Devika Bhushan
Devika Bhushan, MD, is a pediatrician, public health leader, and writer on a mission to drive health innovation, equity, and resilience. Previously, as California’s Acting Surgeon General, Dr. Bhushan was a key public health spokesperson and advisor to the California Governor. She is deeply committed to destigmatizing living with mental illness; she has shared her own journey with bipolar disorder publicly and is building a vibrant community to advance well-being through a newsletter and YouTube channel community. She lives in San Francisco with her long-time partner, Ashish, and their son, Rumi. They are frequently on the road together.
What does your normal working day look like?
Our 1.5-year-old son, Rumi, wakes up between 6 and 7am; my husband, Ashish, is the lead parent during the mornings, so he usually gets Rumi fed and out the door to daycare by 8 am. We both work (both usually from home) from about 8:30 am to about 5 pm. I’m typically the lead evening parent and fetch Rumi from daycare. We then have dinner together as a family, have playtime together, and then I put Rumi to bed around 8 or 8:30 pm (going off his sleep cues).
How long have you had this routine?
Since we returned to work from parental leave in late 2021.
How has it changed as your children have gotten older or as your family has grown?
Ashish used to additionally tend to Rumi overnight during middle-of-the-night wakeups when they happened, but as he’s gotten older, he’s been more consistently sleeping through the night. We set it up this way because sleep deprivation can trigger a bipolar episode, so we try to protect my sleep wherever possible.
What boundaries have you set around your work and how did you work with your colleagues to enable them?
We both work independently (as consultants, podcasters, and creators — not together — yet!), which gives us a lot of flexibility around how and when we do our work. We are indeed very lucky to have this. Since becoming parents, we are both more intentional about fitting self-care activities (like appointments and working out) into the traditional workweek so that they are sure to happen, keep us feeling our best as parents and as people, and also don’t take away from time with Rumi.
What systems do you have in place to have a successful day?
In general, we try to get to bed early as a family, so we can all get enough rest. Open communication and flexibility between Ashish and I is key to getting chores accomplished.
Switching to weekends, what are the most important things to get right to have an excellent weekend day?
We tend to spend at least one full weekend day without any external commitments — just hanging out as a family, often outdoors — checking out a park or playground, hike, or museum. This helps us recharge and reconnect while exploring and seeing something new together.
The other weekend days/nights, we usually spend time with friends, some of whom have kids and others who don’t.
What principles have served you best in your parenting?
As parents, we are hands-on, but allow Rumi space to make mistakes and do things for himself. We try to empower him to explore and discover the world around him as much as he wants to. This works well for him; by nature, he’s extraverted, curious, and loves new experiences.
On that note, we are privileged to often be on the road together, sometimes for weeks or months at a time, when we work and play (the work of childhood!) remotely from other places. Thankfully, Rumi loves these windows into other worlds as much as we do.
With the travel, and for environmental reasons, we also try to be minimalists with respect to buying things specifically for Rumi. We go the route of hand-me-downs and Buy Nothing group giveaways for his clothes and belongings, and we favor turning common household objects into developmentally appropriate toys when we can.
Is there a primary parent in your household or do you split the parenting evenly?
Ashish, my husband, has spent more waking hours with Rumi, because he used to do the nights and still does the early mornings; though with Rumi now waking up later in the day, this is starting to be more even.
We try to build in time off for Ashish when he’s feeling overburdened during a particular week when maybe Rumi’s been waking up earlier than usual. When this happens, I’ll spend some one-on-one time with Rumi on a weeknight or weekend day (which I love doing), to give Ashish cover to recharge.
What book has been most influential for you as a parent?
As a pediatrician parent, I love two books in particular (published by the American Academy of Pediatrics) because they are evidence-based and cover most questions parents have: Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5 and Your Baby’s First Year.
What is something unusual or unique that you do in your family?
Our family is privileged to often be on the road together, working and playing (the work of childhood!) remotely for weeks or months at a time. Thankfully, Rumi loves being in and exploring new places as much as we do. He has also been extremely adaptable to having different childcare providers, different foods and formula brands (when he was younger), home environments, and even readjusted routines and creating some new ones in different places. We as parents have gotten very good at assessing and quickly setting up new childcare and setting up systems that help this work, including workstations, key food supplies, and a dark, cool corner for Rumi to comfortably sleep. We will sometimes put up curtains or garbage bags to simulate the blackout curtains he uses at home. It helps that in previous phases of our non-parent lives, Ashish and I spent a few years being nomadic, and all of those skills definitely translate and provide a base on which to build now with traveling with a baby. We’re thrilled that Rumi seems to have taken to this lifestyle, too.