Am I burning out? Working full time + looking after a young child...

[pcboo]

I work in a senior role in financial services from 9 to 5.30, though sometimes longer, depending on deadlines. My DS started school last year, and I have a babysitter who helps pick him up from school a few days a week, but I am still exhausted. Work has been quite stressful for the past month. A few days ago, I finished work at 10 p.m., felt like my head was exploding, and collapsed on the sofa until midnight. I feel like I'm constantly on.

Is this a burnout? How can anyone cope with all these? If you can, how?

Most of my girlfriends with kids gave up the careers they had built, and I'm starting to feel the same now...

I don't think I would describe that as burn out, but the natural tiredness that comes when you combine Working and being a parent to young children.

As to how you cope, well, it sounds trite, but you just do. You get on with it.
If there are ways to make your life a bit easier, then take them.

That might be outsourcing some jobs (if you can find the money to do so) - be that someone to do your gardening or your cleaning
or
finding more ways to spend less time on a task - so maybe switching to on-line shopping rather than going to a supermarket in person, or maybe using more shortcuts in your cooking
or
It might be you can relax standards a bit ? Are you one of the people I read about on here who does excessive amounts of washing, or who vacuums every day, or who still irons, or any of the other time consuming things that can be let go ?

Then you just remind yourself it is a relatively short term existence which will get better.

Thanks. I'm doing all those outsources and lower the standard already. It's nice to read through the suggestions so I think I just need to reevaluate them again.

Over the past few weeks I'm just exhausted that I pretty much used up my money for baby sitter/ cleaning etc. I hope it will all be ok soon. Just never had this much stress before.