How to get a break from kids

[Rugby01]

I don’t know how to get my OH to see that I need a break from the kids (under 3) at the weekends. He has a busy life outside of work with hobbies, and books himself evening events, which I really don’t mind, except when it gets to the weekends and he has so much work to do that he can’t ever seem to offer me the time off I need. I don’t understand why he couldn’t have done that work instead of these hobbies etc! . We had agreed that every other weekend I would have an afternoon off to do what I want but this weekend and last weekend these have drifted and I have ended up doing all/most of the childcare again so that he can work (he gets stressed if he feels overwhelmed by work, and I will do anything to avoid that stress affecting me too). Trouble is I’m burnt out and I don’t know how much more I can do of this. I’m still on maternity leave so I suppose he sees this as ‘my job’ or something or he thinks I have a fun time with the kids every day when he’s at work, and he doesn’t realise what hard work it is. In fact I sometimes think he wants to prove how much harder it is for him.
Anyway this is part rant and part call for anyone who has the same situation and what did they do about it, without causing a major row. Every time issues of time and calendar come up, he tends to get annoyed/defensive and we end up arguing. I need specific wordings of conversations you may have had to get what you needed without an argument.

We don’t have family close by to help and I am not leaving him. (In case anyone was going to offer these solutions!).

I think you need to get him to see that - as he gets 'stressed by work' and 'overwhelmed by work', so do you. You've already stated that he thinks looking after the dc is 'your job', so, once you point that out, he will be able to understand that you too need to switch off occasionally. If need be you can add to that sentence 'like you do when you go to {insert hobby}'.

However, I think the most sensible thing to do is for you to commit to something - your hobby in effect - one evening a week, or for a few hours at the weekend, so it is a commitment in the diary, where you have to leave the house. If he is feeling stressed as he wants to clear some work, then it will be down to him to choose between clearing the work, or going to his hobby - either is fine, but it is his choice then and he doesn't have the option of you covering for him if you are out the house / committed to being elsewhere.

Focus on getting equal free time, that way you are not quibbling over who did more work, or who's work is harder. Just make sure you leave the house for yours so that you get proper time off.

So if he has an evening in the pub, you go see a movie another evening that week. If he spends the morning cycling, you go for a swim in the afternoon.

Thanks both. This is helpful. I did indeed try to make it the weeks when ‘x hobby’ was not on so that it was definitely in the diary but then he goes and books up some other not-to-be-missed event for himself on the day when his ‘x hobby’ isn’t on and how can I say no? I have no specific thing /hobby. I just want the freedom to choose what I do with that time off. I could be upstairs reading the newspaper, it shouldn’t matter to him, he should still respect my time off, right? Anyway I’m just seething here. And to top it all he is downstairs working (ie actually awake) while I’m upstairs trying to sleep, but it’s me who has to wake up and see to the baby when they cry!

and how can I say no?

er.... because you are half of this partnership who needs to look after her physical and mental health too.

This is why, until he accepts that, you need to go out of the house. 6 months down the line, things might have changed a bit, and you can have your 'time off' in the house (though I think that is unlikely when you have a baby in the house), but, to set the ground rules at the start, you need to leave the building and leave him to it. Even to the extent of - if he has something that comes up that he really can't miss, then he needs to sort the sitter.

You tell him that for everything he books in the diary for a non work thing (including evening social events for work, hobbies, working time on the weekends), you get an equal amount of time ‘off’ to do your own thing. You do that for a month or two and then re visit the discussion. So go through the diary, if he is out at his hobby Tuesday and Thursday 6-9pm, then you book yourself in the diary for something Wednesday 6-9 and Saturday 12-3. Take exactly the reciprocal hours for yourself. If he goes away for a weekend, you book yourself to go away for a weekend. I go away at least one weekend a year completely alone and go do whatever I want (obviously when dc are old enough to manage, youngest is 11 months so wasn’t possible this year, had to take the baby with me but left everyone else at home). The past two years I’ve gone to Barcelona. It was fantastic, even with a baby!

But once he gets the experience of having to primary parent and having his schedule dictated by someone else’s whims, then he’ll hopefully be a bit more understanding and have better work life balance. It’s no good for anyone for work to be bleeding into family life every weekend just because he doesn’t manage his time better.

Mindutopia - thanks. I think that sounds good. I am not sure how to actually broach it with him esp as he’s now in a foul mood after I told him I needed my time off today. (He’s let me go for two hours this morning, though I hate not having it planned in as I can’t plan to do anything).

Perhaps I’ll just bite the bullet and suggest this plan to him and be prepared for an angry /defensive response. It’s true - he has to give up some other stuff if his work is that important. At the moment it’s ME that is giving up my stuff/time/sanity to enable him to do all his hobbies and interests and work. Essentially at the heart of it is a contempt for my time and a rep sense that what he does with his time is valid and important and what I might choose to do (seeing friends) is not. At the moment I’m so hurt I can’t imagine trying to discuss anything with him.

By the way I love your method of going away at weekends. Good for you!

DH and I did shared parental leave - when DS was 6mo he stayed home for 2 months. It definitely resulted in the mutual understanding that looking after children is absolutely a full time job by itself - you might be able to do a bit round the edges of washing and cooking for the baby but everything else (the stuff you wouldn't expect a nanny working 8-6 to do) is on top of the full time job of childcare because if you were in an office 8-6 as well and paid a nanny, you would still have all that stuff to do. That means that if one parent is at work 8-6, other parent is looking after kids 8-6, everything else should be 50/50 including but not limited to: looking after kids between 6pm and 8am, cooking, tidying, cleaning, dog walking, life admin, etc. And crucially each parent gets 50/50 time off, even if that's just reading the paper with a coffee on a Sunday morning, going upstairs for a bath and Netflix marathon or a few hours pottering in the garden without being expected to respond to screams - or indeed going out to do your own hobbies or clubs or seeing friends. (I know people will say get your nails done or go out to a cafe or whatever but I personally crave alone time at home knowing that DH is on duty with the kids.)

Neither of us realised how much work it was being at home with the baby until we each tried it (and not just for a weekend letting the house go to hell and surviving on takeaways) so he may genuinely not think of the childcare as a job that never stops and which doesn't allow you to do anything else. I'd outline just that, that you are at work 8-6 while he is at work, and then he has to be 50-50 with you on everything else outside those times.

And a word on 50-50, you can do this as you wish but to avoid the "mental load" we don't split each task - we have our designated jobs that we are 100% responsible for so there is no mental load of managing the other, oh have you cleaned the bathroom, ok so I'll hoover etc. But it has to add up to 50-50 work and free time. As an example I do all washing, he does all ironing. I do all cooking, he washes up and tidies the kitchen. He does bins, I do bathrooms. I sweep the floor daily, he hoovers the whole house weekly. I change the bedsheets and dust, he tidies and declutters and deals with dry cleaning. Finances we do together, also holiday planning. He buys presents and cards for his family and I for mine. He usually takes a nap either Sat or Sun afternoon, I have either Sat or Sun morning to do whatever I like, and have choir on a Thursday night. Etc.

Thanks. Shared parental leave does seem to help men realise what it is like. Trouble is my other half wouldn’t get paid for this. And I’m due to go back to work soon. I did ask him if he wanted to go PT and I’ll go FT but of course we all know what the answer was. So I’ll still be the ----slave one who does all the work at home even when I’m back at work.

Can you pull up a nanny job description and point out what is and isn't included? And also point out that if you were at work full time and a nanny took your place with the children, she would go home at 6pm and then ask him who he thinks should be on duty with the kids after that - still you? Why? Why not shared equally? What about everything else to keep a family running smoothly - your job or his?

Xiaoxiong talks a lot of sense.

Before we had dc, I don't think either of us had any sense of what the day looked like. I assumed I'd have loads of time on my hands, whilst a baby either lay and gurgled at me, or slept.

Ha Ha Ha

Fortunately, because of our circumstances when dc1 was born, dh looked after him for a week when he was 5 weeks old, and then for a month once he got to 2.5 months old.
After that experience, he never questioned that I needed a break sometimes.

I know you can't do that, but going off for a weekends might be a start. You need to establish it early on though.

Me and DH both enjoyed a book called ‘how not to hate your husband after kids’. He got me it as a joke but it taught us both things. A lot about women often communicating quite passively about what they need and men assuming if she needs help she will ask. That’s definitely my tendency and there are times I think I’ve been clear and it’s just not. I suppose any discussion you have will be helped by appreciating his experience- that he is working hard and you realise life isn’t easy for him all the time either. But it feels imbalanced to you and how can you come up with solutions together.

So many friends and I all notice how partners work hard to preserve their hobby time etc, while being a mum becomes one dimensional as all that dwindles away. We do ourselves and our partners a disservice by not taking responsibility for that and taking steps to address it.

Merename - that’s interesting - I had heard of that. Perhaps I’ll get it and see. I do very much expect him to know. But then after I’ve explained again and again that I need a break I kind of thought he'd get it.
The main issue is that he does so many fun things for himself (hobbies) that he doesn’t have enough time to do all his work. Now in the old days (pre kids) that didn’t matter. His call. But now that there is literally no extra time to squeeze all these things into, the obvious knock on effect is on my time and welfare, as I pick up the slack. And anyway wouldn’t you think he’d WANT to spend more quality time with his kids rather than catching up on work? Therefore he’d have to cut back on the hobbies? I don’t know. It just seems (to me) to be such an obvious calculation to make and small shift in priorities for a few years.

Put on the calendar on an evening of a week day or weekend in advance when he is to look after the kids. Explain it's on the calendar it'll be your time to relax, go out, lock yourself in your room (not to be disturbed) and tell him not to book his own extra events on those times or dates. I think enough notice and it on the calendar is fair. You need to be honest with him, tell him how you feel and that your agreement hasn't been kept. Maybe sit together to book the slots on the calendar so he's involved and then can't go back on it. You deserve a break just as much as he does.

Thanks tinker bell. I will do. It’s finding the time when he will do Tay without an argument.

Tonight I ended up putting both kids to bed (they are young so this is challenging) on my own so that he could work! I do it for a quiet life and then I feel like I shouldn’t have done that as it just let’s him do it more and more...

Good news is that going away for work in the summer for about 4 days. Hahahahahaha

Does he come home before doing hobbies? If so I'd just be waiting at the door and leave the second he gets in. Fuck his hobbies if he isn't prepared to allow you equal time.

Like @mindutopia said start making a life for yourself away from your dc and dh. I go away for at least 6 weekend trips a year with friends then multiple nights out a year (plus gym trips!). My dh is less sociable than me and prefers to be at home (playing xbox!) , but it's not that he can't go away/out it's that he isn't good at organising things and he isn't really motivated. He's also shit at putting things in the family planner (though getting better) and has missed out on nights out/ sports events because he has been lax at telling me and I've made other plans. Start asserting yourself and get a life outside the home otherwise the resentment will just build.

I meant ‘I’m going away’

All good tips. I will start doing this. Even if he gets arsey about the calendar (which he does), I will just keep a tally of stuff he does and stuff I do and if they’re equal then he can’t get annoyed.

Resentment REALLY building. If I added up all the hours he had for his stuff I’d be owed about a month off (in a calm and nice moment he even said this to me himself ages ago).

I’ve ordered the book.

I have ordered the book too from World of books. I am interested in learning how to communicate better post kids. I am passive aggressive and DH is confident that the bullshit he spouts is right and I quite often give in for an easy life.