Reply to Baby-related chores when DH is in leave

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DH stayed home with the baby and as soon as I got home from work and picking up our toddler from daycare he was off duty. His rationale was he had been with the baby all day. No dinner, no help with bedtime, no folding laundry or washing bottles. He needed time for himself. The baby napped for a solid four hour a day. After a couple weeks of this I was ready to kill him. This sounds dumb to write out but I made a chart. The time of day by half hour down the side, and a column for each of us. Three colors - work, relax, sleep. My lunch hour was relax, my work time was work. Nap time and Netflix was relax, nap time and laundry plus Netflix was work. We filled it out for ourselves and each other for a couple days (took maybe 5 minutes to do)  and compared. If we disagreed about which category something was in we compromised and figured it out and then tallied the time in each category for each of us. It was hard for him to disagree when he saw that he was getting roughly 8 hours of relax a day vs my 1.5 hours. We’re data people though, so this worked really well for us.

The other upside to this was to see what we were spending time on overall. You mentioned getting a new dishwasher - this was what prompted us to get one. We were seeing how long it was taking to load and it was because we were basically washing the dishes by hand first. [/quote]

That sounds amazing! This is OP; thanks for a post that seems to get the situation! I have focused on washing bottles because we have this pattern of me washing/husband relaxing, but the bigger issue is communicating how little downtime I actually have. [/quote]

You're welcome, I hope it helps. [b]The other thing it helped with was finally talking about what we hate/don't mind doing[/b]. For example, it turns out he doesn't mind laundry except folding, which I don't actually mind. I used to expect that if he started laundry he'd finish it, and would get mad when he left it in a pile on the couch. Now I fold. Seems stupid, but when you get stuck in your blame mode it's hard to see what's really going on.[/quote]

In addition to talking about what you don't mind doing, I would also say (in a non-stressful time), talk about what is important to you in terms of what helps you recharge.  Turns out my DH really wanted to work out almost every single day - he was fine doing a quick work out but he slept better, felt better if he wasn't compromising on working out - so I helped make that happen.  For me, I really wanted some down time at home on the weekend with no one in the house - so he would take the kids out for a couple of hours on Saturdays so that I could just be at home without someone needing me or needing something.  And twice a week (or so), I just wanted to completely hand over the bedtime routine and sit on the couch and drink a glass of wine.  By talking about what we needed, we were able to find solutions that weren't necessarily "fair" on a daily basis but were more fair over the course of a week or two.

I hate that people were jumping all over you.  I think your overall concern about the imbalance is perfectly legitimate.  Hope you and your husband can make some progress.[/quote]

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