How I’m making space for creative work while parenting a newborn

At least some of the time!

Aug 11, 2026

My daughter was 7 weeks old when I started missing my creative work. My wife had returned to her job and I envied how she got to be part of the world beyond our newborn bubble. Much as I love my daughter, she can’t be my whole world. I don’t want to lift my head in five years and realise that I haven’t written a thing. I don’t want to be so swallowed by motherhood that I stop being myself.

Newborn care is a deeply embodied experience. Pregnancy rewired my brain and body so that my only focus was on sustaining my daughter. But I want more. In particular, I want to use my brain! (This is probably why I’ve been consuming so much. I’ve always enjoyed the easy company of a good book, podcast or show but it’s become essential since I started spending all my time with a tiny human!)

For the next few years my daughter will require a lot of hands-on care and attention. I want to find a way to make things, while also caring for her full-time. I know I’ll be a better parent and partner if I also maintain a connection to myself and my work. I also know that my daughters’ needs are so overwhelming right now that I often struggle to find 2 minutes to brush my teeth! I am breastfeeding her exclusively so we’ve never been apart for more than an hour, and I haven’t had a full nights’ sleep since… well, I don’t even want to think about it.

But this matters to me. I am desperate to write, and willing to sacrifice things (sleep, socialising, having a clean house) in order to do it.

Most days, I can scrounge together an hour or two while the baby naps or while my wife is caring for her. On the weekends, I aim for a little more. Sometimes, I use that time to rest. Or to enjoy life’s simple pleasures like peeing with the door closed without scream-narrating to a tiny person that she doesn’t need to be scared, that I’ll be back soon. Or reading a physical book without worrying that turning the pages might wake her from a nap that it took me more than an hour to coax her into taking.

I know that adding writing to my plate is a little nuts. She wasn’t even 2 months old when I started trying to find time for it! But I also knew how sustaining writing a little each day would be for me. Often, I feel more nourished and supported by an hour with my journal than I would after an hour long nap especially if I spent most of the hour admonishing myself for not sleeping sooner which TBH is how I was spending a lot of my nap times. For me, creative work and rest aren’t necessarily opposites. In my experience, a lack of time isn’t always a hindrance to good creative work. I want to see what might be borne from the chaos of this moment.

I also learned the (very!) hard way that I couldn’t work the way I used to. I’ll spare you the details of the meltdowns I precipitated because I was too distracted by my work to realise that nap time had sailed past and she hadn’t so much as considered closing her eyes. But the fact that my old ways of working are no longer suitable doesn’t mean that all my work needs to stop. I just needed to find another way, to approach the question from another angle.

I set about making a plan that would fit the following criteria:

Be very flexible. If I had a free 20 minutes, I want to be able to use them meaningfully. (Or to choose to pitter them away scrolling the internet. Either choice is OK, but I want to be intentional about it.)

Less of a creative schedule than a creative practice.
I want to set up my work so I can dip in and out of it.

No deadlines. I want a plan that I can’t fall behind on. The last thing I need is more pressure.

Built on the premise that staying in relationship with my work, showing up to do a little as often as I could would allow great work to accumulate.

Allow my brain to think through creative questions, while my body was busy with the menial tasks of newborn care. I wanted to feel in conversation with my work, like it could keep me company while I rocked my girl to sleep or changed nappies at 4am.

Prevent me from disappearing entirely into the domestic sphere. I want to re-establish a connection with the world, beyond my family and the mom groups. I want to be in conversation with readers, writers and creative peers.

I want a plan that won’t take me away from this precious moment in my baby’s life. I need to remain very attentive to her. I want to read books and do tummy time, and I need to breastfeed for 2+ hours a day. I don’t want to do anything that might interrupt that.

I want to acknowledge what I’m already doing, rather than beating myself up for not doing more. Most days, I manage to write a little, either in my journal or on my phone. Most days, I have a little headspace to think about things beyond my family. I want to celebrate and build on those wins.

I can’t execute my ideas right now, but that doesn’t mean that my creative instincts have stopped. I want to find a way to capture those ideas, knowing that I might someday have time to pursue them. (Or if I don’t, it’s still meaningful to track them.)

Accept that I will sometimes be more tired because I choose myself or my work over sleep. I’ve decided that I’m fine with that.

I’ve also accepted that there will be some days/weeks/months, when I’d have zero headspace for anything beyond my family. I am also fine with that.

My hope is that by making some space for my work, it would help me feel more like myself, less lonely/isolated and more fulfilled as a person and a parent.

Squeezing in some writing while she naps 😴

What I wanted to do

I had a long list of the things I wanted to do. I wasn’t just craving the blue sky thinking of creative work, but the whole enterprise: gathering ideas, organising my files, drafting and redrafting, sketching concepts, brainstorming on structure, making physical things I could reach out and touch.

But really, I had a few priorities:

To continue writing and sending newsletters.
To make things with my hands (cooking, building ikea furniture, creating her baby book, art projects of various kinds)
To keep an intellectual record of this time, which I decided to do through my monthly link roundups. In the future, I imagine that I’ll look back and see that I was circling themes that ended up threaded through my own work.
To be in conversation with folks (readers, writers, other creative peers).
To make some space for creative work away from the rhythms of the internet. I’ve been publishing a weekly newsletter for 2+ years. Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time in the internet’s content cycles but having a newborn has a unique ability to drag you into the present moment. I’m in no hurry to rush back to the demands of publishing, and didn’t want this hunger for creativity to mean that I spend more time online or was slowly dragged back into the drudgery of capitalism.

This feels like a good moment to acknowledge the privilege that enables me to do this. I’m currently receiving maternity benefits from the Irish state, so I’m not under pressure to earn money (yet!). It feels important to mention the things I’m leaving aside in order to do this too. Namely cleaning the house (I spotted a dead fly under the bed this morning when I bent to put on my socks!) and paying any sort of attention to my appearance (showed up to a class with my shirt unbuttoned last week because I was writing until the very last moment!). Plus, you know, sleep!

What I’m NOT doing

Just as importantly, I’m clear on the things I’m not doing. No freelancing. No 1:1 consulting work. Nothing that requires me to show up at a particular time/place. No social media (at least for the moment. It fries my brain too much and in this moment, my brain is already quite fried.) No meetings. No “official” professional commitments.

I’m a couple of weeks into this new plan and while it hasn’t always been easy (ask me about the tiredness!), I’ve noticed a significant improvement in my overall sense of wellbeing. I haven’t produced much of anything1 but I have reestablished a conversation with my work, and can feel some small shoots of momentum begin to take root. But this was never about productivity.

It’s about structuring my life to make space for creativity. It’s about building a writing career that can survive interruption, and modelling what it is to prioritise yourself alongside your caring responsibilities.

Thanks for reading. This is one of those topics that feels ripe for conversation. How do you think about your creative work during life’s busy seasons? I expect I’ll hear from parents, but I’d also love to open the conversation to those with other kinds of limitations (chronic illness, mental health challenges, long hours at your “day job” etc).

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