I was so naive re marriage, career and kids

[Anonymous]

I think this boils down to poor communication and unrealistic expectations.

My husband and I have a 6 month old and both actively care for him while managing the household and working FT.

6am - My husband and I both wake up at the time - he works out and I get ready for work.
7am - Baby wakes up and I feed him a bottle and get him dressed for the day while husband gets ready for work. Husband takes over at 7:30 while I eat breakfast.
8am - I leave for work and the nanny arrives. Husband will prepare food for nanny and get his breakfast while she feeds the baby.
5pm - I get home from work and relieve nanny. I play with baby and husband stops working at 5:30. He comes out and we spending time as a family playing with our son.
6pm - One of us will start baby routine and put him to bed while the other cleans up and cooks dinner. We trade off days.
7pm - Baby is in bed and we eat dinner. We both clean up dinner and leftover baby stuff we need to do.
8pm - We watch tv or sometimes my husband works and I do my own thing. We talk, hang out, and then usually have sex.
10pm - We go to bed and then do it all over again the next day.

On the weekends we trade off and one of us sleeps in one morning and the other will sleep in the next morning. We trade off taking care of baby while we get things done around the house, workout, run errands, etc. We make sure to talk a. a family walk and spend time together throughout the day where we focus on us and the baby. It does probably help that our baby takes 3 naps - 9-10, 12-2, and 4-4:30 so we do have down time.

We do date night every Saturday. We will sometimes hire a nanny and go out to dinner or we stay in, order take out, and split a bottle of wine. We talk, hang out, and have sex.

Things aren’t perfect and they don’t go always go as planned but we try to both do as much as we can. The important thing is we communicate what we need from each other and if we need a break or time to ourselves. Sometimes that doesn’t work so we will say “ I need to do this now, but you can take a break or have uninterrupted time at X time”.

My husband used to work 50-60 hour weeks and now works 45-50 hour weeks and I work 40. We both do as we can and outsource tasks like housekeeping, getting groceries delivered, and ordering takeout 1-2 times a week.

Sit down and communicate with your husband. I hate to say this but you need to scale back at work and put more effort into family time.

[Anonymous]

OP, your examples are so weird for what he doesn’t do. “Cook for the baby” - sorry, neither of you had time for that! You’re being unrealistic! “Find daycare, call daycare” - okay, that’s not a daily task. “Find back up care” - don’t you have a nanny? How often are you needing back up care? “Find activities for baby” - your baby doesn’t need activities! You both barely spend any time with your child as it is, and you think you should put him in activities? I think you are just mad about your life deep down but you don’t know why or how to express it so you’re making up things to blame your husband for.

[Anonymous]

I used to work 60-80 hours per week and Dh used to work 80 when we had our first child. Thankfully my mom was able to watch the baby and was like a second mother to him. I used to earn more than Dh when we got married. I was very ambitious and my career meant everything to me.

I ended up switching to a 40 hr week job and then had a second child. After second was born, I started doing consulting work and then got a PT job. Now I’m a sahm of 3 kids.

You need to outsource more and/or let your Dh handle more.

Dh earns a seven figure income so we don’t need my income. I sometimes am resentful that he never had to cut down and get daddy tracked. He kept moving up while I kept working less until now I don’t work at all. I know it was my choice to have 3 kids. I am the one who wanted the third child. I think the third tipped us over. It is very hard juggling the 3 kids on my own when they attend 3 different schools.

[Anonymous]

It is pretty easy to hire household help.

You should share incomes. How much are we talking about here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly OP, you sound like an asshole. You work a lot and like it. Fine. Then you should happily use the money you earn to hire a sitter and stop complaining. There is really nothing to complain about here. DH works outside of the home and also helps with the kid.

My DH is the breadwinner, works 50 hours per week and I’m a sahm and I get super annoyed about video games. This has been an issue since we had kids. This was when I worked and now that I don’t work.

It sounds like OP has a video game problem with her DH.

Dh always says it is better than him being a womanizer or going out all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this boils down to poor communication and unrealistic expectations.

My husband and I have a 6 month old and both actively care for him while managing the household and working FT.

6am - My husband and I both wake up at the time - he works out and I get ready for work.
7am - Baby wakes up and I feed him a bottle and get him dressed for the day while husband gets ready for work. Husband takes over at 7:30 while I eat breakfast.
8am - I leave for work and the nanny arrives. Husband will prepare food for nanny and get his breakfast while she feeds the baby.
5pm - I get home from work and relieve nanny. I play with baby and husband stops working at 5:30. He comes out and we spending time as a family playing with our son.
6pm - One of us will start baby routine and put him to bed while the other cleans up and cooks dinner. We trade off days.
7pm - Baby is in bed and we eat dinner. We both clean up dinner and leftover baby stuff we need to do.
8pm - We watch tv or sometimes my husband works and I do my own thing. We talk, hang out, and then usually have sex.
10pm - We go to bed and then do it all over again the next day.

On the weekends we trade off and one of us sleeps in one morning and the other will sleep in the next morning. We trade off taking care of baby while we get things done around the house, workout, run errands, etc. We make sure to talk a. a family walk and spend time together throughout the day where we focus on us and the baby. It does probably help that our baby takes 3 naps - 9-10, 12-2, and 4-4:30 so we do have down time.

We do date night every Saturday. We will sometimes hire a nanny and go out to dinner or we stay in, order take out, and split a bottle of wine. We talk, hang out, and have sex.

Things aren’t perfect and they don’t go always go as planned but we try to both do as much as we can. The important thing is we communicate what we need from each other and if we need a break or time to ourselves. Sometimes that doesn’t work so we will say “ I need to do this now, but you can take a break or have uninterrupted time at X time”.

My husband used to work 50-60 hour weeks and now works 45-50 hour weeks and I work 40. We both do as we can and outsource tasks like housekeeping, getting groceries delivered, and ordering takeout 1-2 times a week.

Sit down and communicate with your husband. I hate to say this but you need to scale back at work and put more effort into family time.

I am sitting here reading this laughing, because this was us and I thought we were so good at life. Careers! Family time! Date nights! And sex, lots of sex.
Then we had kid #2.
All I can say, PP, is don't have another kid if you like this great, balanced life you've got now.

[Anonymous]

Yuck. I’m sorry OP.

I didn’t have time to read all the replies.

Have you tried leaving a list of things that need to be done? My DH is generally willing to do housework, but does not notice things that need to be done and is not good at multitasking. Even just a list with a few things “”wash baby bottles, do a load of laundry, load and run dishwasher and wipe counters, pack daycare bag for tomorrow” etc. will he do those things if specifically asked?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband really wanted kids. He assured me would be the primarily caregiver.

I am very focused on my career and wrk long hours.

He assured me that he would be happy to be the primary caregiver

Now this has called a lot of resentment.

He does do drop off and pick up in 75% of cases.

But he does none of the cooking, admin, finding daycare, applying for passport, etc.

He thinks I should do that because I do less of the direct care.

If I need to work on the weekend, I have to hire a babysitter so that he can play video games. He can’t handle more than 3 hours taking care of a toddler.

I work 60 hours a week and he works 45 hours a week.

I have no free time.

He has plenty.

Love the baby and I like my career.

Our marriage is strained because we fight about childcare and tasks all the time.

I thought that it’s possible for a guy to be the main caretaker.

Was naive.

Marriages work much better when they follow traditional gender roles, except for a few circumstances. But that’s the exception not the rule.

Unfortunately I make more than he does so I cannot step back.

I am exhausted and resentful of him.

You sound exhausting and very immature. Your issue seems to be that you make more than your DH and have to work longer hours. I pity your kid and your DH. I also suggest that you outsource as much as you can because you still have to do 50% of the work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband really wanted kids. He assured me would be the primarily caregiver.

I am very focused on my career and wrk long hours.

He assured me that he would be happy to be the primary caregiver

Now this has called a lot of resentment.

He does do drop off and pick up in 75% of cases.

But he does none of the cooking, admin, finding daycare, applying for passport, etc.

He thinks I should do that because I do less of the direct care.

If I need to work on the weekend, I have to hire a babysitter so that he can play video games. He can’t handle more than 3 hours taking care of a toddler.

I work 60 hours a week and he works 45 hours a week.

I have no free time.

He has plenty.

Love the baby and I like my career.

Our marriage is strained because we fight about childcare and tasks all the time.

I thought that it’s possible for a guy to be the main caretaker.

Was naive.

Marriages work much better when they follow traditional gender roles, except for a few circumstances. But that’s the exception not the rule.

Unfortunately I make more than he does so I cannot step back.

I am exhausted and resentful of him.

You sound exhausting and very immature. Your issue seems to be that you make more than your DH and have to work longer hours. I pity your kid and your DH. I also suggest that you outsource as much as you can because you still have to do 50% of the work.

This, he works full time and is on 100% baby duty if you don't see the baby at all. He's entitle to relax a little.

[Anonymous]

OP, you are still naive about adulting. Please get your tubes tied.

[Anonymous]

So, the work situation between the 2 of you is pretty much the same as it was for us (but in reverse- DH worked long hours and got home late, I worked 40hrs a week).

On weeknights I don’t think it is unreasonable for him to relax after baby is down (by that point he has been doing work and childcare since he woke up, presumably without a break). I’d talk to him about accomplishing a few simple things (dishes, throw in a load of laundry etc) during the early evening hours- cant he do a few things while caring for baby? (Put baby in a front carrier or bouncy seat nearby..) But it isn’t unreasonable at all for your DH to want to read after 7:30/8 when baby is down for the night. Most dual income working parents of little ones don’t get a lot of chores accomplished on weeknights IMHO. Once the kids were in bed on weeknights I usually just relaxed (maybe I’d fold a load of laundry while watching tv)- I was tired!

Do you not have any time during your workday to make personal calls or order stuff on Amazon etc? I don’t remember much in the way of “administrative work” with infants. Ped appts, check in with daycare, order supplies on Amazon..what else is there, really?

The weekend thing, not sure what to say. Babysitter is a good idea. Why can’t he arrange that himself?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband really wanted kids. He assured me would be the primarily caregiver.

I am very focused on my career and wrk long hours.

He assured me that he would be happy to be the primary caregiver

Now this has called a lot of resentment.

He does do drop off and pick up in 75% of cases.

But he does none of the cooking, admin, finding daycare, applying for passport, etc.

He thinks I should do that because I do less of the direct care.

If I need to work on the weekend, I have to hire a babysitter so that he can play video games. He can’t handle more than 3 hours taking care of a toddler.

I work 60 hours a week and he works 45 hours a week.

I have no free time.

He has plenty.

Love the baby and I like my career.

Our marriage is strained because we fight about childcare and tasks all the time.

I thought that it’s possible for a guy to be the main caretaker.

Was naive.

Marriages work much better when they follow traditional gender roles, except for a few circumstances. But that’s the exception not the rule.

Unfortunately I make more than he does so I cannot step back.

I am exhausted and resentful of him.

What direct care? You both work and have a day care utilized from early morning until early evening. Hopefully you can find a wait to split the 6pm shifts AND all the mental and time consuming household admin.

Why not go to a therapist to divy things up better.
And maybe a housekeeper 2 times a week to do laundry, clean and a grocery shop, plus many a nanny 40-50 hours a week is better until preschool, or a live in au pair…?

[Anonymous]

There are a lot of workaholic men who are good at their job but suck at being a father and husband. OP is the female version of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OP:
I come home at 9 from work sometime and the baby has been in bed since 730.

He relaxes from 730-1030 every night maybe other than to take out the trash / wash his dishes.

I come home and need to clean up after the baby and cook for the next day.

He does 10% of that.

This is crazy. He does the pick up, playing with the child, feeding the child, bath and bedtime routine all on his own while working full time. Yet you think you should come home from work and have zero household responsibilities? How on earth is that equitable? You are both parents. You are both working.

THIS. He’s probably exhausted after a working a full day, having to switch gears immediately to all the hands on caretaking, and according to OP he’s doing the morning drop offs, etc. Grow up, OP. Chasing a tired toddler (and they are almost always cranky and exhausted after daycare) after a full day is taxing and often frustrating. So there are some dishes in the sink and toys on the floor? Get over yourself. You are clearly so uninvolved with the daily management of this child that you don’t actually know what goes into daily caretaking. I would say the same thing if this were a man posting to complaining about his wife.

+1

You sound ridiculous OP, like you are expecting a stepford wife type clean house and hone-cooked meal when you get home each day. You don't have a SAHP! You sound very full of yourself. Yep kids change your life and career too.

[Anonymous]

We are all naive about those things, dear. It's baptism by fire. You don't know what you're in for until you're in it.