To ask dh to help out occasionally when he is wfh

[Desupi]

Dh and I have a 9 month old daughter. We both work from home, me full time, and him 2 days a week and 3 in the office.

We are in the fortunate position to have my mum looking after our daughter most days. We do pay her £300 a month which I understand is not very much in the grand scheme of things.

In my job I am required to control the business phone line and inbox for around 15 hours a week. During the times when I am doing this, or have lots of meetings, I do try and make sure I have my mum on hand, but not always if it is going to be quiet.

My mum lives 12 miles away so getting a baby who hates car rides into the car and driving that far in rush hour with her screaming is quite stressful, so if I CAN avoid having her look after little one I always do that.

My main gripe is that on the days that I decide not to have my mum help out, I do sometimes ask dh if he can watch our daughter for 30 mins if I get an unexpected meeting request or call from someone. He normally has an issue with it and says "I am working, you should have asked your mum to help today!". He does probably have more of an 'important' job than me, but a lot of the time when I walk in the office he has youtube/ a game on his other screen!

Since I returned to work his working week has not changed AT ALL unlike mine. I organised the childcare with my mum for a low price, I take our daughter there, I wfh either WHILST looking after our daughter, or in my parents house with my daughter downstairs where my lunchbreaks are basically used to give my mum a break. We pay 50/50 on bills so its not even like he pays more.

He doesn't get the guilt of not wanting to burn his mum out and not wanting to take the p* with her kindness, and having the stress of taxiing a screaming baby around.

So AIBU to ask him to occasionally step in to care for our daughter every now and then during the week?

I'd suggest the following - as you are both working 5 days a week (irrespective of how busy you might be or not), that means that you have 2.5 days of childcare to sort out and your DH has the other 2.5 days of childcare to sort out.

Even when you drop to 4 days a week, you will still have 2.5 days of childcare to sort out, I'd suggest that the 1 day you will no longer be working, be one of those days. That means that your mother would be looking after her grandchild for 1.5 days per week.

Then it's up to your DH how he gets his child looked after for the remaining 2.5 days per week.

Sorry OP, but you need reliable full time childcare and both you and your husband need to be responsible in sourcing and paying for this. A cheap ad-hoc arrangement with your mum just isn't suitable.

WFH shouldn't be an excuse for people to not use childcare, it's unfair to your employers but most importantly your child. Babies need fresh air, stimulation and attention and this simply can't be met if you're in a full time role. I'd go as far as to say its cruel for your child and it'll only get worse as they get older. If you both had office jobs, you would need to source childcare accordingly.

You cannot work and look after a 9 month old without neglecting your child. They need near constant interaction at that age.

It fucks me off when I'm WFH and DH gets huffy with me for not helping get the kids out the door for school. If I'm working then I'm working. YABU.

Pay for childcare. You can't work and look after a 9month baby

I really can’t believe you’re asking this!
I’ve come off a call with HP “tech support” this morning. 1 hour. The assistant was deeply unprofessional and wasting my time and hers. Why? Clearly older toddler kids who were shouting for her, making a racket in same room. I couldn’t hear her, I couldn’t think..how the hell could she. She was not listening to me properly, (kept repeating back stuff I had not said, in one case the exact opposite) . she wasn’t even looking at the video stream she had set up to show fault at times. She was throwing random stupid things for me to try like unplugging and plugging into socket next to one I was using..did she miss the bit of schooling that teaches you power sockets are on/off and supply only electricity and not internet connections! and the power to printer was on…as shown in video ….now if she was asking me to move printer nearer Wi-Fi I get it, but she wasn’t (I suggested this and did it as she seemed unable to think with any element of tech ability at what to try).
deeply unprofessional. Distracted by kids. Wasted 1 hour for her to agree bloody thing is defective (it’s brand new out box). Even then she said she couldn’t organise the return and refund herself and told me to call a different number, 3 hours I was on phone to HP this morning.

ive managed people working remotely. Used to work remotely myself. Got adult kids working remotely. In all cases if staff were found to be trying to work at same time as child care, it would be disciplinary approach, husband is correct- you have childcare you need to use. He is very sensible to tell you to piss off. And yes, £300 is taking the piss from your mum, but hey ho that’s her choice.

do you not realise that all young kids and parents struggle with early mornings and childcare travel…did you not think about that before deciding this arrangements? Off course it’s not easy getting a baby out the house. We all manage though- in my case in 1990s we only had 6 months maternity leave, and I started work at 7:30…and no nursery so childminder with me making up bottles and weaning food. Granted have no idea how I managed it now , but I did somehow. Or I’d have been fired.

sort yourself out before you get fired yourself. You cannot do a good days work with managing a child. You can’t provide a child with a good focused parenting time if you’re working. All you are doing is being lazy at both and wanting an income for it.

. If I had someone with that attitude with no shame at all about what they were doing I would be thinking very hard about dismissal frankly, as you clearly don’t get you’re doing anything wrong.

Sorry op this situation isn't realistic or good for anyone. Your child should be in a proper childcare setting getting looked after, having fun and socializing. You sound absolutely frazzled and your dh could help you much more, he's left everything to you which isn't on the baby is his too. And it's definitely not fair on your mum having to put her life on hold and being stuck in the house just incase she's needed to look after baby. Go back to the drawing board and start again with paid childcare.

You should have proper childcare.

There are two points.

WFH is still working (albeit it sounds like your DH is taking the piss and uses wfh to have a slack day whilst at the same time working as an excuse to not do his share of the domestic stuff and childcare). You can't work and look after a child.

But, at the same time, the logistics of having a child and the domestic load should be more even split between you, as it doesn't sound like he's going any of that.

Read your updates. I wfh and agree with others that child care and wfh don’t mix. But you’ve probably made the choice to let your mum look after the baby because £300 a month is an absolute steal for child care. So in my view the odd tricky moment is the price you both pay for this bargain deal. You’ll need proper childcare at some point though so I’d advise getting on those waiting lists.

Why are you 50/50 with your DH - he should be paying more if he earns more. You are compromising your work and he's just carrying on. Where is your upside. Not a team player

That said i wouldn't be watching a baby either whilist working

This as well, I can't understand anyone defending the idea or saying it worked well in lockdown. And there's been much in the news about children who were of pre-school age during the covid lockdown having all sorts of problems and development problems so it can hardly be defended as a good idea!

That’s very unfair on your mum.

If you needed to get a job for financial reasons and couldn’t get childcare, then you should have got an evening job to work around your DH.

If you couldn’t get childcare then you would have no choice but to turn down the job/ask for flexibility between you and DH, like every other parent does.

It seems you’ve not given your mum a second thought in all of this and just expected her to pick up your slack.

This child is yours and your DHs responsibility.
Getting your mum to do childcare or trying to work and parent isn’t ok.
You’ve taken on something that you can’t actually do.

My DH used to do this to me while I was working from home and he was looking after the baby using shared parental leave. He used to just assume I would 'take the baby', I used to try and help when I could but it was the attitude that 'I was at home so I could help do childcare' that used to boil my piss, and we had some harsh words over it a few times. So your DH isn't wrong in that regard that if you need to work while he is working then childcare needs to be covered.

But, saying that, it is his responsibility to organise that too?? Surely HE could be driving your baby over to your mums and do pick ups etc outside of his working hours, it sounds like you've taken control of all of that aspect and he sees that as your responsibility.. this is a lesson for future reference, if he does that about childcare then he will do it about other things like chores etc.. start as you mean to go on, don't just automatically take responsibility for things that aren't your responsibility.

Just don't expect him to take the baby while he is actually working. It is extremely unreasonable.

The company I work for has a specific wfh policy which explicitly states that wfh is not a substitute for childcare. You should probably both look into your company policies…

But you can’t work and do childcare at the same time. Just not possible to do either properly.

have you tried child minders etc? There’s always something, especially in densely populated areas.
i voted yanbu as i think your husband is acting like the child is you responsibility to sort out and that’s not right.
if he’s not happy to help you in between for 30 minute slices of time then tell him he needs to help find an alternative arrangement that works for all of you.
hes taking you and your mum for granted

Lots of people saying "your poor mum" etc. My mum retired early many years ago, she OFFERED to do this. I basically had to force her to take some kind of payment. She always says it's no problem to have my daughter more, but I still get the guilt of overburdening her which I'm not sure I will ever get over, thats just who I am. Yes I know I am extremely lucky. My mum is not the victim in this, she loves that she is able to see her granddaughter so much! Did I mention I know that I'm lucky?

Well then do it. Don’t work from home and expect your DH to miss work because you have a call, your job may be relaxed but his may not be and he could get into trouble. You have childcare sorted so use it. If you don’t want to then get your DC on nursery waiting lists and sort it out.

Your husband is working. You can't expect him to stop and look after your child. You need better childcare arrangements with your mother.

I think it's great, she must have such a lovely relationship with her! Just be mindful that while your mum loves having her, she will most likely find it incredibly awkward to tell you if she is finding it tough, especially knowing that you have no backup plan in place so she would essentially be 'letting you down'.

If you are both working you should be able to get her into proper childcare at some point(even if not straight away), at least one or 2 days a week, and seeing as you have 2 days covered with your mum, why not tell DH to sort out the other two days out.. time for him to stop leaving it all for you, that's for sure.

Maybe he just recognises that it’s not possible to work whilst looking after a small child.

Honestly OP you need to come up with a better plan than this. In a few months your child is going to be much more mobile and demanding and it will be impossible to work from home with a baby there. You are risking your job (and your husbands) by attempting it. If your mum can’t do the 5 days you are at work then you need to start looking at paid childcare.

Your husband is in the wrong for not taking any responsibility for childcare. But he is not in the wrong for not looking after your baby during his work hours. You shouldn’t be doing that either except for very rare occasions (like if your mum was sick and you had to complete a task that day)

You should outline the cost options to him and make clear he will be paying 50/50. And also tell him he will now be taking 50/50 of the drop offs and pick ups. Why does he get to not have his work week impacted? me and my DH used to alternate - he’d drop and I’d pick up.

If you are genuinely worried about your mum doing too much; you need to supplement with some other childcare. I found a childminder great and did 2 days per week. Will you not soon qualify for some funding from baby hitting 10 months anyway? If you are based in England.

Yet you seem to be paid full time so 40? Hours a week

But work 15 ish

What do you do the other 25hrs ish

And if manning the phones - my friend does this as a social worker but she knows when she is doing it so books her ds into a flexible cm that she has amazingly managed to find

But also, DH is equally responsible for sorting out and paying for these childcare arrangements! OP, maybe you arrange 2/3 days with your mum and tell him his job is to sort the other 2 days??

Sorry OP, but I agree with PP: you simply can’t look after a baby AND work from home. You need to put formal childcare in place.

You can’t compare it with having YouTube up on his other screen. He’s in charge of how much attention he pays to his other screen: looking after a baby means being responsive to the baby.

Unfortunately you can’t look after a young child and work effectively. The only time I’ve done it is when my child has been sick and my work have been completely aware of the situation.

I know it’s tempting to try and reduce the stress on your baby and your mum by minimising time in the car etc, but you might get into hot water if either of you are found to be doing childcare when you’re supposed to be working.