to tell Dh I no longer want to be SAHM to 2 month old and to be a SAHD?

[MrsDutchie]

Dh is a PhD student in the final stages of submitting his research. I've been on mat leave since November and whilst I love PFB to bits, I don't want to be a SAHM much longer - it's driving me crazy. I miss my work so much I've taken on part-time consultancy work with a charity. If I go back to work, a fair amount of the money goes straight back to childcare if Dh continues with studies.

I don't get why it's not the other way round. I have the job but Dh's logic is he will eventually get the well paid job. Sod eventually - why does the fact I have vagina mean I have to stay at home and look after PFB? I have a career and interests too. He just sees her at evenings and on nice family days and I'm driving up the wall here desperate to work again.

Like I said, I love PFB but why should the fact I have boobies and gave birth mean I'm faced with this dilemma and Dh gets to waltz through guilt-free without any concerns or repercussions about how selfish he is if he goes back to work.

Any other MNers had a similar dilemma? What did you do? I'm not looking to get flamed for how selfish I am or that it was my choice to have kids. I stand where I stand on this and I want to balance both

Your DH is living in cloud cuckoo land. I have a PhD (Science, so may be different to your DH's area) and began applying for jobs before I started my final write up. In your situation it would be a no-brainer.

A couple of thoughts:

1. Are you sure that he is actually writing up and not just bumming around on the internet or similar? I've seen phenomenon this in several graduate students in my department. Once the funding has run dry it's amazon how fast they can suddenly write ;)

1. Is he being productive and just has a lot of work to get through or is he struggling to write? May be he needs some guidance with how to write. His timelines seem a bit excessive.

Marynary the nursery my DD goes to takes babies from as young as 6 weeks.

Well, I must have been imagining it ten and seven years ago.

I wonder where I left them them?

Imagined what? I thought you said that your children were three months. Three months is older than two months believe it or not and the fact that nurseries accept children at three months does not demonstrate that you can leave them at two months.

Can he not look after the baby in the day, and then write up at nights/weekends?

kitchentableagain Thank you for the suggestion - I would be open to that. I think the only problem is that I would need to work for at least 4 days a week to bring in enough money.

Caterina99 - exactly that. I believe in Dh's research academia is that there are so many balls hanging in the air. I'm sure he will get a well paid job.

I agree with what a lot of others have said - he has not been proactive enough applying for jobs at the moment. It's more disorganisation than anything else. He loves his research and just wants to focus on that and finish it, and thinks we'll just about get by e.g. if parents step in.

I'm not happy to ask for large amounts of money from DPs for something we can fix ourselves if he looked after PFB a couple of days in the week. It's not fair on DPs to fund this lifestyle even if it is just for 3 months if a job miraculously appears. That's a lot of money! Money which I don't want to loan either!

Well I went back to work when my PFB was 6 weeks old andmy second 12 weeks. I had to I was the only one working and my EX had to step up and look after them if we wanted to eat and pay rent. This was 20 plus years ago. Was the best thing for us as a family , to be honest he wasn't thrilled and could never seem to manage housework, shopping and childcare, but the kids had the benefit of having a parent at home and we had no childcare costs. I think if you need to go back to work just go and leave baby with him, tiny babies sleep he can work round it.

Hi MrsDutchie -- I lived with my ex boyfriend while he was doing his PhD and he also refused to apply for things while finishing up. He then had more than 6 months out of work following submission which was MEGA shit.

Just to warn you.