How often do you and partner get a 'date night' without children

[NatMoz]

I love my baby, she's one in December but in the last year we have had 1 meal out while on holiday where my parents looked after her for a couple of hours, a child free wedding but we came home at 8:30 so my parents could go home and this Saturday we went for a meal after hiring a babysitter for the first time ever.

Talking to some mum friends, they were shocked at how little time we've had just us. They have family taking their (similar aged) babies overnight as well as regular meals out/gigs etc.

Going forward i think we'll go out for a meal once a month using the babysitter (£5 an hour so worth it in my book) so that we can have adult time together but i was curious to know how often you have time apart from your babies/children (not counting nursery during the week when you're working 🤣)?

Kids 4 and 10 months. No local family so no date nights. We do spend time together in the evening though. When I'm at work (still on mat leave), we do take annual leave on nursery days to have a date day. This will be harder once eldest goes to school as will need annual leave to cover holidays. Once youngest starts nursery, we will hopefully sort a babysitter for the odd night out but don't feel ready to leave him yet.

Mine would both wake up in the hours after bedtime unfortunately!

MIL loves babysitting so we can go out if we want to but we don't do it that often. Once every couple of weeks- might just go to the local for a couple of hours or an early meal on a Saturday evening and a couple of drinks or to the local cinema. We like being at home and the DC are good sleepers so once they are in bed we are rarely disturbed these days- we like to watch a film or play cards and listen to music with a few drinks.

With a just 1 year old, none. Dc wasn’t a good enough eater for me to leave for more than 60 minutes.

Three times in 8 years I think.

Very rarely. Twice a year maybe? Kids are 5 and 2. Once they're a bit older we will be able to go out more I hope.

We aimed for once a fortnight but missed a few due to work commitments. No family living in the same country as us so used two of the staff from DT’s nursery as babysitters.

A handful of times in nearly 5 years, and some of those have been a festival with other people there. Family live far away and tbh it’s more hassle than it’s worth getting them to come and stay just so we can go out for a few hours . We are quite homebodies anyway, sort of been there done that with big nights out in our twenties, and enjoy just chilling out when kids are in bed, we also have separate nights out quite a bit. We also go out for lunch a few times just us, when kids are in school and nursery - we take the day off work. Sort of resigned to the fact that it’ll be like this until they are older and really don’t mind. Knowing us, when we do have ‘freedom’ again we’ll probably carry on slobbing at home 😂

The random stranger thing is tricky though. If you don't have friends or family in the area then your only choice is an online agency. I would happily leave mine with a friend-recommended babysitter but it's a bit daunting to leave your young children with someone you've never met before and you found on the internet, even if they have all the right checks.

Fairly often, we’re very lucky that Grandma typically comes to stay for a few days each month, so she will sometimes offer to have them for an evening, or the odd over night now our daughter is a little older. Their uncle will also babysit on a fairly regular basis, he has recently done an overnight on his own after doing a few dummy runs with us here as he was a bit nervous about having them both on his own overnight. So we generally get one day off a month if we want it.

We do have the luxury of working part time, so we both have Fridays off, this means if we wanted to we could book another day of nursery, or use the gym creche to have a few hours for just us.

We have a 2yo and a 6 month old. Haven’t had a date night since the 6mo arrived but hoping to get to one by about 9mo.

After our eldest was born, we had:

• drinks out for 2h when she was 9mo
• dinner out when she was 10mo
• night away when she was 12mo (when we conceived the youngest 🙈😂)
• two nights away when she was 14mo
• one night away when she was 18mo
• maybe 5 meals out between 12mo - 21mo when the baby arrived

The person taking care of her in each scenario was either my MIL or my sister and her boyfriend. MIL has already warned that 2 kids might be beyond her so I suspect our date nights will be a bit more limited this time around!

DS is 25 months and DH and I haven’t had any time alone together yet. Although, to be fair, DH works away from home for weeks at a time (50% of the year in total) and I work too so trying to fine time can be hard.
Our “date night” currently is ordering in a takeaway and watching a movie after DS goes to bed. We try and fit that in every time DH is home so maybe once every 6 weeks or so.
I’ve had 2 nights away from DS since he was born but it was to sit with a loved one as they passed away 😔
We have tickets to a concert that was rescheduled to June 2023 and it’s likely to be the first time DH and I are out together since DS was born 😅 and if I’m completely honest, I’m already dreading it 🙈 I hate the thought of neither of us being there to put him to bed 🤣 My own issue, I know!

I have a few friends with kids a similar age and they go out every few weeks or have DC stay at grandparents etc. 3 out of the 4 have also been away abroad and left DC with grandparents.

Everyone is completely different 🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t think there’s a right or wrong tbh! I think what’s important is that my DH and I both feel the same way about it - it’s not as if one of us is crying out for alone time together and the other is refusing to leave the child etc!

About 4 in 5 years and they've mostly been weddings. We don't have any family locally, and as others said having to pay for a babysitter on top of a meal out makes it not viable financially.

We have nursery staff who babysit - given that they look after our during the day, the evening seems fine!

Before that, I advertised on a local site, a nursery worker replied, I checked her references and we did a trial run. My son liked her more than me lol!

Every couple of months either in-laws babysit or we have adult children that do.

We first left our son at 5 weeks old overnight with my mum & dad. I pumped and he was happy with bottle so it wasn't a problem and I didn't want to get into the habit of neglecting 'us'. We probably went out once a month when he was little. Then DH went to work away for 18 months and so that dropped off as when he did come home we didn't want him to miss out on time with our DS! However, now he's older we just go out whenever we feel like it!

I don't think there is a right answer but remember you don't have to just go out at night! Are your parents available for a day 'shift'?! You could go out for breakfast somewhere nice, have a shopping day and then a really nice lunch somewhere, back for teatime!

Never, no one to have him. Zero family help. Then he got to about 8 and started having sleepovers at friends' houses so we went out then.

DH WFH and I work evenings, so we'd always have lunch together and chat during the day, take the dog out. I don't feel like we've missed out on anything.

Pre-dc we went out A LOT, and to think of all the money we've spunked on restaurants, bars and the cinema - boof!

About once a month usually, I feel it if we've not had done time together in a while, something I've always prioritised even if we didnt have family around (paying for babysitters or going during the day when at day care).

My awesome late MIL, used to babysit for us every week so we could go out.

Maybe because they don’t happen to know anybody like that.
There are many options for you but not for everyone.
I don’t know anybody outside of the family that would babysit for me.
Unless they are kind enough to do it for free, some people just can’t afford it anyway.

Dc is 3.5 and we’ve never had a night out together or a night in alone or even out during the day except once we went shopping and left her with PIL.
All four gps live nearby. Mil has offered to put dd to bed so we can go out which is really kind and I would but she’s in her 80s, dd is hard work and wakes randomly and I just don’t think it’s fair.
My mother has been dying to take her since she was about two months old but I don’t trust her.
There’s a few people who might do it. My sister probably would and sil has offered but it doesn’t feel right. We didn’t have close relationships with either of them before we had dd.
Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m just being overly anxious, then I think no…I have good reason not to trust them. It kind of goes round and round in my head.
The thing is we could really do with some time alone. It comes up every so often and dh makes out like I’m just too anxious, but once we talk it through, he doesn’t trust them either!

In 6 years we have been out together on an evening 4 times.