Oh my god. Well hasn’t this turned into quite something. It STILL just popped up in active!
I’m utterly gobsmacked at some people inability to see logic, and then repeatedly give useless or irrelevant replies. I mean you really are just wasting your time if you say something like ‘if you want someone else to raise your child, go ahead’ if you see 3-4 months of a child’s life as the ONLY opportunity to do what you consider it is to be ‘raising them’ then what an earth do you do for the other 18/21/30 years? Chill out watching Dr Phil with a glass of gin in your southern France retreat? But of course, you’re only saying that because you haven’t read or understood my OP/other replies. That’s why I stopped reading after 20 something pages. The replies were getting effectively useless since there are far more ‘why have you had kids’ and ‘I couldn’t have don’t that I stayed off for ten years’ without context at all, along with replies asking questions or suggesting things I had already covered.
@bookwords I don’t know what you said but judging by the replies it seems incredible vicious and renders any point you were trying to make as pointless competition to make you feel better(?). I’m glad you spent the whole (you haven’t actually clarified how long) of your mat leave tending to every need of your babies, that is great. And your choice.
I can’t go tagging everyone because I just can’t remember all the handles but: thank you to those who see sense in things and are prepared to speak out when something clearly sexist is playing out. It’s not about whether we agree on length of day, that’s why I asked for opinions, I’ve had plenty of useful disagreement. Disagreement isn’t bad/what I wanted to avoid, the whole point of aibu is to get disagreement to possibly adjust your view.
Sexist or just plain rude comments of course, aren’t necessary.
A pp mentioned whether my baby was a ‘nightmare’ or not, I’m not going to call him a nightmare but it’s certainly been challenging. No more than 3 hours sleep from June to October then no more to an 45min - 1.5hr at a time from October to start of February.. I have been battling with allergies, doctors, reducing our diet (was BFing) and utterly exhausted as some stalkers may have seen if looking at my other threads on feeding and tiredness. So 3.5 months of having sleep in roughly 1 hour intervals with no rest-bite (no DC wouldn’t settle for DP, so with covid I really do mean no rest-bite) I LOVED my day on Tuesday. Will I be waiting outside the door at 07:59 every week, no obviously not. I love spending time with my child, as do all of you.
The build up of incomplete tasks after zombie-ing my way through the last 3.5 months was almost cleared on Tuesday in case you want to judge this also.. I gave meter readings and had a £273 refund G&e and £39 water, switched provider for g&e, saved my monstera leaf from the impending doom that was the constricting cable tie, watered our cacti’s, removed tiles that had been sat in the kitchen since the tiler let us down in jan, removed masking tape from a paint job I did over Christmas (!!!), completed an assignment which id usually have to do when DC slept, sorted out an office space for future wfh and oh my god my skirting boards - no longer dusty. I then enjoyed a relaxing peaceful cup of coffee.
Maybe next time I’ll have a duvet day, I’ll post about it to cause even more controversy.
I was reading a thread just last night from a struggling mother and someone actually recommended sending their DC to nursery whilst she was on mat leave. Reading that and others on this thread I am far more comfortable in knowledge that the decision isn’t unique or remarkable.
The ‘you’ll miss the firsts’ is such a stupid argument, you cannot possibly know that when your child does something it’s the first time unless you are physically attached to them 24/7, as I said upthread, the nursery doesn’t know, the camera can’t catch the firsts unless you get DC to do it again.. even that memory isn’t actually the ‘first’. People use that as a way of guilting the mother (only the mother) into conforming into an outdated system of sexism. If you want to be a SAHP absolutely fine and you’re free to do as you please without judgement , but it’s not so you can see ‘firsts’ it’s because you love spending time with your DC and it’s nothing to do with missing something that you have no certainty over. I cried when DC stood up himself this morning, I don’t know if it was the first time, it’s the first time I’d seen it. It was special. It wasn’t on camera neither will it make it to his baby book, but I loved that moment and I probably won’t forget.
TLDR: I’ve loved the replies that were for our setup, I’ve loved the replies that said ‘I couldn’t do that, we did this instead have a think about it’ but some really should be ashamed that they’re so incredibly sexist and illogical.
You can all decide for yourself which you are 😊
Reading the recent replies, @Frazzled99 @Karmakarmachameleon @Chewingle @NoSquirrels and others of course than you for reiterating my posts for others to understand. We will certainly be considering a nanny after DC2 has arrived and that maternity leave ends.