For those of you who don't have family help...

[Anonymous]

So my husband and I are 40, and we are happy but sometimes exhausted parents of a lively and wonderful 1-year-old. Being older parents, and DH and I both also having parents who had us later in life, the 4 grandparents are all thankfully alive and loving, but in their late 70-early 80's and in varying states of health. They all love visiting with our kid, but none of them are really capable of watching a toddler on their own for even a pretty short period of time.

So when i hear about friends who are able to drop off their young kids off at grandma's and go away for the weekend to celebrate their anniversary, I seethe with jealousy. We wouldn't even be able to do that for a date night. We're probably not going to have another baby, but if we were I'd probably have to stay in the hospital by myself.

I guess I want to hear from others in this situation (or anyone else who has helpful thoughts) on how to deal with this both on an emotional level and a practical one. How to deal with the feelings of disappointment and jealously, and preventing it from turning it into resentment, either towards my parents and IL's who are all honestly lovely, or toward others who have the luxury of young, helpful grandparents?

And then on a practical level, how to compensate for this as much as we can. It's easy for us to trade off to give each other solo breaks, and we can use a babysitter for an evening. But I don't know when we'll ever be to get away by ourselves and be able to relax and reconnect, and I worry about the effect of that on our marriage. At what age is it ok to leave your child with a paid babysitter, or a friend maybe, overnight? I've thought about DH and I taking the day off and doing something fun together while DS is in daycare. Any other strategies?

[Anonymous]

1. Most married people don’t get overnight trips away from their kids together. It’s just not normal.

2. You aren’t hearing the down side to the “my parents are around all the time” setup, so don’t imagine it’s all peachy. There are good and bad parts, like anything. But you seem to be envisioning only the good parts of another setup and noticing only the bad parts of yours.

[Anonymous]

Wait you’re annoyed with your parents because they’re not spry when *you* decided to have a child late in life? That’s hardly fair.

[Anonymous]

As your kid gets older, you need to prioritize finding neighborhood/"family friends" that you trust. For us, this happened slowly as my kid's world expanded during the child care/preschool years. He's in 2nd grade now and we have several families who we can trade babysitting, exchange play dates, etc. with. You HAVE to be social and grow a community around yourself. Also, you learn to have dates on days that daycare is open.

[Anonymous]

We never had parental help, because ours are in Europe. Our circle is made up of internationals like us and Americans who for various reasons (aging parents, distance, family tension), also don't receive parental help.

Now all our kids are teens, I don't recall anyone complaining about this. It's the norm for most people we know. People pay for babysitting or forgo the dates. Since we didn't have a lot of money when our kids were little, we did not go on date night. We've always celebrated our anniversary with our kids - after all, that's why we got married, to have them! And we've always traveled with them, because they're cute and fun to have around.

Sorry, but I can't relate, OP.

[Anonymous]

We don’t have local family. When we had our second and third, we flew our adult niece in a few days before my due date so DH could be with me at the hospital.

We don’t have date nights, we take a day off and spend it together while the kids are at school/daycare. I honestly love it.

It would be awesome to have local family, but I also see what some people go through using “free” family care. From the outside it sometimes seems like it’s not worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
We never had parental help, because ours are in Europe. Our circle is made up of internationals like us and Americans who for various reasons (aging parents, distance, family tension), also don't receive parental help.

Now all our kids are teens, I don't recall anyone complaining about this. It's the norm for most people we know. People pay for babysitting or forgo the dates. Since we didn't have a lot of money when our kids were little, we did not go on date night. We've always celebrated our anniversary with our kids - after all, that's why we got married, to have them! And we've always traveled with them, because they're cute and fun to have around.

Sorry, but I can't relate, OP.

Not helpful.

[Anonymous]

I’m in your situation (except I have two kids). Loving but not close by or physically capable grandparents. I also get a bit jealous of my friends who have parents who are willing and able to provide more than emotional support but I’m generally a counting my blessings kind of person so I mostly think how lucky I am to have grandparents who adore my kids and want to see them and talk to me and all. Also my dad has inoperable cancer so every year he gets to see my kids grow a year old is such a joy to me. He’s so good with kids and when he was first diagnosed I was terrified he’d never even get to meet mine.

On the other side of things one of my friends has her mother provide full time childcare to her son and his two cousins (the parents pay her but it’s comforting for them to have their kids with someone they trust absolutely and they rate is lower than standard daycare costs). We were chatting about it and she mentioned that while she is so grateful for the arrangement in general it’s really hard when there’s some kind of family emergency because it naturally disrupts her childcare at a time she’s already stressed and worried for other reasons which is a perspective I hadn’t considered. My daycare chugs along without issue of my dad’s in the emergency room and I can spend the day one the phone with insurance or working and worrying or whatever. She’s trying to balance supporting her parents through a tough time while also unexpectedly caring for her toddler at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
We never had parental help, because ours are in Europe. Our circle is made up of internationals like us and Americans who for various reasons (aging parents, distance, family tension), also don't receive parental help.

Now all our kids are teens, I don't recall anyone complaining about this. It's the norm for most people we know. People pay for babysitting or forgo the dates. Since we didn't have a lot of money when our kids were little, we did not go on date night. We've always celebrated our anniversary with our kids - after all, that's why we got married, to have them! And we've always traveled with them, because they're cute and fun to have around.

Sorry, but I can't relate, OP.

Not helpful.

It is, since an attitude reset is what OP needs most.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like you need to start practicing gratitude, OP. My kids don’t have grandparents at all.

As for care— many grandparents can’t watch kids on their own. You find alternate childcare. There is nothing special or unique about your situation. If you can’t see that, you need to work on your maturity.

[Anonymous]

You are speaking to my heart, OP.

Some people are very fortunate in this way and sometimes I am very envious. It's not just about having younger grandparents, or grandparents in good health, and it's definitely not just about free babysitting. It's about having involved and loving grandparents who want to cultivate relationships with their grandchildren (and with us as adults and parents) and who are interested in creating a broader, supportive family network for their grandkids. We just don't have this and it makes me sad. My heart hurts for my DD that she doesn't have more in this area, and I feel bad that I can't give it to her.

It's just hard. If you have really supportive parents, I hope you realize what a gift that is!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like you need to start practicing gratitude, OP. My kids don’t have grandparents at all.

As for care— many grandparents can’t watch kids on their own. You find alternate childcare. There is nothing special or unique about your situation. If you can’t see that, you need to work on your maturity.

+1. You pay for a lot of help. This is what we do. It has worked well.

[Anonymous]

DH is military, and we're nowhere near our family. We just take the kids on our anniversary trips.

Now, if you want to complain about not having emergency contacts, I am here for that!

[Anonymous]

DC is a very transient area so you are not alone in not having family nearby. Most of our friends don't, and neither do we.

Like others said, start building your community. Are there other families you like at daycare with whom you could do a babysitting coop? We did that for a few years and it all worked out. Larla's mom came and watched our DS when we had a commitment. We never actually ended up babysitting for Larla, but babysat for other kids in the coop whose parents at some point babysat for them so it all works out if you have a good group of half a dozen families.

Get to know the families in your neighborhood and see if you can start to identify the young teens who would be good mother's helpers while you're home. By the time they're older teens your child will know them, you'll trust them and you now have a reliable babysitter.

We never went away for a weekend or a vacation when DS was young, and I don't recall my parents doing so either. To me, that idea of vacationing without your kids was a foreign concept so I didn't feel like we missed out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait you’re annoyed with your parents because they’re not spry when *you* decided to have a child late in life? That’s hardly fair.

Not OP but not everyone "decides" to have a child later in life. I would have loved to have my child in my early 30s instead of late 30s, and would have loved to be young enough to have more than one. That was not an option I had, even though I wanted it. I'm grateful to have had a child at all, but this stereotype that people who have kids later were all just living it up and purposefully delaying kids is wrong. Some people might be that way, many are not. There are many reasons a person might not have a baby until 40 that have nothing to do with choosing to be an older parent.

Also, OP pointed out their parents were also older when they had them. This isn't OP's fault.

I am the 3rd of 4 kids, so my parents are much older for my kid than they were for my older siblings (big age gaps) and I didn't have my kid until 37, after 5 years of trying. I didn't choose to have older, less healthy, less involved parents when I had kids. It's just the hand I was dealt.