are usually one time unlocks – setting up API keys or new accounts to enable new skills for the AI system, and of course the initial setup. I have a standard desk chair that’s sitting in storage, and prefer to use the wheeled larger chair pictured below for stability while wearing the snoozy baby. Behind me is my bed, for napping myself.

What I actually Made

The type of creative projects that this has spawned have been four blogs (five if you include this one):

1. Birth Story of my 4th baby – codeXgalactic

Three of which detail my main project, which has been a deep dive on AI fundamentals and creating the latest with agentic AI.

For more consumption rather than creation, I’ve been able to plow through media listening to a lot of great podcasts and occasionally having the bandwidth to read (appendix contains my selection). Long form podcasts are the sweet spot for me as they provide enough intellectual engagement to marry well with light sleep deprivation.

Month Two on the Horizon – a new rhythm

Now that we are ending the month (baby is just over one month!) the baby is just beginning to sleep one longer stretch at the beginning of the night – 3-5 hours, and I have a good sense of when they are entering that stretch so I can get one too. They are starting to acclimate to the bassinet, and spent more than 11 hours in it spread out of the course of the day. That’s a lot of time spent apart. After 3 tries pumping milk for bottles, the 3rd the baby got the hang of it and I spent my first time away (as well as my first morning being able to focus). The baby had their first “drowsy but awake” instead of being fed to sleep daytime nap. So we are transitioning from the most difficult time into the next phase. I’m excited to move the mix more from consumption to production.

What I read, Watched, and Listened to

I include these for both some recommendations and as a highlight for being pretty intentional about enjoying the moments in between activity. I’ve had some thought provoking input on AI, business, and biology and enjoyed some more relaxing media as well.

AI Fundamentals Deep Dive

These have been great to get my personal neural network firing on more cylinders. I’ve enjoyed the theme of practically experimenting with the fruits of AI while reviewing the math of its fundamentals. I have the vision to progress into a personal project that marries the two likely on my biology theme (I’m thinking to investigate genetically modifying plants).