When do you get a break?

[LittlePennow]

By break, I mean period of time when you aren't the one responsible for attending to your baby's needs, not counting being able to have a shower or get dressed? DH works from home FT, I'm currently on Mat Leave. Baby is 10 months. Hit me with how it works in your house!

When my husband is here (military so away a lot) Saturday mornings he takes Ds (2) to park run so I have a lay in.m and few hours to myself. Or will do another day too if work allows. Sometimes take him to the local football on Sunday depends what we are doing.

At 10 months I would plan and say eight Saturday afternoon mummy is off duty and he would have him.

Nights we alternated at that time. So if you were in duty in the night eg Friday night Saturday morning you could lay in.

DH is very hands on dad.

I'm 9 months in and I tend to say to my husband can you take him while
I do xyz. But I don't take extended breaks from him. We all just hang around the living room with either of us dropping in and out to do stuff. My husband works full time so this tend to be in the evening.

I do the night time stuff. As he's only up once and my husband has work to go to. When he was smaller my husband would do every other feed so I could get some sleep. With weekends who ever is awake tends to take him downstairs. Tbf it's normally my husband who is up first as he's a super early riser.

The honest answer? When eldest was ten months old, I worked full time shifts and sent him to the childminder on my non working days for a break. I was paying anyway so used it to my advantage.

When my youngest was ten months old it was when I was in work. It was the same for DH cos I worked evenings so he was the responsible one when I was in work.

I'm anticipating that you are going to post that your DH does not share the load.

The two hours between DS going to sleep and going to bed myself. DH and I didn’t really look after DS independently at the weekends or week nights, shy of maybe an hour or two at the local park. I now see that was silly as it’s part of the reason why I felt so burnt out on maternity leave. We’re a lot more relaxed now and we’ll often spend a weekend day at the respective grandparents while the other one does what they want, which gives a nice balance. Equally, having a full weekend just the three of us is easier now as well, as I get a different kind of ‘break’ at work.

At that stage dh was working full time whilst I was on mat leave and we would (and still do) alternate who got up on weekends then that person got to go back for a nap after the first few hours. Dh would also take ds for the day or evening if I wanted to go out, and I have a very supportive family who would do sleepovers if desired. I did the nights (actually, ds has been a pretty ace sleeper, he's now nearly 4) and would nap in the day with ds when he went down - he napped longer with me than by himself as well.

Saying that, ds was formula fed and I appreciate if breastfeeding the above is nigh on impossible unless dc takes a bottle.

Now a days I work 3 days and ds does 2 at nursery, 1 with one set of grandparents and one with the other. At weekends dh and I share and we do things as a family. I have 1 day a week to myself and when ds starts school I'll up my hours to 4 days so I still get a tidy up/life admin day.

DD is 7 months, DH works long shifts so I can sometimes go 4 or more days with only getting short breaks here and there which can be difficult, also when he's on nights he'll do a full week (7 nights) of 12 hour shifts when it feels like I'm very much on my own! But he's very hands-on and he takes her out for a walk most days he's off or finishes early for nearly 2 hours, this usually happens at least once a week, sometimes twice. He's just recently started walking for that amount of time then finishing at PIL where he can keep her entertained for another hour. She's EBF though so until she starts eating more solids I think that's about the longest I'll get.
I'm also starting a class soon which will be an hour a week of an evening, I'm apprehensive as it goes right up to bed time and DD is fed to sleep but also looking forward to getting back into doing something just for me.

I didn’t until they went to school but I am a lone parent