Reply to How did you navigate childcare with two demanding careers?

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[quote=Anonymous]I think you should work backwards from your pre-child logic as you try to answer this question.  What do you want from your family life, and then how can your career work with that?  It's a REALLY tough mental switch for us super-career-oriented folks, but the baby basically forces the question when he or she gets here, so you might as well ask it now.

So, is it important for you to see the baby every day?  After those first few awful weeks, the baby will probably only be awake about 12 hours a day.  How many of those hours do you want to be there?  Do you care if you and your husband are with the baby together?  Do you care if those hours are in the morning or evening?  If you're planning on breastfeeding, do you anticipate caring about getting to feed a couple times a day (as opposed to pumping)?  No right or wrong answers here, and you can certainly change your mind once the baby comes.

But if it's not important to you to see the baby awake every day (and plenty of people make that choice), then you can definitely go the nanny+ route, and get coverage for 12 hours a day.  If you do want to spend some time with baby every day, then you should consider one of the staggering-your-schedules options.  If you want family with the baby every day, but it doesn't matter if it's you, then you should bring in family somehow.

For me, I ended up scaling back in ways I never would have anticipated.  But I've also capitalized on every ounce of flexibility my job allows--working in the morning before my now-toddler wakes up, working a short (7-8 hour) day while he's at daycare, and then working again in the evening.  It means no free time, but I never had any before because I worked all the time.

So, there are lots of alternatives, but it really depends on your priorities--again, all of which are valid.[/quote]

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