How do you manage "days off"?

[TammyswansonTwo]

Okay, the twins are almost 14 months now. DH works from home regular hours M-F. I have a very part time job 15 hours a month, many of which I can take them with me - there are probably 8 hours a month when I leave them at home with dad. That's my only "break"- neither myself or my husband have been out since they were born, together or separately, other than for work or appointments.

It has been this way as it's just the two of us and we have just been getting by, but now I'm really starting to struggle. I need some time occasionally to properly rest or have some mental space. I know he does too.

I feel like saying that I need one day a week "off" during the day so that I'm not the primary caregiver 24/7, albeit with his involvement on weekends. However, if I do that it's only fair that he also gets a day off, and then that's the weekend gone with no time as a family.

How do others manage this balance? It's difficult as we don't have friends or family round here (we had a big social circle when we moved back to the area but everyone has gradually moved away for work etc). I've made some good twin mum friends and they're proposing a night out for some food and to watch a film. The boys are down by 6:30pm and don't ehenr

bibbidee he has already improved significantly over the last few months (they were both waking every 2 hours then), they've always been small but frequent eaters - we've struggled to get enough food into them to last them the night but things are improving there. We did have a couple of nights last week where he only woke once but then constant fireworks happened so it's been a nightmare. The littler one will always need to be fed every 3-4 hours, at least for the foreseeable future. It does make life more difficult but it is what it is.

Unfortunately working more isn't an option - I have managed to fall into a job that's very easy to work around the twins and my health issues but it's a fixed number of hours with no possibility of extending them. My health is unpredictable and makes it pretty much impossible to hold down a regular job - I haven't done that for six years, I was self employed before the boys but have massively neglected my business since I was pregnant so would take a long time to get to a point where I could cover twin childcare costs with it (I am working on this slowly but very hard to find time). So yeah, going to regular work isn't going to work out sadly, and I'd be just as exhausted working with them in childcare.

Milli ah yes that sounds familiar. I'll often here amazing tales of things he's managed which are in reality daily occurences! He does spend a great deal of time with them at weekends but he has me there to get all the other stuff done / when he needs the loo etc!

TBH only by leaving...

Twins was just too much pressure on what turned out to be a not very brilliant marriage for me.

I did it all from 3 weeks, sparkling house, twin babies, 3 and 4 year old at school and preschool, dinner on the table when he got home, bills paid, voluntary work done....

It actually nearly killed me and the final nail was when I spoke to him about how desperate he was and asked him to make an application for flexible hours so I could get a job (his company is very accommodating) and his response was that it was ‘impossible and I think you do enough for the family already’ meaning he wouldn’t help me work and if I did work it would have to be on top of everything else...

So I left and he applied for flexible hours because he didn’t want me to ‘take my children’ and now we have 60:40 care so whilst I still do the majority of the shitwork and I have virtually full time care for ASD DD1 who is not good with living in two places, I get actual proper down time on a pretty regular basis.

Marriages frequently don’t survive twins. If you have health problems as well as primary care you need to be really quite assertive about needing to rest or you are going to burn out/go mad as I did and then your marriage will probably be beyond rescuing as there’s nothing more toxic than feeling your husband has happily watched you fall apart and carried on doing what he wanted to do!

Start with a morning each at the weekend.
My dh has always taken the kids out Saturday morning to re-bond as they spend much more time with me in the week.
Then he goes cycling Sunday morning.
Both days were together “as a family” from lunchtime onwards.
When ds was tiny I’d spend my sat morning sleeping.
Now I usually feel up to going to parkrun then having a cup of tea and bacon roll in the cafe. But if I’m particularly knackered I still use it to sleep.

Life with DT's is hard. We didn't have a night out together until they were 15 months and when I went back to work when they were 13 months I could count on my fingers the number of times I had left the house without them since I was born. They are now 4 and it was around the the time they were 3.5 that things settled down a bit. Our two are full on and relentless and up by 5.30am every day so we are constantly shattered and that takes a huge toll on you both individually and as a couple. We take it in turns to have a lie in until 9am at the weekend and that just about keeps us sane. DH often pops to our local Tesco Express with them at the weekend and I relish the 15 mins peace it gives me. I think the reality is that your relationship will never be the same as before but hopefully over time you find a new balance

Our relationship is actually in a really good place at the moment - the twins have definitely made us both happier and brought us closer, but I am definitely at risk of burning out (I'm not already there tbh). Having a bad flare up of pain this week which makes it harder to cope. Hopefully things will improve in the next couple of days. We've had a bit of a chat tonight but am so tired I can't really think straight. Will talk to him more tomorrow.

Not read it all but I think it's essential each of you get a bit of space. Even if you go out for a walk in the evening with your choice of music.

Is there a tumble tots or singing activity that they can be booked into on a Saturday morning? One of you take them one week and swap round the next week. Start small and build it up. If they go down at 6:30 and sleep reliably till 10-ish, i'd book a sitter and go for a meal round the corner - eat at 7, home by 9.

Good luck finding a new balance and routine.

I think though, going back to your OP, you've asked two separate questions on the thread: what should we do in terms of a routine is what's in the OP and you have lots of ideas there.

But actually the underlying question seems to be 'I'm at the end of my rope, how do I get time off now while still affording equal time off to DP?'. And I would say the answer to that is - get the time off you need right now. Don't worry about eaksiepeaksie sharing it - you've been doing the majority of the work, you aren't in the best of health, you actually need a weekend off right now or you're going to collapse.

So book a travelodge for a night or two, and go. Simple as that. Then work out a fair rota which stops you getting back into this place. But at the moment you are dropping and you need to replenish.