My daughter was born in Riyadh in 2009, just as I was starting to report on some rough years in the Middle East. Chaos has always been totally fine with me. But when I had a child, I needed to put some sort of system on the chaos. So I became obsessed with tracking her sleep. When we would fly home to the US, which we did about three times that year, I would start adjusting her schedule weeks in advance, inching her bedtimes earlier and earlier in 30-minute increments. I’d call my husband to keep tabs on the plan when I was out reporting in the field. People thought I was crazy. But it actually worked.

Kelly McEvers is a host of NPR’s All Things Considered and the podcast Embedded.