Overwhelmed

Tomorrow--weather permitting--I leave for my field's big annual conference in Chicago. Given that there's a big storm between here and the upper midwest I'm not sure if I'll make it, which makes me wonder about the wisdom of scheduling anything in Chicago until later in the month.

For the first time since I've had a baby, I've had to juggle writing to a deadline and an infant. I have yet to adapt my working method (waiting until the last minute and writing crazily and ignoring everything else) to life with a newborn. I'm starting to see that what worked before won't work again until he's old enough to do his own thing without Mum worrying about him. Babies don't respect schedules and they want attention and S is going through a phase of eating more than his little tummy can take for hours on end and then spitting back up for the next few hours. He also doesn't want to sleep when we are around. I want to give him everything and perhaps dedicated days last week to him when I could have been working but I'm also aware that he needs that attention and that this process of balancing work/motherhood will take a while to fine tune.

So I'm here with an unfinished, unproofread paper that is far from my best work. My bags aren't packed. I'm tired. He's finally asleep and I have to leave tomorrow and run a rather time consuming errand before I go. I have no powerpoint, my clips are not edited onto a disc. Will this be the year I take my laptop and write on the plane and at airports? Given that I have to take my breast pump, I'm inclined to think I'll be jotting notes down on paper instead.

I love conferences but I don't want to leave my baby and I don't think it's fair on him or Evan. If only a family trip was possible but it might even be too early in my little one's life to take him so far, particularly in bad weather. At the moment, I just want to snuggle up in bed and cuddle him. If only cosleeping wasn't dangerous--I've not done it and won't do anything that might hurt him but it would be so lovely to sleep with my baby boy in my arms. At this point, I'm so tired that sleep appeals to me the most--not socializing, papers and academic politics.