My DH and I have a 2yo DD. The only grandparents close by are my parents (who are very close) so if we ever need a babysitter, it's always them. There's no one else that can babysit / willl offer.
We don't go out very often. We ask them maybe once every other month so we can go out for dinner or something. However, over the last fortnight we have asked them twice, as we happened to get free theatre tickets in the Festival, but the last time before this was about 2 months ago for my birthday.
Anyway, we were supposed to go out tonight but I cancelled because I felt that it was 'just too much hassle' for them. They wanted to have tea in their own house first and weren't going to come over until half six, but I said that we would never make the performance if they did that (have to get bus across town), so they said, "ok, quarter past then", and wanted to know when we'd be home ("straight after the show" - "Oh, but it can be difficut getting parked at night"). Last week they huffed and sighed told us to get home for "10.30 at the latest" which meant that we had to rush our dinner in the restaurant, although we did manage a few hours out which was good.
When DD was a tiny baby it was better all round that we put her to bed and they watched her while she slept, so we were out 3 hours tops, including paying for taxis to avoid spending our whole night out on a bus. We hardly ever went out when she was under 1. Now that she is a bit older, it is better that they do her bedtime routine (dinner, bath, bed) as otherwise she gets hyper with all the people in the house and wonders where mummy and daddy are going.
Both my DH and I work full-time but only get 1 day a week together because of how we've worked out shifts to manage the nursery (can't afford full-time childcare). We are saving hard to buy a bigger flat (we're in a small one-bed, so DD is in our room), haven't had a holiday since DD came along, are always watching our money, it feels like all we do is work and collapse on the couch, we don't have any private space in the houes, and so being able to go out and be a couple is very important to us, not only for our relationship but my sanity.
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are we being unreasonable asking them to babysit as often as we do? twice in a fortnight is an exception - it is normally every other month, maybe every 6 weeks if we're lucky
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are we being unreasonable asking them to do the bedtime routine?
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are we being unreasonable full stop expecting anyone to babysit, as perhaps whem we have kids we should just except to completely sacrifice our own lives and stay in all the time??
What do other people do?