How to Write a Dissertation after Having a Baby

I don’t know how to write a dissertation after having a baby.  I truly don’t.  But I titled the post as such to lure here those of my ilk, the other parents and caregivers of children who have dissertations to write and babies to raise.

See, every once in a while I google that phrase above, and I get some crap from the Berkeley something or other network (nice people, it seems, but they are different from me in that they have access to nannies who themselves have access to public transportation), and advertisement websites from dissertation coaches.  I’ve yet to find people blogging about the hell I’m currently in, the hell of my own making, which for me can be defined as wanting to lay on the couch and stare at the baby as he figures out how to use his fingers when what I really need to be doing is working.

I don’t think childrearing-while-dissertating is that different from any number of “personal issues”–caregiving, illness, divorce, dating, whatever–that chew up your brain.  Kids are just one branch on a particularly gnarled tree.  But.  It does have its particulars–difficult sleep schedules, absence of solid blocks of writing time, occasional guilt, whatever–and man do I wish there were more folks blogging about those particulars.  It’s hard enough to find dissertation bloggers as it is (hi, PauvrePlume!), let alone dissertating parents.

I know, though, that we’re out there.  So if you’ve come here looking for an answer re: living a human life while managing a (sometimes inhuman[e]) academic task, I don’t have it.  But you should stick around anyway.