To think I’m going to have to give up work

[itfeelsstupid]

Because I can’t cope.

I can’t manage a demanding job (albeit 3 days a week but with a lot of ‘extra’ work) and two demanding children and no other support.

I might just be feeling overwhelmed but I am already thinking this isn’t going to be possible. It’s taking hours to settle children at night then I have the ‘night shift’ to do early starts and I can’t do it 😭

Spot on, take care OP

Also this is what a FT working routine looks like. We both work 5 days a week but I can leave work early (by 3:30-4) so I do need to do a bit more work at night or on the weekends to catch up on the hours. We have a cleaner once a week. Big jobs like recycling and changing sheets are for the weekend. I hate changing sheets so DH does that. He hates doing the trash so I (reluctantly because I also hate it) do that one.

Morning

• DH wakes up at 5:30. He has a shower and gets ready by 5:45. He makes breakfast. Dries out laundry or puts it away or starts a load. Makes me tea- by 6:10ish.
• I wake up and drink the tea and answer emails.
• Till 6:45 we answer emails/get a headstart on the day. Have a chat/catch up. If I am feeling super virtuous I will slip in 20 mins of yoga here. When the kids were very small this was a rarity. Still is and one of them is a teenager.
• 6:45-7. He makes packed lunch for both of us or we both eat at work. (All of this takes 15-20 mins). Done by 7. If he has to leave early he leaves at 7 OR
• 7 am: he goes to wake up the kids. We put out the clothes day before so DH can get them dressed quickly and have them eating breakfast. Bags are packed the day before. They are dressed by 7:15ish.
• while they are eating breakfast I shower and get ready for work (10 mins). If they are done DH loads the dishwasher. 7:15-7:30 am.
• He hangs out the laundry or puts it away.
• We have a quick chat about the cadence of the day and who is doing what. DH can leave any time between 7-7:45 depending on the day.
• Once DH leaves: If kids weren’t done with breakfast by then I tidy up breakfast. (By 8). We leave the house. I drop off to school (8:15).

Evening:
I pick the kids up between 4-4:30
Home and they run around while I put stuff away.
My kids are old enough to need to do homework and music practice. Otherwise they would run rings around me and whine while I made dinner. Worst bit of the day. I have no answers for this bit. It does get easier as they get older.
5:30-6 Dinner
6-6:30 Reading and quiet time with me. Also often descending into havoc.
Between 6:30- 7 pm: dinner is done so DH takes the kids up for bath and bed
7-7:30- I tidy up and run the dishwasher and sit down to make up my early end to the day.
7:30-8:30 I work if dinner is made aka we are eating what the kids ate. If not I make it.
DH puts them to bed and has a shower and is down by 8:30.
8:30-9:15ish we eat dinner
9:30-10:30 I work. Sometimes DH does too. If he’s not working he’ll go off and get stuff ready for the next day- his clothes, kids clothes, kids backpack.
Final tidy up together. Make sure everything is ready for the next day, eg if clothes need ironing etc.
10:30- go up to bed and watch crap on Netflix. Collapse.
When they were small we alternated night wake ups.

We meal plan ruthlessly. Kids eat the same breakfast every day. They eat lunch in school and/or day care. Meals are not elaborate. We batch cook on weekends. We both nap on the weekends if we can. No extra curriculars in the week when the kids were little. Leave it for the weekend and tag team.

The key is team work, ruthless planning and assuming that I won’t have time for date nights or hobbies or whatever.

DH out earns me by 4 times. I am a tenured professor but he’s a doctor and a scientist and has his own company. It doesn’t mean my work isn’t valuable enough for him to support me in everyday life so I can professionally succeed.

Also DH being involved in a lot of the mental work helps. So he handles all correspondence with the school including birthday invitations and what not. I do the homework/curricular bit. He made and took them to medical appointments. I did/do haircuts. DH books and plans holidays down to the last detail. I do the bulk of the packing. I rarely drive (I use public transport for work) so DH handles all the car stuff. I handle everything to do with our pet cats. I plan birthday parties and so on. DH will then be in charge of presents (figuring out what to buy, buying/ordering and wrapping). I’ll do the cake and invitations and the general party prep. Something like this!

Sounds like you and your husband have a fabulous relationship @MangshorJhol

One can see from your kindly typed out schedule that two parents working full time absolutely requires both parents, regardless of money earned or time ooh at work, to be both hands on deck on weekends and evenings.

Otherwise one parent is drowning.

Spot on. With small kids, no parent sits down till both are sitting down. He can come in at 730, have dinner, clean the kitchen, make the lunches for next day while you are doing bed time . It's so hard! But that's small kids, it passes. Good luck op.

Are you saying more men should do it? Less men should do it? Surely it depends on whether or not they’re the primary caregiver and what they want from life.

@arethereanyleftatall yes. But. And this is why anything online is only a snapshot of life. DH is also autistic. He finds socialising impossible. (This is why I organise the parties and he handles the presents and sometimes has to go upstairs and get away in the middle of his own child’s party). Sometimes his needs take priority over mine because a neurotypical world exhausts him. I get it but I also get resentful. He’s happy for me to go out with my friends as much as I want to but sometimes I want him to come too. Also sometimes he needs endless quiet time which is hard with kids so he gives everything as a dad but then I lose out.

He is also a fussy eater and I am a foodie.
There is also a MIL who lives next door and a FIL who died recently. DH hasn’t coped well with that but won’t talk to a therapist. So yeah, there is all that. But he’s a kind, funny, brilliant man.
Like I said, what you see online is always just a snapshot.

I’m saying more should. So that women aren’t the default parent. No primary caregiver in my family.

I can’t deny that I’m intrigued as to what job OPs DH does. It’s 8.30-5.30 and only men do it? Those hours sound like an office job.

His company only have men doing the role DH does. It’s office based some of the time, yes. I don’t know why you’re so intrigued (not meant to sound arsey) as I haven’t claimed it’s a special job or anything, but equally he can’t just rock up two hours late. Like most jobs!

Me too.

I work in a male dominated industry and I’m one of the few women at my company. I’m wondering if we may have similar roles.

So there are probably women doing it in other companies then.

what does he do when he gets home on a normal day?

The reason people are questioning you so thoroughly regarding your husband is because time and time again on mumsnet you get women who will tolerate so so much from men, low standards whilst they give so much. Often they don't realise or question it. Science would suggest we've evolved that way, oestrogen being the caring hormone, to ensure survival of our species. We do not know you or your husband, so cannot know if this is the case, but it is the reasons for the questions.

You've said your husband is working 12.5 hours per day including a 3 hour commute. With two young kids, and a wife who is working 4 days a week, and no extra help, this simply isn't enough hours, it won't be coming close to the hours you're having to put in. See the schedule below, they are both working in one form or another from 6am to I think it was 9pm. 15 hours a day. And weekends. That is what is required with kids if you both work. If one is dropping 3 hrs per day, the other one is picking that up.

If commute is so long is there scope to move closer to his job so you at least get back some of that time?

I am in the same position as you except working full time, and I have been asking people for advice. Universally people say you can't keep going like this, you need to change something. But they also say it's a relatively short time and once the youngest is three/four life gets a lot easier. But that's a long way off for both of us. So back to the change again. For me I think it might be a move overseas so we can get some proper childcare support without breaking tye bank.

Yes you imagine. Spot on.

Take no notice of the psychics on here, they know nothing about your husband although they think they know everything.

I hope you are OK, it is tough but it will pass.

Two things. 8:30-5:30 is not a particularly long work day- most women in the corporate world or working in law firms in big cities or working as doctors probably work AT LEAST those hours.
The 3 hour commute is actually a red herring. What it means is that OP’s husband has 90 mins child free at the end of his work day to drink a cup of tea, listen to a podcast etc before he dives into family life.

I assume like all of us when the kids were small the hellish period is 5:30-7 pm. That’s the bit OP’s husband gets to miss (and isn’t working then). So when he walks through the door I hope to God he jumps right into bedtime/dishes/chores/whatever his wife needs and doesn’t sit down till it’s done. Because I am pretty sure the OP hasn’t sat down either.

it could be that because im surrounded by people who work in the banking industry, I don’t think being out of the house 7-7 is all that crazy long hours. It’s pretty standard, and yes women do it to (usually the solution is - live in childcare).

the problem isn’t that he’s not home until 7pm and the OP has to do pick up for childcare and bedtime routine by herself until 7pm, the problem is that actually she needs to work very long hours to do her job well. She could do with spending 4-7pm not looking after the dcs but doing the unpaid overtime the teaching profession has evolved to expect, which makes it a particularly bad job to have with small dcs.

Yep.
It's so risky now that divorce or not being married when you have kids.
Women invest their time, energy and give up their careers to facilitate their DH/DP careers and then end up divorcing/spliting up and not benefitting from the man's 'big job' (& big pension) as divorce seldom results in the man being 'taken to the cleaners' as the incels would have you believe.

I find it crazy that some women can't think that there's a good possibly they will stay the man they had children with the whole of their lives and they need to ensure they continue their own careers and invest in their own pensions.
That's not feminism, that's just having your head screwed on.

Well if his commute is him driving I doubt he's having a relaxing cup of tea. I used to do a 90 minute commute, 60 minutes in the rush hour on the motor way and then a 30 minute crawl into the city where I worked. End of the day just as bad. I much preferred doing bed and bath to that. I was so stressed out I started to miscarry on the drive home one night but I suppose the OPs husband won't have to contend with that.

Not everyone has a career, some people just have a job.

@itfeelsstupid I know you want to stick with the status quo, but I feel it is worth pointing out that if DH went part time and you went full time, your family would pay less in tax and could claim child benefit. It is not always as simple as 'DH earns more..."

It would also help to redress the balance that tends to become very heavily weighted the other way, even when working equal hours.

Teaching is a vocation. It’s so much more than a job.

That’s right. It must be true that only men can do OP’s DH’s job.

Please.

Apologies if I get anything mxed up UP, I have rtft but not all at once (busy day!)

Firstly, you CAN do this. I think it's totally normal to feel like this when returning from mat leave, and as teaching is a job where you have to hit the ground running it's quite stressful. I'm back in a couple of days after may leave for DC4 and I feel a bit like this. I'm comforted by the fact that I've now felt a bit like this twice before and I'm still standing! You can do this. After a week you'll be back n the swing of it. You'll make efficiencies where You need to and it'll be ok.

Equally, if it isn't ok, you CAN walk away. If your husband earns about ex what you do, you could stop working and reduce your childcare costs and it would be fine. You may have high outgoings at the moment, but there will be ways to manage. You can come back to teaching after a break -how easily depends on your exact position, but you could do it.

Is there anything you can do to make the evenings/nights easier? It's really hard to make changes when you are getting very little sleep. Lots of people in here can give advice. Even if you're not ready to make changes now, your children will be sleeping better in the future. 2 of mine have been dire sleepers in the toddler years, no trouble at all now. It will get easier one way or another, but perhaps we can help.you nudge it along a bit faster? I'm very strictly no tears at bedtime, I just can't stand crying when I need to be calm and getting relaxed myself.

Your DH's hours prevent him getting much involved in bedtimes etc. Can he pitch in more at the weekend? My DH has certain activities he does with the kids at weekend to help free up a regular slot for me of known length so I can plan on using it.

Presumably you are part time because you want time with the children (I'm also 3 days a week), so you wouldn't want an extra nursery day. However, you could ask aroumd child minders - they are often full for school run times, but may be below capacity in the middle of the day. Something like 2 hours twice a week for 3yo at a time when two tends to nap might buy you a bit of time.

If you give us more details of what might help, you might get more tailored advice.