Weekends: fair schedule for parenting toddler?

[AgingLikeGazpacho]

Wondering what's the fairest way of divvying up parenting during the weekends for a breastfed 15 month old. At the moment I feel I get 0 time to myself and even showering and basic self care is guilt ridden as husband can't wait to palm the baby off on me again as soon as possible. He'll often just hover in the same room as me which means she's whinging about me not holding her / playing with her.

I'm working full time, and that includes 2 hours of work on a Sunday. I do all overnight wake ups. She tends to wake up at least 3 times a night and often wants breastmilk so for now it makes sense for overnights to be me.

The only thing that's working for me at the moment is that I've negotiated being able to sleep in until 10am on the weekend as otherwise I'm exhausted.

Yesterday husband looked after the baby for 5 hours total (cumulative, not straight). Today it's looking like it'll be the same (this includes the 2 hours I'm working). He never leaves the house with her so they'll often pop up wherever I am and as soon as she sees me she wants me.

The problem is that husband won't do much housework (does laundry, cooking and a bit of gardening but not vacuuming, cleaning kitchen/bathroom) while I'm looking after the baby so then during my time "off" I'm often just catching up on chores or quickly hoofing down a meal/showering etc. So whilst 5 hours feels like it should give me plenty of time it really doesn't feel that way, especially if I've slept through half of it (catching up in the morning after a crap night).

I guess I naively thought parenting would be closer to 50:50 at this point and that I'd at least have an hour a day fully to myself.

Baby is a bad napper so that only opens up an hour a day where she needs absolute silence (we tried getting her accustomed to background noise from birth but it just resulted in overly short naps and her being grumpy when awake).

I guess if she was a better sleeper then it wouldn't be so bad - would feel better rested generally and have a few hours to potter about the house when she is napping.

Looking for advice/insight on how people who are happy with their parenting arrangements are using their weekends?

(I don't have high cleaning standards BTW- just don't want muddy paw prints in the hallway/cat fur all over the carpet/unhygienic bathroom/dirty counter tops. I am literally just striving for the bare minimum of standards)

I think 5 hours of solo parenting a day on the weekends is quite a good chunk actually. I can’t say that Dh or I regularly each take our dc for 5 hours on Saturday and 5 hours on Sunday and leave the other to do other things.

So it sounds like time is not the issue. It’s that your Dh needs to step up and parent. It’s not just having her for 2 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon every Saturday. He needs to start taking her to visit family for lunch alone or taking her to a birthday party or a playground or story time at the library or whatever. It’s about not just hovering about.

That said, I wouldn’t be super happy to just be lumped with my toddler a good chunk of every weekend day while Dh did something else. You need to work, sure, but you should be out doing things as a family, not dividing up childfree time. Yes, there should be time to go do Parkrun if you want or for Dh to meet friends for lunch, but say, 5 hours each per day seems like too much solo time and not much family time.

To ask what we do, we talk with each other about taking time as we need it. Dh has a campervan he’s building and he likes to work on that, so I’ll sit and have my coffee with dc watching a bit of tv and then we might run out to get a few things at the shop (so means he has 2-3 hours in the morning) with a family walk after lunch. This morning, I went and did things with my horse while Dh had dc. Then we cooked lunch and did homework as a family (mine are school age). We don’t claim hours just to claim them. We plan things we want to do and the other takes over so we can do them.

I found it a shock, too. I'm the higher earner, a career woman, had a very equal relationship pre-baby.

Older women always warn of this but you don't think it will happen to you, there's a mirage of equality pre-babies.

And even though I am doing much better and have tons more time now, it's exhausting quietly defending my corner every day.

The man I thought I married would not let me take 100% on until i break and stand my ground. But here we are.

I'm the higher earner too. People at work wouldn't believe I'd stand for this if I told them!

You can wait for him to step up or you can manage him. I took the latter option. So dh gets a list of everything he needs to complete. Yes I get the mental load of that but at least the physical tasks get done.

5 hours solo does sound a lot which is why I was doubting myself, but that does also include the few hours of catch up sleep from the awful night before (she is also easiest to handle in the morning).

I think once sleep is sorted then things will feel a lot more manageable. She was awful with colic for months, then teething pains, and just endless bouts of colds and flus since she went to nursery. She has only ever slept a 6 hour stretch once. On a good night she'll wake up every 3 hours still. If she's ill it's about once every 1.5 hours (or less).

I wrote my husband a list of activities he could take the children to:

classes
libraries
pools
7 local pkaygrounds
play cafes and soft play

etc I told him he had to leave the house. The days he didn’t, I grabbed my coat and got a pedicure and a coffee

5 hours of him parenting solo in a day is actually quite a lot if that’s every weekend day. We dont really split it up like this. If one of us has something to go to out the house then the other looks after DCs by themselves for however long that is, but other then that we both parent together in the house/take them out together as a family, and just do things like showers/cooking/cleaning as we need to in the day rather than allotted time each.

1.That only works if you're both pitching in constantly.

1. You have missed that she handles all night wakings. That's a hell of a lot of solo parenting she's doing every single night.