Today, we’re going to talk about the typical day of a PhD parent – mom addition – except I don’t have a “typical” day. Instead, I have a three-and-a-half month old, Percy, who is teething and going through the four month sleep regression1 early, so no sleep for baby and no sleep for me. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to run downstairs in the morning – normally, a little bit before 7 a.m. – to start making my breakfast. Before it’s even ready, my son will wake up from his last nighttime sleep session. Before eating my oatmeal and drinking my tea, I’ll go back upstairs and change him out of his pjs and dirty diaper. When infants don’t feel well (like when teeth are forcing their way through their gums), they tend to get clingy, so he’ll sit on my lap while I eat breakfast. Sometimes, he’ll let me set him down long enough to clean some bottles.
![a stainless steel sink is filled halfway with water and bubbles from dish soap and you can see bottles and breast pump parts sticking up throughout the bubbles](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2022/02/bottles.jpg)
![An aerial view of a 3 month old infant napping in a crib with blue dinosaur sheets, wearing a long sleeve onesie with cartoon wolf faces and gray socks](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2022/02/percy-napping-225x300.jpg)
After breakfast, we go back upstairs, where he gets to play on his mat. Currently, this activity includes lots of arm waving and clumsy grabbing, and when he figures out I’m more than two feet away from him, getting dressed and brushing my teeth, it includes screaming. With all the running back and forth to reassure him I didn’t disappear, this process usually lasts until his first nap around 8:30 or 9 a.m.