SAHMs: how do you balance time alone versus spouse's time alone

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Welcome to motherhood. I find it incredibly hard to believe you can't get anything done during the day. Do you play all day long ? I had 3 in diapers and still managed to cook, clean, go out shopping, do laundry. The machines today are great, they do the work now, all you have to do is put it in and take it out.

Correction, you don't watch your kid. You parent. He's not a pet.

As for your husband, he's got a legitimate gripe. You are a lazy wife, self absorbed while he works non stop. Grow up Princess. Why did you have a kid if you didn't want to be a mother ?

JFC. If I sad to you what needs to be said to someone of your low moral fiber, I'd probably get the ban hammer from Jeff. So fill in the blanks. And be honest; if you're this ugly with someone asking for help, you've got to have some really shitty comments chambered. Turn them on yourself for a change.

OP, legitimately if DH won't budge on this stuff, you need marriage counseling. Whenever I say to DH that he needs a break, he works all day, he asks if I got to sit down for more than a few minutes, ate or went to the bathroom without an interruption, or did anything without an interruption. And ignore the jerks who evidently had easy kids. My first was very high needs and it was exhausting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would much rather run errands the way I do it now, one evening per week, after bedtime. It's so much easier that way. I can shop leisurely without my toddler crying/fussing during errands. I also view errands time as alone time.

I wasn't aware that shopping was a leisure activity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. There is no way I can do housework during the day other than cleaning the kitchen. I can clean the kitchen and load/unload dishwasher while my toddler is finishing lunch, but other than that, it's hard unless I can get some things done during naptime. Toddler takes one 2 hour nap per day. I usually do a load or two of laundry and some tidying up if I have the energy. But often I am worn out from our morning activity (running after him at gym class or something) so I'm too tired to do housework during his nap.

And I never do errands with him. It's just too stressful. He will cry the whole time. He is a high needs toddler and cries a lot/is cranky a lot while out.

You sound high maintenance, OP. I'm not surprised that your Dh needs more alone time.

Unhelpful, and inaccurate. Ignore this person, OP.

It sounds like you just need to suck it up and run errands with your toddler, even if he is whiny. IMO it's not a good idea to structure your life around his (temporary, harmless) unhappiness - think of what this is teaching him.

Otherwise, your DH sounds rather selfish. I know he works a lot, but so do you!

I think hiring help is your best option. Tuesday and Thursdays from, say, 9-1 so you can go to the salon, or look at books, or just go have coffee and read a newspaper. What you've described sounds awful! Also, have a date night! At least once a month.

She doesn't work. She's a SAHM.

[Anonymous]

Why do you need a weekend babysitter? If you had 15 hours of help during the week, wouldn't that help things a bit?

[Anonymous]

A) Your husband gets plenty of alone time

B) If your husband is working 60 - 70 hours a week it better be for some serious cash - otherwise, why the sacrifice for him to be an absentee dad. And if he's making serious cash, GET A BABYSITTER!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Welcome to motherhood. I find it incredibly hard to believe you can't get anything done during the day. Do you play all day long ? I had 3 in diapers and still managed to cook, clean, go out shopping, do laundry. The machines today are great, they do the work now, all you have to do is put it in and take it out.

Correction, you don't watch your kid. You parent. He's not a pet.

As for your husband, he's got a legitimate gripe. You are a lazy wife, self absorbed while he works non stop. Grow up Princess. Why did you have a kid if you didn't want to be a mother ?

Wow! PP, you have a real bitchy attitude.

OP, parenthood should be joyful, however, if a parent does not get any break from work and childcare, they feel rundown and exhausted. Both you and your hubby work very hard. I would outsource some of the work and also get some paid babysitter or mother's helper for a couple of hours - to give yourself and your husband some break.

I am a SAHM and I left my high paying job to take care of my kids. I outsourced a lot of housework and some child care as well. It cost us some money (and we are not rich), but saved our sanity and resulted in a happy household.

Is outsourcing some work a possibility for your household?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do you need a weekend babysitter? If you had 15 hours of help during the week, wouldn't that help things a bit?

OP here. Well the reason we think we need a weekend babysitter is that my husband wants more free time on the weekend. And I need a break on the weekend too. Also, we never get a chance to work on household projects that require both of us, so a weekend babysitter would help us get things done around the house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I also find it sad that you and your husband are treating your toddler like a hot potato. There are simple things that you can do as a family. For example, on Saturday morning have a pancake breakfast together. I can tell you that my toddler is happiest when she, DH, and I are all together and DH and I also enjoy this time. I think you guys may want to seriously consider not having more children. I am not saying this to be mean or harsh but I'm not sure how your marriage can survive this for too long. It sounds like you are coworkers managing a task.

OP here. I did mention that mealtimes are our family time--dinner during the week and most meals on the weekend when husband is not working. We also do a pancake breakfast on the weekend.

This thread made me realize that growing up, we had zero "family time" except for maybe a few times a year. My father was always tired from work, and spent his weekends relaxing and reading, and my mother took me places. We almost never had "family time" and I know it was the same with my husband's family. Is family time really that important?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I also find it sad that you and your husband are treating your toddler like a hot potato. There are simple things that you can do as a family. For example, on Saturday morning have a pancake breakfast together. I can tell you that my toddler is happiest when she, DH, and I are all together and DH and I also enjoy this time. I think you guys may want to seriously consider not having more children. I am not saying this to be mean or harsh but I'm not sure how your marriage can survive this for too long. It sounds like you are coworkers managing a task.

OP here. I did mention that mealtimes are our family time--dinner during the week and most meals on the weekend when husband is not working. We also do a pancake breakfast on the weekend.

This thread made me realize that growing up, we had zero "family time" except for maybe a few times a year. My father was always tired from work, and spent his weekends relaxing and reading, and my mother took me places. We almost never had "family time" and I know it was the same with my husband's family. Is family time really that important?

OP's attitude is like the one who wanted to know how to accommodate her DH working at home with the 15 mo old toddler. Are you the same person/troll?

[Anonymous]

Op also had a "break" seven days a week during nap time, since she explicitly stated that she does not do chores during that time.

Maybe you would feel less the need for a break on weekends if you had more of a break during the week, so look for weekday help.

There is something strange about your family dynamic-- no weekend evenings with your husband? Weird.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op also had a "break" seven days a week during nap time, since she explicitly stated that she does not do chores during that time.

Maybe you would feel less the need for a break on weekends if you had more of a break during the week, so look for weekday help.

There is something strange about your family dynamic-- no weekend evenings with your husband? Weird.

OP here. We would love to find a babysitter so we can finally go on date nights, but as I mentioned, we are on care.com and have not yet found anyone. I hope we find a babysitter soon. We are looking for both weekday and weekend help and so far can't find anyone who is interested in those hours, so I may just look for weekday help. My husband does his sports on weekend evenings so he is often busy with that, or he is traveling for work and not home. So we don't get many weekend evenings for date night at home. Sometimes we stay in and watch a movie when he is around. But I really like going out, so when I get the chance to go out with friends I also like to do that. He stays home with our son.

[Anonymous]

OP, you may need to find TWO sitters. One who can do weekday and one who can do weekend. And yes, family time is important. You've recreated your families of origin in this one. You grew up around disconnection and are not able to show your son how to connect. You are a unit of 3. Start connecting.

[Anonymous]

OP, family time is incredibly important. It's basically everything in life. I also find it sad that you treat your child like a hot potato and want a babysitter for the weekends. I think you and your husband need to look at how little time you spend together one on one and as a family, instead of trying to find more alone time for each of you. It ssounds like your husband only spends a couple hours with your son a week, so I'm surprised he feels he needs more time away from him. You said DH leaves for work at 5:30 am, what time does DS get up? One idea is for you to get up early too, with your DH, and get chores, etc done in the morning since you are too tired to do any of it at nap time. You could nap during DS's nap if you need to, and go to bed earlier with your DH.

The fact that you and DH have such different schedules and trade off time with your child on the weekends does seem odd to me too. I'm a SAHM of a 14 month old and I go out with girlfriends at night about twice a month. I also don't do work at nap time and have down time at night from 7:30-11 and that feels like enough "me time" for me. we spend basically the whole weekend together as a family, trading off nap, bedtime, bath, etc. duties on a day to day basis.

[Anonymous]

Count me as another one wondering when you all three hang out together. I currently SAH with our toddler (& one kid in elementary school), and we really value weekends as family time. Sure, everyone needs a little break, but we certainly don't have a schedule for passing kids around and sleeping in. Don't you have a little time each evening after your child goes to bed? In my view, caring for one toddler is of course work, but that alone isn't a full day's activity. It can be done while going to the grocery store, doing some cooking and cleaning, etc. I would focus on family time and working together as a team rather than score keeping about who gets more alone time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure why it's so hard to do errands with toddler. Our DD is now 22 months, but I've been taking her on errands since she was 3 months old, every afternoon. The people at the bank, post office, and Giant know her pretty well by now. Today we went to CVS to get some stuff while walking around and looking at things, then off to Giant where she helped pick what to make for dinner (pizza.. but scratch-made except the crust). If she's going to be fussy, we go to the salad bar and I let her munch on a cucumber slice while we shop.

Good. Teach her that theft doesn't matter if it's small, right?

At Giant you can use the produce scales to weigh/label the salad bar container, so I do that before she samples from it.