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Author: Billable Baby

Reflections on the First 200 Billable Hours After Parental Leave

Posted on August 7, 2021August 7, 2021 by Billable Baby

Two hundred hours–that’s a busy month for some of you; a slow month for others. To maintain some semblance of privacy, I will leave ambiguous the number of days it took me to hit this threshold. I will also let you all decide whether defining life milestones in billable hours is a healthy practice. So…

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Parenting Performance Evaluations (4 Months)

Posted on June 27, 2021June 27, 2021 by Billable Baby

For a Type A person like me, one of the more challenging aspects of parenthood is the lack of feedback about how I’m doing as a new parent, especially during the phase when my kid is still a non-interactive potato (don’t tell Billable Baby I called her that). In my day job, I am used…

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How I’m Feeling on the Eve of My Return to Work

Posted on June 20, 2021June 20, 2021 by Billable Baby

“I’m in the hospital and will be offline for the coming weeks. My water broke this morning (two months early). The doctors are monitoring me and trying to figure out if the baby wants to come out.” It feels like a lifetime ago when I sent this abrupt out-of-office message from the triage room of…

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Fire, Flood, and a Month-Long Hospitalization: Making Sense of Billable Baby’s Birth Story

Posted on June 13, 2021June 20, 2021 by Billable Baby

It all started with a fire. A flood followed, perhaps foreshadowing a rush of water of a very different kind. Over and over again, I found myself telling the story of the birth of my daughter. The story flows out, in drips and dribbles at first: a pause, a sigh, and a hint at a…

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Everything I Learned about PPROM (Preterm Premature Rupture of the Membranes)

Posted on June 13, 2021June 13, 2021 by Billable Baby

“I think my water broke.” I told my husband one chilly morning early in my third trimester. I knew the signs because I had grown up hearing stories about how my mother’s water broke a few weeks early when she had me. Baby Me made a dramatic entry in to the world, and everyone was…

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8 Pieces of Parenting Advice I Would Tell a Five-Months-Younger Me

Posted on June 8, 2021June 8, 2021 by Billable Baby

A friend recently asked me if I had any advice to share with her friend who is pregnant and expecting her first child. I thought about what I would tell five-months-younger me. Here is what I came up with. 1. Take all the help you can get. Friends or family members offer to drop off…

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How Much Sleep We Got with a Newborn

Posted on May 20, 2021May 20, 2021 by Billable Baby

Many parents describe the newborn phase as “a blur.” The round-the-clock feedings. The lack of sleep. The terrifying new reality of caring for a helpless, tiny human. When you are in the middle of it, it feels never-ending. You hear that “it gets better,” and you wonder, but when?! Because I love data, I would…

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3 Baby Products that Are Surprisingly Worth the Hype

Posted on May 15, 2021May 15, 2021 by Billable Baby

To prepare for the arrival of Billable Baby, I spent many hours reading articles and watching videos about “must-have” baby items. In order to retain some semblance of minimalism, I told myself that my sturdy baby was not going to need wipe warmers or bottle warmers (turned out to be true, phew!) and that the…

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Happy Mother’s Day, Lawyer Moms!

Posted on May 9, 2021May 12, 2021 by Billable Baby

A special happy first Mother’s Day to the new mamas out there, who now viscerally understand what their mothers went through and profoundly feel the depth of a mother’s love.

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4 Skills Essential to Good Lawyering that Are Useless for New Parents, and 3 Skills that Actually Help

Posted on May 4, 2021May 16, 2021 by Billable Baby

Both my husband and I are the first person in our families to go to law school. Given my limited exposure to the legal profession growing up, I was fascinated by the childhood experiences of those who come from a long line of lawyers. One classmate, the son of two prosecutors, told me that discussions…

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About

Billable Baby Blog
This blog chronicles the adventures of two Washington D.C.-based lawyers and their baby daughter ("Billable Baby"). Read more about us here.

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Recent Docket Entries

  • Reflections on the First 200 Billable Hours After Parental Leave
  • Parenting Performance Evaluations (4 Months)
  • How I’m Feeling on the Eve of My Return to Work
  • Fire, Flood, and a Month-Long Hospitalization: Making Sense of Billable Baby’s Birth Story
  • Everything I Learned about PPROM (Preterm Premature Rupture of the Membranes)

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billablebaby

Two hundred hours--that's a busy month for some of Two hundred hours--that's a busy month for some of you; a slow month for others. To maintain some semblance of privacy, I will leave ambiguous the number of days it took me to hit this threshold. In my new blog post (link in bio and below), I wrote about my work setup, pumping, child care, time with my baby and my husband, and the search for the elusive work-life balance.  For those of you who recently returned to work, how are you feeling?  For those of you have have been at work for a while, got any tips to share?

https://billablebaby.com/archives/reflections-on-the-first-200-billable-hours-after-parental-leave/
New blog post (link in bio)! As a Type A person wh New blog post (link in bio)! As a Type A person who thrives on external validation, I find the newborn stage particularly challenging because there is often zero feedback on how I'm doing as a new parent. To address this void, my husband and I decided to write parenting performance evaluations for each other! 

Here are the questions we answered:
1. Things my partner is really good at.
2. Qualities that make my partner a great parent.
3. Areas of improvement that might bring my partner greater happiness.
4. What our baby loves the most about my partner.
5. One thing I'm glad my partner does so I don't have to think about it.
6. How parenthood has changed my partner.
Back to work tomorrow! New blog post (link in bio) Back to work tomorrow! New blog post (link in bio). On the final night of my maternity leave, I share ALL of my feelings. Special guest blurb appearance by my husband at the end!
“It all started with a fire. A flood followed, p “It all started with a fire. A flood followed, perhaps foreshadowing a rush of water of a very different kind. Over and over again, I found myself telling the story of the birth of my daughter. The story flows out, in drips and dribbles at first: a pause, a sigh, and a hint at a difficult experience. And then, with a gentle prompt or a curious question, the rest of it pours out in relentless, crashing waves.” 

I initially started writing about the circumstances of Billable Baby’s birth as a coping mechanism, with no intention of posting it publicly.  I wrote in fits and starts over several months, in between her naps, after middle of the night feeds, and during endless pump sessions.  I truly believe in the healing power of words, and in this case, every word I typed lifted a little bit of weight off of me.  Since I have greatly benefited from many of your honest, frank, and often hilarious posts on parenthood, I thought I would share my story, in the hopes that it might help someone else out there. Link in bio.

For those of you who have experienced recent life upheavals with circumstances outside of your control, how did you cope? How are you doing today?
I initially thought that my experience feeding Bil I initially thought that my experience feeding Billable Baby was, to put it mildly, a HOT MESS. As a NICU baby and a preemie, Billable Baby was formula-fed in the beginning. After she came home, she drank formula and expressed milk. After my milk came in fully, she breastfed during the day and at times drank pumped milk from bottles at night. Then, she had nursing strikes and we switched to bottles during the day and nursing at night (if she latches). Having basically experienced every method of feeding a baby on any given day (exclusively formula, exclusively breastfeed, exclusively pumping, combo feeding, triple feeding, quadruple feeding—JK that’s not a thing), I realized that the grass is not always greener on the other side and that there are trade-offs and hidden costs for every method. It took four months, but I finally recognized that my breastfeeding/pumping journey is not a “hot mess”. Rather, it was a blessing for me to have experienced EVERYTHING. I have no idea what next week brings. For this week at least, I’m proud of the 700 minutes I pumped and the chubby little nugget that Billable Baby has become. #breastfeeding #breastfeedingmom #breastfeedingjourney #pumpingmom #exclusivepumping #newborn #breastpump #newmom #lawyermom #lawyermomlife #newparents #triplefeed #pumpingmama #pumpingmilk #combofeeding #triplefeed
New blog post! Link in bio. Do you remember how mu New blog post! Link in bio. Do you remember how much sleep you got when you brought a newborn home? When I asked my friends this, everyone said the newborn phase was a total blur. Since I’m obsessed with data, I used my Apple Watch to track my sleep over the last three months of Billable Baby’s life. Swipe ➡️ to see how much sleep I got during the last week of my pregnancy (I was being monitored in the hospital that whole week), Billable Baby’s first full week home, and then 1️⃣ month, 2️⃣ months, and 3️⃣ months later. These days, I feel so refreshed in comparison to that first week when we had no idea what we were doing and no help raising a baby in a pandemic. To the parents out there, how are you sleeping these days? #babysleep #newborn #pregnancy #pandemicbaby #pandemicpregnancy #sleepdeprived #newmoon #newparents #lawyermom #lawyermomlife #sleeptraining #allnighter #sleeptracker #dcmoms #dcmom #dcmomsblog #mommyblogger
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Docket Archive

  • August 2021 (1)
  • June 2021 (5)
  • May 2021 (4)
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Subject Matters

  • Baby Products
  • Baby Sleep
  • Birth
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  • Data Dork
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  • Performance Evaluations
  • Pregnancy
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