Relevant background info: I work full time as a consultant, which is flexible but also demanding. My husband is a resident in a surgical specialty. I work ~9 hours a day (8:30a to 5p, then light work in the evenings after LO is down), and my husband works ~12 hours a day (6a to 6p). We have a nanny to care for LO during my “official” work hours. Typically in the evenings, my husband takes care of baby while I cook and clean up.
When my husband comes home late — like later than 6p or if he says he thinks he’ll be home early but comes home 6p or later — I find myself irrationally angry. He has asked me for some personal time to play a game w his friends on a weekday evening and I find myself irrationally annoyed. It’s not his fault when he has to work late and I think people need and deserve personal time. But I feel like I’m already stretched thin — I solo parent from 5a (when LO wakes up) to 8:30a and 5p to whenever he gets home, and I do all weekday night wakes, on top of a demanding job and trying to run a household (though we do and are trying to outsource more household maintenance stuff). So every additional hour feels like trying to pour from an empty cup.
Is the solution to hire even more help? The nanny already works 8.5 hours per day, so not sure I can ask her to work more. Also it seems weird to hire someone to help with LO when I’m not working, because it should be me?
I recognize and feel grateful I am able to spend time with LO (who is mostly a joy!)… I just wish I didn’t have to do it alone so much.
I did. My husband was an attending (hospitalist) when we had our first and I had the nanny come in on Saturdays so I could sleep and wash my hair.
Now our son is in daycare and my job is less demanding. But I use my sick time on myself and my husband handles appointments when he has weekdays off. A lot of his coworkers and my family members have two nannies because of work demands as physicians.
@kimosabe2019 omg there is a subreddit for everybody!!!! thank you for the rec, this one is great!
someone in a similar position as me had a “mothers helper” a few days a week in the evenings. we live near a major academic center for his residency, so i’m thinking that there are prob a ton of college/med/nursing students that can fill this role cheaply! don’t need them to be experienced since i’ll be home and just need a hand w errands, cleaning, cooking, etc.
@1stjohn0666 That's similar to our situation! Our old nanny is a grad student so we're using her as a mother's helper for her last semester and then hopefully a summer nanny with our second on the way. Being in a college/university city has made it very easy to find extra help on a part time basis. You got this!
@1stjohn0666 I used care.com but there's a local childcare connections Facebook group, which I would have started with if I had known about it earlier. A lot of people are looking to fill a couple hours here or there. Right now it's filled with students looking for something during winter break.
@1stjohn0666 Do you ever get time to yourself? My husband does all the night time with my lo but she’s also 3. He puts her to bed and I have that time to myself. I take care i of her from wake up 730 til I leave for work. He takes her so I can go to the gym 3-4 times a week. I also give him time for the gym. It’s a balance
@ligerheart25 yes! some saturdays i do woodworking for a few hours while husband stays home and watches LO. i do feel a bit “filled” after that but.. something abt it feels unbalanced still. like yes maybe our personal time hours are roughly fair/equal but for him, my personal time means him going from 0 to 4 solo parenting hours (which is easy!) while for me, his personal time means me going from 20 to 24 solo parenting hours (which is less easy!).
@1stjohn0666 How much longer is residency? I was in a super similar situation— had my first kid about a year before husband finished a surgical specialty residency. I’m a lawyer and at that point I was in BigLaw, working long, intense hours. But because my job was technically more flexible and didn’t include surgery, I was always the one up overnight and solo parenting after the nanny left, etc.
I totally get the resentment. Realistically there is no good solution here except survival.
@reebern i know the whole situation is temporary — LO will get older/slightly easier and there’s 1.5 more years of residency.. but i know the anger/resentment is hurting our (still kind of new-ish) marriage
my sister is in big law so im familiar! what did you do to manage your (crazy) workload and the… feelings from having to still shoulder more childcare?
@1stjohn0666 I think the best thing from a marriage perspective is to try so, so hard to have equal amounts of leisure time. Balancing the parenting tasks and the work is so hard, and it becomes just about impossible to keep things “fair”. But at the end of the day, the real resentment comes from feeling like the default parent while the other person gets to keep his freedom and take hours/days for leisure.
Also it just gets so much better once residency is over.
@1stjohn0666 I also have a surgical resistant husband and I similarly get frustrated/resentful sometimes with evening hours. His program has a ton of "mandatory" dinners, bonding activities, journal clubs etc so there is always something every other week or so on top of his call schedule and general home time of 7 pm.
For me at least, I don't think the frustration is irrational. Its unfair that you have to shoulder more of the childcare etc due to his job. I'm still working through my own frustrations, so I don't have a solution for you other than to talk to your husband about how you feel.
We have hired a babysitter once or twice so that I could also do a weeknight work dinner or one time a social event. It totally fair to get extra help when you need it! The other thing that has recently helped a bit was hiring a housekeeper to reduce my household workload.
@limeleaf i know this is going to be totally dependent on your home and your own tolerance for mess, but out of curiosity - how often do you have the housekeeper come? we do biweekly now (started abt 6 months into residency), but now w the baby and his being mobile/on the floor a lot i was thinking we should up it to weekly? but do i really need that much help?? ugh this is my constant internal debate w hiring help, like ofc help would be great but conceivably i could do it myself..
@1stjohn0666 We do biweekly. Each time I have todo a lot of picking up stuff and putting away laundry etc before they get here, so I don't think I'd want to be rushing Todo that each week. I think if i added any help next it would be having the housekeeper also do our laundry since I hate folding and the endless loads so much. We have a robot vacuum that goes around each day to pick up crumbs and that helps keep the floors clean between housing cleanings, so that might be a good alternative investment to keep the house cleaner.
We like to think of it as buying yourself time vs hiring out a task you could do yourself. Time is the most valuable asset especially when family time is so limited with a resident spouse.
@1stjohn0666 Sounds like you need to talk to your husband to communicate better, & ask for your own time. If he says that he may be home early, but plans change, it's common courtesy to be informed. Even a text or email is better than nothing.
And ask for your own personal time! He can use his personal time to play a game with his buddies, you use your time to do "me" things without a baby latched to you.
@1stjohn0666 The solution is to figure out how to fill your cup, and how to get you some me time. I just recently learned of a “dopamine menu” where you categorize tasks that trigger those feel good hormones. I felt very lost and incredibly resentful of my husband after our first, he also works long unpredictable hours. Learning to make myself happy again took time. And so did collaborating with him and carving out time for me.
@1stjohn0666 I think this is the situation where you need a paid village if you don’t have access to family support (probably because of your husband’s job…) I would try to find a “date night” sitter that you can use to take care of yourself! I work 37hrs a week but have a long commute with baby and my dad and his wife come over every Sunday and bring lunch and watch baby for like 5 hours.
@1stjohn0666 Ask him for personal time on a weekday evening too and go out for dinner, meet up with a friend, go thrifting or shopping, watch a movie, gym, join a local club, watch sports at the bar.
Could also hire a babysitter or ask nanny to stay late for his evening and then you can relax and do something for yourself.
