I feel like I'm drowning. How do two full time working parents do it?

[Anonymous]

I just feel like I have hit a wall. I'm am physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted.

I have a 9 month old. Both my husband and I work full time at demanding jobs. Mine is more flexible than his but still a 9-6 situation.

How do other parents in this situation cook meals? Clean the house? Run errands?

My son is a total joy, an "easy" baby from what we have been told but he doesn't really nap so when we are home with him on the weekends there is nothing that can be done.

He goes to bed early (7:30) but I feel so drained from work and then playing with him when I get home until he goes to bed that the thought of cleaning or preparing dinner for the next day is just too much. Also my husband doesn't come home until baby is already asleep and he is also exhausted (His job is even more stressful then mine).

My husband has suggested that I drop a day at work and use the day to do all the things I cant do normally. I would love to do this but both my husband and I have a great deal of student debt and I was hoping to work full time for at least another year to make a larger dent in it. I just don't know if I can make it like this for another year.

FYI we have no family around here and the closest family lives 5 hours away so no help there. To make things even more complicated we want to try for next one in May. I was thinking that might be a good time to drop a day but I would 1. Los my health insurance, I'm on my husbands as well but mine is actually better and accepted at more places.) 2. Lose my full time salary and be paid an hourly rate, I would in reality be bringing home about $1000 less per month.

Anybody been in a similar situation? Suggestions?

[Anonymous]

DS and I both work full time, but I get out earlier than you (around 4pm). We get home and I play with DS for 30 minutes, then make dinner. I clean the house on the weekends (other than just straightening up most nights). I run errands after work (with DS), at lunch, or on the weekends. I am exhausted all the time, but sort of just go with it. I figure it won't be like this forever. It helps me a lot if I just have the same routine day after day.

Luckily DS takes long naps on the weekend so I can get some other stuff done then (although who I am kidding I just catch up on my DVR then lol). Have you tried sleep training for naps at all?

[Anonymous]

We are- we both work FT and longer hours than what you posted. I generally say we're on a treadmill that is going too fast.

Some ideas: outsource as much as you can financially. Do you have a cleaner? Can you pay her a bit more to do some laundry? Microwave meals. Peapod for groceries with lots of frozen foods so you only shop 1Xweek. No-iron shirts. Is there a drycleaner near work? Schelp your cleaning in with you in the morning.

Also, it will get much easier as you LO gets older, so hang in there.

[Anonymous]

thought of cleaning or preparing dinner for the next day is just too much.

Stop doing this! I am in a very similar situation with a pretty easy, but no-napping 11-monther and two-attorney household. Pare everything back. The way it "works" is that "dinner" is often take out, or sandwiches or scrambled eggs. We have a cleaner come in twice a month and just do the bare minimum in between. I order everything online. Things are often untidy and we are somewhat disheveled. But as a result, the stress level is actually pretty low and we are chugging along fine.

[Anonymous]

A few thoughts:

Only you can know if you really can afford to drop down a day, or if you really want to do it careerwise. But if you can, and if you are OK with doing it, I can't encourage you enough to JUST DO IT. Even one day will help your sanity so much. Can you still send the baby to daycare for at least half the day, so you can do some meal prep, clean up the house, or take care of the little crap?

Your 9-month-old NEEDS to be napping, for your sanity but more importantly for her own healthy development. If it means doing a little CIO at naptime I personally would think it is completely worth it. Once you get that sorted out, you should have at least a couple of hours to yourself per day while she is sleeping.

Why are you concerned about conceiving #2 right now? Unless you have had fertility problems in the past or you are over, say, 38, I wouldn't even worry about it right now. Come May, things might be different for you and you may feel ready. Or you may not. You can assess when the time comes. But if you decide to put off TTC for another 6 months or so, it's really not going to change anything in terms of your long term plans and it might really ease the pain of everything. The younger #1 is when #2 comes along, the harder it's going to be at the beginning. I don't know why everyone is in such a hurry. (I have twins so I didn't have a choice, but if I had I would have waited a full 2 years at least after #1 before even thinking about TTC #2.)

Good luck. It gets better!

[Anonymous]

We are in the same situation as you -- no family, two demanding jobs. Except that we had a baby with colic and DD is high-energy and NOT easy. You just make it work. Do what you can. What worked for us:

1. You don't need to be engaging DS all the time on the weekend -- give him some developmentally-appropriate toys or let him jump in a jumperoo and do some cleaning. Let him "help" (at that age, DD loved to "fold laundry," i.e., sit in the laundry basket and throw things while I folded). Also along these lines:
- Can't you trade off? DH watches DS, you do some errands. Then you watch DS and DH does some errands. Seriously, the magic of only one child.
- Do this also so you get a little break every weekend day. 1 hour of alone time is great for morale.
- Take turns sleeping in (Saturday for you, Sunday for DH).

2. Get a house cleaner (way cheaper than cutting a day of work, and you get to keep your benefits). Cook meals on Sunday and freeze them.

3. Address the nap situation. It'll probably work out, though: DD only napped 45 minutes at a time until she was 15 months. Try to stretch naps out by seeing if you can change the time a little to get a longer nap.

4. OMG DON'T TRY FOR ANOTHER IF YOU'RE OVERWHELMED NOW. Holy CRAP, that's a bad idea. Get your life together and then go for #2. Things are MUCH MUCH harder with two, and if you're just scraping by now, you will be shocked at the devastation two will visit on your life.

[Anonymous]

It is very hard! Outsource as much as you can afford. For example, I have someone deliver meals once a month, which covers us for 2-3 nights a week. I also try to prep one meal on the weekend that I can throw together on a weeknight. I have cleaning people twice a month. Order as much as you can online. I get almost everything from diapers.com or Amazon Prime. If you need to, hire a sitter for a few hours on Saturday morning so you can cram in all of your errands. I know you want to spend that weekend time with you child, but if you can knock out a bunch of stuff in a few hours then you'll still have plenty of other time.

[Anonymous]

I work full time but have cut back so I don't have to work evenings or weekends usually, and get home to be with baby by 6. I have mommy tracked myself a bit, but it allows me to balance quite well so far. I think it is very hard to thrive if you have two parents working stressful jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

thought of cleaning or preparing dinner for the next day is just too much.

Stop doing this! I am in a very similar situation with a pretty easy, but no-napping 11-monther and two-attorney household. Pare everything back. The way it "works" is that "dinner" is often take out, or sandwiches or scrambled eggs. We have a cleaner come in twice a month and just do the bare minimum in between. I order everything online. Things are often untidy and we are somewhat disheveled. But as a result, the stress level is actually pretty low and we are chugging along fine.

This! I have a two year old and a 9 month old. We both work and are not able to get home until between 5:30 and 6:00. And when I get home the LAST thing I want to do is cook dinner. We do a lot of take-out and a lot of breakfast for dinner. We would starve if grocery stores didn't roast chickens for us.

I did finally get sick of never sleeping on clean sheets so I negotiated to work from home one day a week. I'm able to at least get some laundry done in between calls and emails. It's really helped and I highly recommend it if you can swing it.

[Anonymous]

Thank second wave feminism. Now you can do your work at home with your family and do your other job as well. Run yourself to the ground and enjoy because the money and your job title are worth it. But I don't understand wanting a second child that you will barely see, but its your choice. Why don't you outsource that as well?

[Anonymous]

We both work full time with a 9 month old too. I also feel overwhelmed or like a crappy parent for not being able to "do it all" during the week sometimes, but I know I need to be realistic. What helps:

1) A nanny. It stretches us a bit financially to have a nanny and not daycare, but it saves us so much time on the front and back end of the day and allows more time to be home (plus she keeps everything related to the baby tidy and washes bottles, etc.)

2) A maid. Ours comes often, but we are admittedly pretty sloppy and neither of us wants or has time to do major cleaning. Even an infrequent house cleaning will make a difference.

3) I don't "cook" meals during the week, and don't waste time cooking before baby goes to sleep. If I make dinner during the week, its something that was already in the crock pot, or something super simple like a chicken breast with steam in the bag rice and veggies. Or salad from a bag. I never prepare anything until after baby goes to sleep. So for now, we aren't all eating dinner together but I'll figure that out later.

4) Cut back on scheduling stuff for the weekends. Its nice when you know you have no plans other than to hang out as a family.

[Anonymous]

We do a lot of take-out and a lot of breakfast for dinner. We would starve if grocery stores didn't roast chickens for us.

Yup.

[Anonymous]

Oh shut up, 10:39.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thank you so much for the helpful replies so far

I should have clarified. My son naps but for extremely short times (like 30 minutes minutes once a day...MAYBE twice.) So by the time I start trying to do laundry, or make a meal he is awake. I just didn't count that as a nap because its so short.

If I dropped the day at work I would still have him at daycare for the day (though I would pick him up earlier I'm sure). The day would be solely for me to take care of things that I cannot do when my son is home.

We do a lot of take out or I try to make simple things but I feel like we eat the same thing all the time (and probably not the healthiest stuff).

I don't mind cleaning the house at all I just don't have the time to do it so I think I am leaning towards having a day rather than hiring someone.

I do think we need to invest in a babysitter though. Any suggestions on where you found yours? I know about care.com but I feel like the babysitters I have seen on there want 20/hr. That seems like a lot for just one child (we live in rockville if that helps).

We already order most things online from diapers and amazon. We still need to run out and get groceries sometimes though. I have found that when we have used peapod, a lot of the stuff we normally buy at the store isn't available through delivery.

But yeah we may delay having a second at this point. I wanted them to be close in age but the increase in stress is probably going to be too much for now.

[Anonymous]

OP here again. I can't work from home in my position so that isn't an option I totally wish it was.