Wow, I feel like I wrote this post, as I'm in a similar situation. Only mine is slightly better as both my husband and I are usually home by 6:00 (though we both have to "let go" of work that we know still needs to be done in order to make this work. We both stress endlessly about that).

My daughter is 8 mos now. Right before Christmas I thought I would have a meltdown and resolved to start trying possible solutions until I could find a balance that was livable. Here's what I have begun that seems to be working:

MEALS
1- I have a slow cooker and use it all the time.
2- I now eat the same dinner 4 nights per week, making the shopping and prep MUCH easier.
3. I took about 6 hours one weekend and made 4 freezable stews that will each provide 3 dinners/lunches. You can also do this with casseroles. I plan to do this every month or so.
4. On weeks when I don't pull a stew from the freezer, I cook 5 days week's worth of meals on Sunday night.
5. On Friday and Sat, we order out or pick up a rotisserie chicken.

CLEANING
1. Hired a house cleaning service. They come once a month and keep the grime from building up. (honsetly, I wish it were more often).

CONVENIENT DAYCARE
1. This was the hardest decision. I moved our daughter to a daycare that is much closer to our home. Her other one provided good care, but was closed all federal holidays, Good Friday, 2 weeks vacation + 3 sick days. I never realized how much stress all those days off plus a 15-20 min. commute to/from would cause us (they took off 7 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and that's how we learned). So we now have her at a daycare that also seems great, but will be open more days and is only a 5 minute commute. Those extra 10-15 minutes help us get the LO to bed earlier, which is good for her and us.

PAUSES
1. Now that our daycare is more regular, I plan to take a vacation day every 6 weeks or so to tackle home projects. I took one of these in early Jan. and it calmed my soul. Amazing how much difference 1 day at home alone, catching up on some "to do's" can now make.

Don't know if any of these will work for you, but I hope so.

Best of luck!

I've so been there. Go to sleep when the baby does. Seriously. Use paper plates and buy microwave meals from trader joes. For a limited time, until baby can enjoy playing with you while you cook and can join you in everyday tasks like laundry, dishes, etc. (we make these into games) you just have to get through.
Seriously, it gets better. But nothing gets better if you cannot enjoy the time you have with your baby. Play with him, who cares about the rest. And btw, tell you husband that vaccuming is zen and set him to it. Seriously, he can unwind with a vacuum. And perhaps a beer inthe other hand. It's ok. Share hte load.
The worst thing is to have more time for chores, and less time for baby.

Anonymous wrote:Or, you could turn over all responsibility for your material stability to another person, find your self-worth entirely in serving children who will outgrow you, set your family up for disaster if your husband dies/leaves/has a brain tumor. Oh, wait ... you have a business that brings in extra dollars and cam easily be ramped up to full-time, support-the-family mode if necessary.

Also, there's an awful lot of self-congratulation here for enjoying domestic labor. I find it stultifying. I don't work fulltime either, and I've still outsourced quite a bit of the child care and cleaning. I also know that we are lucky, lucky, lucky to be in the financial situation to have one full time job, one WAH part time job, and still have weekends entirely free and the resources to hire help. You are ridiculous in your assumptions about OP and WOHMs.

Oh, and congratulations on choosing so well in the husband department. I assume that took all of your best skills.

+1.