#72: public spaces inside the home

thoughts on assembling a care team

Good morning,

Last week I introduced my constellations project.

This week, I completed an outline and started writing.

Because I’m in the phase of building my care team as I transition back to work outside the home, I decided to start thinking through that constellation.

Contrary to what I expected, building a care team goes far beyond hiring help. It’s a slow set of emotional processes: 1) letting go, 2) building trust, 3) claiming space. Here are some visuals of things I’ve been noticing.

1) Letting go

It’s been interesting to observe my care team develop post birth. I’m currently primary parent, but still, I need a team.

who takes care of baby

Chart 1-When pregnant, it felt like I was entirely responsible for the baby inside of me because physically, I was.

Chart 2-After birth, I existed in a small bubble of recovery and care. I was the primary caregiver, particularly due to breastfeeding, and I relied on my most trusted people, which included my partner, family and postpartum support team.

Chart 3-In the middle of month 2, my partner went back to work and new caregivers started helping out when he couldn’t. Still, everyone who cared for my son was selected by me.

Chart 4-Now, at nearly 8 months, I feel the world slowly entering into his life—a neighbor here, an acquaintance there. He is comfortable being in the arms of new people, even if I’m not there. He’s starting to be nourished by food that doesn’t come from my body. I expect the future to look like a balance shift in Chart 4. Once I conclude my journey of nursing and no longer need to be with him every 4 hours, my portion of the pie chart will decrease and the world will keep on coming in.

The wonderful thing about this shift is that it’s giving me time to be elsewhere in my own head a little more, rather than tethered to him. This feels healthy. Parenthood, I’ve been told, is a slow, sweet, lifelong good-bye of sorts.

2) Building Trust

Assembling a care team is its own kind of job. To me, it feels very similar to hiring a team at work or for a project. You put feelers out to attract folks with certain skills, but in the end the decision depends on whether they are a good fit and whether there is potential for growth.

Hiring is never quick. Hours, days and weeks of work time can get spent on hiring, often unexpectedly, because it’s not your job per se, but you’re wanted in the room. And then you have to articulate why or why not you’re interested in the candidate, sometimes in a systemized way, and sometimes just based on your gut.

But honing that gut for caregivers is harder to articulate because you’re not hiring someone to deliver an outcome, but to create a safe space. An entirely subjective wish. As I’ve trialed different options (nannies, friends, family), I’ve been jotting down lessons I want to remember, like these.

Notes to self:

• building trust takes time

• allow other caregivers to develop a relationship with T without you hovering, it’s better for everyone

• if your gut says this is someone you do/don’t want on your team, follow it

• practice leaving baby when it’s not necessary, so that when it is, you don’t have to carry extra anxiety of newness with you

• start collecting data on the rhythm of your day with T, because it’s hard to explain to other caregivers what you’re doing intuitively. if you have notes, maybe you can start to share your approach

• interesting tidbit on this podcast about allowing a child to see you trust another caregiver

3) Claiming Space

I’ve also noticed something that has surprised me because I didn’t anticipate it. No one warns you about how much privacy you lose when you have a child. Particularly in your personal space.

As a person who has always revered home as a private space for personal restoration, I was immediately self-conscious about sharing that space with other people.

What used to be phone calls suddenly become FaceTime calls to see the baby, opening a regular window into your meals, your kitchen, your morning hair and your pajamas that wasn’t previously there.

Your living room shifts from being a den for recreation to a site for care for your child set up to support whoever is caring for them that day. Ours is split down the middle with a gate to separate our very curious dog from baby’s toys.

Your kitchen becomes a place where other people cook and clean, either to help you, or to care for themselves while they stay in your home to… help you.

If we lived in a more communal society or bigger home, these shifts might not feel so noticeable, but young adulthood in America, especially in cities, especially in my circles, is a solo-operator affair.

As your home expands to include more people, it becomes a communal site of caregiving. In this way it starts to feel like a public space of sorts.

Last week, I moved my desk back into my bedroom, because it was the only place I could really think alone. It felt like a strange, full-circle moment back to childhood, when my universe was my room and the rest of the house was a communal space of care.

(Here’s an illustration of where my desk has been over the last 30 years.)

where my desk is

These shifts are beautiful, because I get to offer my child a village.

I both love it and am still letting go.

Happy Monday,

Jihii