AIBU to think being a SAHP to a six-month-old baby and under five is harder than most jobs?

[TheOddity]

I don't know many people in jobs with a schedule or level of stress like that of a woman on mat leave in school holidays.
My morning, just from 7am to 10am:
Get up by being jumped on, immediately change sodden nappy.
Nappy in nappy bucket
Get four breakfasts ready while entertaining baby and answering questions/4yo stream of consciousness.
Try to find safe place for crawling baby while I wash up. Make den for 4yo.
Wash up, clean high chair, dustpan floor (weaning), wipe floor (crawling).
Hear a cry, sort out teddy stand off.
Put washing on. Spill powder, clean floor
Clean toilet and floor (baby crawls everywhere in a flat).
Baby grumpy and crying and falling all over fighting sleep. Put to sleep while trying to mentally plan lunch.
Finish washing up, have five second shower. Baby wakes distraught (teething). Feed baby while still wet and naked. Won't go back asleep after tiny nap.
Take nappy off again as soaked through and messy from breakfast. Give her some nappy free time.
Encourage toddler to take clothes off to get dressed.
Toddler needs a poo. Juggle wiping bum while baby tries to crawl closer from other room (can't put in cot as she just breaks down. separation anxiety?!)
Baby crying as after two days the nappy free trick has worked and they have done a massive poo on the floor and are now squirming in it. Leave toddler playing in sink while I sort out 'poonami'
'Poonami' sorted, baby back with nappy. Find toddler has flooded floor with water. Wipe up water while listening to baby crying in other room.
Baby dying to finish nap, put in sling while I encourage 4yo to dress. Go downstairs to throw poo and rubbish out. Baby finally asleep in sling.
Share woes with mumsnet while 4yo watches god knows what on TV.
That is three hours. It is totally relentless. And that is just me keeping things how they were before we woke up, no extra cleaning, no shopping, no trips. We go out lots but those bits you have to do at home and getting ready are soooo much harder than my paid job before. Dh then comes home to tell me he is so tired. I breastfeed and do all night feeds.

I think it depends on your job , your personality and your organisational skills.

I found staying at home much easier than dealing with demanding adults in a business setting. I was my own boss. I set the agenda and I got to organise everything in a way that worked best for me and my family. I could happily ignore anyone who thought they knew how to do my job as a parent better than me in a way I couldn't in the office.

I didn't have three kids however but ultimately the number of kids we have is our own choice (multiple births aside) and I know I wouldn't have coped well with three under fives .....so I didn't have them , in the same way there are certain jobs I wouldn't accept because although I could perform the tasks required I wouldn't do a great job so why take on one job you know wouldn't be enjoyable and we perform best when we enjoy the job.

Ultimately SAH is choice , the number of kids is a choice. I don't believe it's any harder than most jobs with a decent amount of responsibility (and yes I realise that's MN heresy but that is my honest personal experience)

I both agree and disagree. And it's not a competition. For a lot of people full time parenting will be a lot harder then paid jobs. But it depends on your job doesn't it? There are plenty of very stressful jobs.

I found days with just me and the kids very hard when I was on maternity leave. (2.5y age gap). But I was lucky to have my oldest in nursery a few days a week so I had some respite where I could go to baby groups, do things with just the baby. A lot depends on your expectations too. I am not shy about putting ceebeebies on if I need DS1 to sit quietly while sort the baby out, and I accept that my house is a pigsty.

It depends on your job. I am a nurse. Some shifts I am rushing around on my feet, trying to keep people alive and safe for 12h non-stop while helping my team-mates do the same. Other shifts are a bit calmer and are less stressful than being at home. My husband works in IT and finds his job miles easier than having the kids by himself.

On the other hand, if I was a full time SAHM I think I would find it psychologically much harder than my job, as I'd be quite isolated.

YABVU. I think it depends on what job you had. Like wildfire being a surgeon or something in senior management, when the buck stops at you for 1000's of people, you cannot compare all jobs to being a SAHP. I only did the SAHP role for 3 months (16 months & a newborn) & they were the best 3 months of my life.

But the kind of work you do is a choice too.

Maybe you've just never had a particularly stressful job, OP?

Parenting is challenging. At times it can be stressful. But stress is very relative.

When I was an RMN I was regularly the only qualified member of staff responsible for a ward full of suicidal and/or psychotic patients for up to 14 hours without so much as toilet break. Maternity leave was an absolute picnic in comparison. As previous posters have said, it's not a competition, but when your working day includes having to cut someone down from hanging, being strangled and spat at, trying to comfort people in a state of distress so extreme that most of us can only imagine etc. it does grate a bit hearing SAHM's saying they "wish they could go to work for a break!"

My current job is often easier than being at home with two small children would be. That's because it's a comparatively "easy" job compared to what I'm used to.

Depends on the job. Nhs worker here so used to not being able to sit down, go to toilet and juggling 1000 things but tbh excluding the triedness looking after a baby is easier than running a clinic, seeing patients, treating patients, sometimes being verbally attacked, ordering stock, writing gp letters, phoning gps with the occasional medicAl situation thrown in...had a diabetic who hadnt eaten then followed by a patient who Fitted in one morning so add that to my full clinic list...i was running very late that day. (I love my job by the way every day is different and im so lucky to have meet some amazing patients). In own home, everything set up by us to make it easy...simple. Yes there are bad days but you can hid away and hit the cake and mn, something not possible at work. Even if we had access to the internet...when would i have the time when i dont have time to pop to the toilet. Its not a competition though! Both situations have stressful parts...(reaches for the chocolate cake and cuddles new born while considering which box set to start today...)

I'm a secondary school teacher by trade. I don't work full time any more, but I certainly found being a SAHM when my two were tiny FAR easier and MUCH less stressful than full time teaching. No comparison.

Put it this way, at the end of my career I was getting paid almost £40,000 for just nannying. No cleaning, laundry- just nannying.

(Now I'm a sahm and have a shit load of animals and vegetable gardens to look after as well as ds and am permanently exhausted and scrape by on dh's wage. It's 5.30am I've already been up for two hours and think I may puke due to how tired I am and the rest of the family is not even up yet.)

Yeah it's hard but I don't find it harder than my job outside the home which is way more stressful and has the added extra of missing the kids. Realise it is different for everyone though.

It's not a competition.

I have a very stressful full time job. When I get home from work it's relentless. After toddler goes to bed I don't get to sit down for a single minute during the week apart from when I quickly eat my dinner. As soon as she is asleep I spend every second doing housework, preparing food for the next day, sometimes I have to finish some work too. I frequently get less than 6 hours sleep. Toddler does not sleep through.

On the weekends at least I can get chores done whilst she's awake, which means I can sit down and relax a bit after she's gone to bed.

Depends on the job, depends on the baby, depends on the person I think.

I'm finding mat leave harder than working (DS 5.5 months). Easier than being pregnant and working though!

It's the accumulated broken sleep and the constant, relentless responsibility. Even if I get a sneaky 10 minutes, like now whilst baby is amusing himself, you've got to constantly have eyes on them and can't relax, and know that it is only a temporary reprieve before the next round of inane babble / forced enthusiastic play to keep him happy, or the next round of never ending cleaning up drudgery.

DS has had gastroenteritis for the past few weeks and some days it feels like allllll I do is basically clean up poo, clean bottles and do laundry. My hands are so dry the skin cracks open every day from all the cleaning, no amount of hand cream is enough. There are obviously rewarding parts of looking after baby, and yes you can go off to the park etc. for an hour or so occasionally. But you don't clock out at 5, or at 7, or at 10, or basically ever.

A lot of people have to do all the above and then find the time for their pod work as well! YABU.

Paid work, of course. Which very well may be in a pod.

I work term time only but had to do a day's training earlier in the week. I felt like I was on holiday! It's not so much the difficulty I find, but just the mind numbing drugery of being at home and the sense of never being off city. We've been out to loads of places and had a great time, but I couldn't just go to the loo without an entourage or sit on the beach and read a book. I'm spending an inordinate amount of time on here just so my brain doesn't dribble out of my ears 😆

Ah see I think I answered the wrong question then! My order of stressful tired situations is, from most to least -

1. Full time job then looking after a baby all the time you're not a work and doing night feeds (did this for a year).
2. SAHP (to my baby/toddler - others I hear are a bit easier :) )
3. Stressful FT job with no real domestic responsibilities (did this for about 5 years).

Sigh. Yes of course, because being something like, say, an A&E doctor isn't nearly as stressful as having to plonk your toddler in front of the TV or clean up a bit of poo from a floor (which was your own fault, since the baby didn't have a nappy on).

Little sympathy, I'm afraid. How would you cope if you actually had to function in the real world?!

Go get a job then.

Bet Op wishes she'd never started this thread

Being at home can be hard with small children - been there. But it isn't a breeze either being at work and having older children.

However I am really really glad that I never have to do nappies again.

Empathy for others running strong on mn today.

Seriously, does it make people feel good about themselves to be spiteful little madams?

Totally depends on the environment in which you work, anyone watching the documentary on low paid workers?

There are some incredibly stressful jobs around with horrible working conditions, NMW, zero hours contracts etc etc etc - that to me (and I am on NMW although in a fairly 'pleasant' job) is 100 times more stressful than being a SAHM - which I was for many years - bliss .

I agree with pp that it's not a competition, both can be hard work. But I think for many jobs yabu, I'm a sahm to a 6 month old, 3 year old and 5 year old, and even on a bad day it's no way near as stressful or challenging as when I worked (solicitor). I think many sahp who think the opposite must have had pretty easy jobs.

Yes I am on the go all day with my three, but it's miles easier than DH's job, deadlines, managing people, high level of responsibility etc. If I'm having a tough day I can just eat chocolate and sit in the garden :-)

It depends what your job is. When my kids were young I would look after 4 kids under 7 all day then go to work all night in an incredibly stressful job. Looking back I wonder how i didn't have a breakdown. Nowadays I would much rather be at home with a couple of preschoolers than go to work in a stressful job.

It's really not a competition & there's no need for the nastiness.

Whatever an individual feels is hardest depends on many factors.

However, I think the TWO MAIN things that makes being at home harder or easier is your relationship with your partner & your expectation of yourself. If there's pressure from either of you to have house pristine, home made dinner ready, xyz done then yes, it's really stressful, whereas if you don't put that pressure on yourself & your partner doesn't put it on you its SO much less stressful.

And I'm sorry but since when was raising children not being in the real world? I really hate the way being a sahp is devalued by people sometimes.