Advice Needed: parents who both work long hours

[Anonymous]

DH and I were both promoted in our jobs over the past year, which is great.. except our promotions came with much bigger workloads. I always worked long hours really, but in the past DH’s job was much more flexible but now he is generally working from 8am to 9pm with a quick break for dinner some nights. Much of his day is spent in meetings he needs to attend, even in the evenings. My job is extremely demanding but a bit more flexible and I am usually ON from 9-5:30 and then go back on around 8pm when the kids are in bed and work for 2-3 hours.

The problem is that now I have 2 full time jobs - day job and kids/house - with minimal help from DH. This feels really unsustainable in the long run because o am at the end of my rope. My days consist of waking up, getting kids (2 and 6) dressed and fed, taking older one to school, working all day, dinner prep/cook/clean, kids baths, bedtime craziness, back to work until 10/11pm, clean house until way too late, repeat. This doesn’t even include grocery shopping, coordinating everyone’s schedules and appointments, school projects, and so much more which also always falls on me.

We already have a full time nanny who works from 8:30-5:30pm daily and a cleaning lady once per week so I do outsource what I can. What more can I do to make life easier? I try to make really easy meals but nothing is under and hour with prep and clean up.

How do others who have crazy work schedules and demands like this do it? I am so burnt out but we need the income so me leaving my job really isn’t an option.

[Anonymous]

Can the nanny feed the kids breakfast lunch and dinner and you and DH eat simple meals? Or hire someone to meal prep on the weekends.

Have everything delivered, including groceries.

[Anonymous]

You need to outsource more. Get a housekeeper, not a cleaning service. Have them come twice a week (or more) to clean, shop, laundry and meal prep.

Or one of you needs to dial back your career.

There are only so many hours in a day and your kids deserve present parents.

[Anonymous]

This is not sustainable. One of you will have to rethink your job and/or you will need to reorganize your expenses so you can live on less. Why do you need two full blast incomes to sustain your lifestyle?

[Anonymous]

You need a nanny 8a - 6p. Have dh meal prep on the weekends. Then you both need to take a hard look at things. Raises and career are great, but is it worth the expense of everything else? Where is the downtime? The quality time with kids and each other? It just doesn't seem sustainable.

[Anonymous]

Why are you cleaning the house every day? 6 year old and nanny clean up kids stuff. Nanny does kids laundry. So that should leave the dinner stuff. Which DH can do when he's done with work. You also have to be willing to let some things go. Do the kids need a bath every night? Can't nanny do bathtime before she leaves? Dh can do meal prep on the weekends to make dinner easy.

[Anonymous]

I agree that someone needs to take a step back. Can your husband go back to his old job?

[Anonymous]

Get rid of the cleaning lady and hire a housekeeper.

[Anonymous]

Our nanny's hours are a bit longer, and we also agreed in our contract that our nanny will do no more than five errands per work week that may or may not be kid-related. So it may be going to the dry cleaners, post office, returning something, picking something up at the hardware store, going to the farmer's market (although we've joined a CSA so now we get a box once a week), etc. It's no more than one errand per day for the nanny, and frees up some of our time.

Also, your 6 yr old should be capable of getting fully dressed (if a girl, they maybe need you to do their hair), and getting their own breakfast.

[Anonymous]

You need an evening babysitter. My SIL has daytime nanny, evening babysitter who makes dinner. It's doable.

But what are you all earning to be working these kinds of hours? Can you demote yourself, go PT? Can DH? Or can one of you utilize your promoted title in a year to find a new job, where work ends at 5pm?

[Anonymous]

What the heck do you both do that is important enough to warrant such long hours? Good lord, that’s a messed up way to live. How did you manage to even conceive children?

[Anonymous]

Another option would be to put 2 year old in daycare or preschool, and not have a nanny. Instead, have babysitter 3pm to 8pm or so to do school pick ups, dinner, laundry, bedtime routines. And every evening, you can allot an hour of quality time for you and kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need an evening babysitter. My SIL has daytime nanny, evening babysitter who makes dinner. It's doable.

But what are you all earning to be working these kinds of hours? Can you demote yourself, go PT? Can DH? Or can one of you utilize your promoted title in a year to find a new job, where work ends at 5pm?

Similar suggestion: Our friends that have similarly demanding jobs have two caretakers that come at different times. I believe that one comes in the afternoon around 4pm and cooks and cleans up dinner and then leaves around 8pm.

[Anonymous]

Personal chef comes on weekend and prepares a weeks of meals and portions them out and you just reheat.

[Anonymous]

For us, there just wasn’t a way to make it seem worth that much time away from our child. I went part time then started my own company, which I run less than part time. DH works a minimum of 12-14 hours/day, which is bonkers enough. He’s looking to cut back, but that means a major job hunt and searching for a firm that honestly values work/life balance...and finding time to job hunt while working this much and spending time with DS and me as often as possible make it all seem like losing an uphill battle.