I’m currently pregnant and my littlest is expected 6 months from now. I’m solidly in a groove with WK, leveling every 7 days and intend to until I get to level 18 in April, then slowing to a 9-14 day leveling strategy until I pop (see below).
I was first thinking I’d take a full 3-month vacation-mode break from WK whenever my littlest arrives, but more recently I’ve been thinking I’ll just stop new lessons and keep up with the reviews to keep up the effectiveness of the SRS (testing things at their WK intervals rather than WK interval + 3 months). But I’m more and more aware each day that goes by that the exact lessons I’m completing now will be those eligible for burns during that sleepless time period.
How would you plan for this ahead of time?
Have you experienced a longterm break from WK you could plan for (not just taking a break for burnout)? How did you do?
The current plan (taper):
April reach level 18 at full speed, then slow a smidge to 8 day leveling for rest of month.
May 9-10 day leveling
June 11-12 day leveling
July 12-14 day leveling (stop new lessons when I give birth or just before my duedate)
late July-October reviews only
late October start up again slowly with lessons as I feel capable to manage in order to continue my preparation for JLPT N2 start of December.
You might want to start not doing lessons about a month before your due date. I would also recommend stopping right at a level up and using a script or an app to clear out the previous level vocab.
I personally prefer stopping lessons over vacation mode, but it’s up to you whether you think you’ll have time to do them in that period.
You may want to do both and activate vacation mode a few days before your due date.
I guess I should add I do 0/0 leveling even at full speed. So I currently have no items hanging around from level 5 or lower that I haven’t gurued now that I’m at level 7. I plan to continue this way as I have zero interest in doing the kanji without the vocab.
That’s a good plan to stop right at a level up, @alo. So with a 14-day level up plan I’d probably plan to stop at the level that falls 1-3 weeks before my duedate.
No help on the management frontier…but is this your first baby? I had way more time with my two than I would have anticipated since I was up all hours of the day and night…I personally would have liked to have something to do on my phone while I was holding a sleeping baby, etc.
Anyway, might be something to consider but you know yourself and your kids most obviously! Not trying to be ride or anything. Congratulations btw!
This’ll be my third and final kid. I do try to completely avoid using my phone at night at all during the fourth trimester as I am a terrible sleeper as-is and I wake easily and also take a long time to sleep again and having bluelight or stimulation of anything other than a book is far too much for my little sleepless brain to handle… but I can see wanting to do small chunks of WK three times a day like I do now during the day to have something of my OWN to be doing apart from healing and managing the lives of three very small humans. It is amazing how accomplished I feel after completing all my reviews in a day right now as a mom of two and part of me is sure that would carry over enormously on the days when I feel so little self-efficacy in a hormonally-induced stupor of “I will never be my own separate human being with aspirations and accomplishments of my own to speak of ever again…”
I didn’t have a kid but I had to take a 6 month break for basic training and officer candidate school. I just threw wanikani on vacation mode, and when I got back spent a week or two using the “self-study” quiz addon to re-familiarize myself with all the kanij.
It didn’t take me long to get back into the swing of things.
I don’t know… I say use the vacation mode until you settle into your new family. As you know with kids, it’s not always the best idea to plan too much, and with the addition of a new member you don’t how your other two will adjust. You just may not have the energy for ONE MORE THING if three small human beings seemingly need something from you all at the same time. And if I had to choose between using the bathroom in peace 3x/day (as my 3yo keeps slamming into me as I type ) or doing WK, I know which one I’d choose!
Anyway, the thing with vacation mode is that you can toggle back and forth and so the freedom to experiment with what you can handle is an option.
Oh, and some people take lesson breaks just to focus on burning so there’s also the option of stopping lessons a bit sooner when all of your reviews have hit Enlightened. Then, going forward, you only have to review a smaller pile of stuff that you’ve gotten wrong when Burning.
Yes, but the key word in my statement was “stopping.” It’s just an option. And I have had periods of going so slow that the lower review levels were but a distant memory.
It can be a bit tricky for moms to give themselves permission to take breaks when it seems as though you have to choose between motherhood, and yourself as a person who just wants that thing that has nothing to do with kids. But sometimes you have to plan around anticipating the unexpected, and giving yourself space can also be a kind of freedom.
I actually started WK when I was pregnant with my first and thought that it would be great to work on during the downtime… and yeah it was great in theory but in reality it was just too much of a brain drain during those first few months. And I ended up taking more time away then I had planned, and that’s okay. Priorities and life. It is what it is.
Obviously everyone is not the same, and everyone doesn’t have the same life situation, but just throwing out a suggestion based on my experience.
) or doing WK, I know which one I’d choose! 
