Day in the Life of a 38-year-old mom, 27 weeks pregnant with her third child, who works part-time

Hang on, I have to pee.

12:48am- I wake up to pee.

2:22am- I wake up to pee.

4:38am- I wake up to cough violently, which makes me pee my pants a little, and I realize I need to get up to pee.

4:39am- My 8-month-old kitten Ivy sees I’m up. How perfect, she thinks, now Mother can pet me. She lies on my face and purrs and kneads her claws into my neck. I try to go back to sleep with a cat on my face and a set of small daggers in my neck. Somehow, I am successful.

6:58am- My 5-year-old Elliot bounces into my room and launches himself into our bed, landing squarely on the fetus growing in my stomach. It’s only 2 days after Daylight Savings and my kids haven’t yet adjusted. Normally, he gets up at 6am, so the 7am fetus launch is actually a welcome reprise from our normal wake-ups. My husband and I switch off nights and mornings, so one parent is on duty all night if a kid wakes up (which happens rarely at this point, my kids are 3 and 5) and that same parent gets up with the kids while the other one gets to sleep in a little. Our normal routine is that the kids get in bed with the parent on duty and watch videos on Instagram. The videos are supposed to be educational, like a zoo or aquarium’s account, but sometimes we slip into HelloKitty or Pokemon. Today my son requests to watch a snake account, where a guy in his twenties walks around Texas in board shorts at midnight and flips over rocks to find snakes set to music that’s too Gen Z for me to identify. I actually love this account.

7:45am- Suspiciously, my 3-year-old daughter is still not up. I guess it’s not that suspicious because of Daylight Saving time and because she threw up at school yesterday, so she might be sick but truly, who can say. Kids throw up randomly all the time, I’ve learned. My son runs downstairs because he has the idea to make a treat stand and “sell” treats to our three cats.

7:51 am- The treat stand is a huge hit, despite the cats not possessing currency. While my son does this, I make the cats’ breakfast and start making coffee, lunches, and breakfast. My husband emerges from upstairs, and he starts getting the kids’ clothes ready.

8:11am- My 3-year-old Winnie emerges from her room, holding four Pokémon toys in her tiny hands.

8:13am- Oh no, I took a bite of Pirate’s Booty I was packing for my kids’ lunch and my crown fell out. I spit it out in a lump of chewed Pirate’s Booty. I will deal with this later, I guess.

8:15am- Normally, we all eat breakfast together at the table like a movie family, but the late wake-ups have messed it all up, so my husband hands my son a bowl of cereal and tells him he has to eat it fast because they’re leaving for the bus in five minutes.

8:26am- Miraculously, Elliot is ready to leave for the bus, which arrives in 4 minutes, but it is a 5-minute walk to the bus stop. My husband pulls out Elliot’s scooter and runs behind him as he scoots to the bus stop. I hope they make it, but this is no longer any of my business.

8:30am- Winnie and I sit down for breakfast together. I am having yogurt with granola, and she is having toast with sprinkles and strawberries. She only eats the sprinkles off the toast and complains that the strawberries are “too slimy,” and she needs a fork to eat them. I bring her a fork. She does not eat them.

8:45am- I get Winnie dressed. She goes to preschool three mornings a week, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my mom watches her while I work. I try to brush her hair, and she screams, “NO, I LIKE IT MESSY,” and messes it up again. Whatever. I feel my half tooth with my tongue. Will I get bacteria in it and die? Is that what crowns are for? My mom has a friend who had a toothache and went on a cruise anyway, and then died. Right on the cruise. Of tooth. I should call the dentist, probably.

8:57am- We finally leave the house after trying to find new shoes for Winnie because yesterday she threw up on hers, and I haven’t cleaned them yet. We settle on a pair of too-small Crocs from last summer. I bribe her to leave the house with a Kit Kat, even though she absolutely loves going to my parents’ apartment and begs to go there every day. But getting in the car is the hardest thing a 3-year-old can do. I’ve spent most of the last six years of parenting trying to convince my children to get in the car. When we get to her car seat, she claims she “forgets” how to get up. The actual problem is that she’s still holding four Pokémon, but I don’t have the fight in me today (have I mentioned I’m 27 weeks pregnant?), so I just lift her into the car seat and hand her a Kit Kat.

9:00am- We finally pull out of my driveway. We are supposed to BE at my mom’s house at 9am, but whatever. My daughter wants to hear “Go Go Flamingo,” a song from the Disney+ show The Lion Guard, four times in a row. It’s kind of a banger, though, so I don’t mind. I briefly wonder if I could sing this at karaoke.

9:16am- It takes about 30 minutes to drive to my parents’ apartment in the morning. This is a really long time, but we all pretend it isn’t because having my mom close by and willing to watch the kids for free is such a huge benefit. Winnie asks if I’m sure we are going the right way. I assure her I know how to get to my mom’s house, but she is skeptical. She yells my name many times in a row as if she has something very important to say, and I am refusing to listen to her. I assure her I’m listening. Finally, after a dramatic pause, she tells me, “Cheetahs need water and food to live.”

9:30am- We finally roll up to my parents’ apartment complex. She lets me press the elevator button, a huge honor in her culture. I tell her I appreciate it. When the elevator opens, she makes me race her down the hall to my parents’ apartment. I lose, and she taunts me. We open the door to my parents’ apartment, and I flop down in a chair and open my laptop to start working. I usually work at their house on Tuesdays because it’s too annoying to drive all the way back, and I belong to a gym near them. My daughter announces to everyone that when she was a baby, she jumped out of a plane with a parachute.

9:30-11:50am I work while my mom plays with my daughter. At 11 am, my dad asks if we can watch “The Ladies,” by which he means The View. He loves The Ladies. I say sure.

11:50am- I close my computer and leave for my 12 pm workout class at F45. Have I mentioned I am 27 weeks pregnant? I still go to F45, which I’ve been going to for about two years. It’s a hard workout, and I’m very proud of myself for showing up every week. I used to go a few times a week, but now once a week is enough to almost kill me. I usually go with my best friend Joanna, who is not pregnant and goes every day, but she’s skipping today to run outside because it’s the first warm day in a while. Annoying for me because I can’t talk about how pregnant I am so everyone else in class can hear me and be proud of me, but whatever.

12pm-12:45pm F45. The workout isn’t that bad and I only have to skip one or two of the exercises due to my large belly getting in the way. I think everyone is very impressed.

1pm- Staff meeting over Zoom. My mom and Winnie have made me lunch! Homemade mac and cheese and a salad with apples. It’s so nice! I eat it while I do my meeting.

1-3pm I keep working while my mom and Winnie play.

3pm- I pack up Winnie and my stuff and get us in the car, once again bribing her with chocolate. We drive back to our house, and she falls asleep on the way, which is great because now I can listen to my audiobook instead of The Lion Guard music. We stop at the bus stop and wait for Elliot. I call the dentist and make an appointment for tomorrow.

3:50 pm- Elliot’s bus arrives and he jumps in the car. Winnie wakes up and is Mad. Toddlers HATE when they accidentally fall asleep in the car. Incredibly embarrassing to them.

3:55pm- We get back to our house and it’s actually warm outside today! After a really cold winter where we’ve barely been able to go outside, the kids are very excited. I bring out a small water table, some bubbles, chalk, and some popsicles. They happily play with these things and chase each other around while I sit and scroll on my phone and draw a chalk drawing of a cat on the sidewalk. This is my ideal afternoon with the kids normally, but at 27 weeks, I do kinda wish we were doing what we’ve done the rest of the winter which is crash out on the couch in front of the TV until dinner. But they are happy and my seasonal depression is melting away.

5:11 pm- My husband comes outside. He is done with work! He works from home as a lawyer. He’s always super helpful during the day when I need help with the kids, but today I haven’t needed him at all. I go inside to start making dinner. I’m making egg salad sandwiches for me and my husband, avocado toast for Elliot, and, sigh, sprinkle toast for Winnie. I will also put out some yellow peppers with dip that they may or may not eat.

5:27 pm- Elliot comes in crying hysterically. I ask what’s wrong and he says he isn’t going to tell me and stomps to his room. I quietly go up and let him sit on my lap and cry. Tantrums like this used to really set me off, but last year I got on anxiety meds and they have changed my entire parenting life. Now I don’t mind waiting for him to relax into my arms and tell me what happened. He finally does and says Winnie ruined his chalk drawing of a dragon. Winnie comes up with Matt and says she’s sorry. Matt explains Elliot dumped her water table over first and they both agree it was both of their fault and hug. For the first year and a half of Winnie’s life Elliot hated her so much. He would ask us every day to throw her in the trash or give he to another family and could barely be in the same room with her without screaming. I was distraught, worried they’d never have a good relationship. Watching my friends’ toddlers fawn over their baby siblings was incredibly difficult for me. Maybe they were just not compatible. I often found myself reading incredibly depressing essays about siblings who hated each other all the way to adulthood. But in the last year or so, they’ve become good friends. They still fight a lot, but when they aren’t fighting, they are usually playing a game and giggling together. It’s such a relief.

5:38 pm- The kids pull out Perler beads and start quietly crafting at the kitchen table while I finish dinner. Is this...a dream? Whose children are these?

6:10 pm- I put dinner on the table. Winnie refuses to eat and wants to finish her Perler bead project instead, so we just let her. Her doctor recently said toddlers sometimes really don’t need dinner, and we’ve held onto that like gospel.

6:37 pm- Dinner is over and Winnie is done with her beads. I iron the bead projects while Matt plays a board game with Elliot and Winnie watches. Elliot’s only 5, but he plays adult board games. It’s sort of unnerving how good he is at them, especially because he literally can’t read.

7:15 pm- The children notice they haven’t watched TV all day, but we have a strict no TV after dinner rule. I’m sure this will change eventually, but right now it’s too hard to pull them away from the TV, and I can’t handle fighting that fight AND the bedtime fight at the same time. Instead, I agree they can listen to Lion Guard songs on Spotify with me. They stare at the still picture of Kion the lion that appears on the phone like Victorian children who have just encountered a photograph for the first time, thirsting for their daily allotment of Media.

7:30 pm- Generally, we start bedtime now, but Winnie has decided to throw her nightly fit about only wanting MAMA to put her to bed, but it’s Dad’s night to put her to bed. But she doesn’t LIKE dada (she does). We make a deal, she will let dad put her to bed if I give her a bath. It’s too late for a bath, but I am a pushover. I try to remind myself that my kids are very good kids and giving in to them for wholesome things like “spending time with mom” isn’t going to make them spoiled brats. The boys play another board game while I give Winnie her bath.

8:06 pm- Oh no, she’s still in the bath. I have made a mistake.

8:30 pm- I finally drag Winnie out of the bath and get her pajamas on. My husband and I switch kids. Elliot picks out the longest book in the world about snakes for me to read to him.

9 pm- Jesus Christ, we finally finish the snake dissertation and I argue with Elliot about going to bed. It is NINE PM. Daylight Savings has really messed us up, but I can’t complain because it’s also curing my seasonal depression. I tell him to go upstairs and brush his teeth and he tells me I’m yelling at him, which I am not. Upstairs, I can hear my husband STILL reading to Winnie, who won’t stop talking. God help us.

9:10pm- The kids are finally all in bed with lights off, and we have been released. They may or may not be asleep, but I don’t care. Winnie often stays up and plays with toys or books in her bed, but that’s none of my business, as long as she doesn’t call for us. I am done being Mother to Humans, but now I must clock into my shift as Mother to Cats. The three cats have been following me around meowing for food, so I go downstairs and make their dinner and make myself a giant tumbler of ice water. I leave the dishes for my husband, we switch off making dinner and doing dishes every day. I made dinner today, so it’s his turn to do the dishes.

9:15pm- I head upstairs to shower. I have grand plans to fold laundry as well, but again, 27 weeks pregnant and exhausted, so chances are I will not. My whole house is in shambles in this season of our lives, but we do manage to get the dishes done and vacuum up crumbs, clean up cat and child vomit, etc. But the house is rarely tidy. It makes me anxious, but I remind myself this is temporary and one day I won’t have small children who pull everything out and throw toys all around the house and I will probably miss the feeling of stepping on a Barbie shoe.

9:16 pm- I make the mistake of lying down on my bed before my shower and now my kitten Ichabod wants to play fetch. He’s brought me a toy. I throw it and he brings it back and I throw it again. It’s so hard to say no. This is my problem with animals and kids. They’re so cute. He moves on from playing fetch to just attacking my feet. Time to shower.

9:32 pm- Oh no, I’m still scrolling on my phone in bed. Must get up to shower.

9:47 pm- I have now showered. I get into bed with wet hair, which will look insane in the morning for my 9 am dentist appointment to put my tooth back in my mouth. My husband is already in bed, doing lawyer work on his laptop. Normally, we would watch TV or a movie together, but I’m so, so tired and can’t think of anything to watch and he’s doing work anyway, so I just turn on my audiobook. Two of my cats climb on top of me and fall asleep.

10:02 pm- I start drifting off to sleep when I realize I’m STARVING, and run downstairs and eat a string cheese, a slice of Munster cheese, cold pesto noodles, and some cut-up pineapple while standing in front of the fridge, all with my hands like I’m a raccoon who just discovered an open trash can. Have I mentioned I am pregnant?

10:08 pm- I get back in bed and turn on my audiobook again. This time, I really do drift off to sleep.

11:38 pm- I wake up to pee.

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