My DH is thinking about changing his schedule at work to the morning shift which is from 4am-12:30 pm. I am wondering if this might be a good idea with a baby so he can be home more, and I can have more flexibility with my part-time work schedule (since we don't want to do daycare) Right now he works Noon-8:30pm. I know he would have to go to bed super early, but at least he would be home during the day and evening.
For those of you with husbands on crazy schedules, what do you find works best with your family? TIA!
Re: Whats your husbands work schedule?
It's different on any given day. On average he's out of town 6 months out of the year. When he's in town he can sometimes work a normal 8-4:30 or he can be working later hours or even over night.
It sucks but it works for us. I've managed to do just fine with 1 kid and with any luck I'll manage to do just fine with 2.
My husband technically works and 8-5 (well really 7-4) job. But, he manages a global team and work in a business critical IT group. It is always "core business hours" somewhere in the world meaning his work cell never stops ringing.
Also, if anything breaks, at any time, he gets called to manage the incident.
I've just learned to go with the flow and realize that this phase of his career will pass. I am dreading fitting his schedule into a child's routine.
I am imagining many night where I am on my own dealing with the baby after a long day of work myself. But, we have decided that his career, and income, are vital to our standard of living and we will suck it up until he moves into a new role.
Well...right now DH works 24 hour shifts. We have no control over his schedule unless he switches departments, but most are the same schedule (he's a firefighter).
Currently, he's on one, off one until he works 3 days. Then off 4. It sucks not having him here those three days/nights, but having him home for 4 days straight is awesome.
Our current plan is to pay for full time daycare, but only have LO in there on the 3 days he works. If he gets called in for OT and has to stay late, we still have coverage.
His previous work was a police officer and he is thinking about going back to that. In that case, his schedule will SUCK. It is a rotating shift every three weeks where he works, days, then evenings, then midnights in 3 week increments. I hate it....so NOT family friendly at all. We wouldn't see him for 3 weeks straight when he works evenings because of when he'd go in and when I get home from work except for his days off.
DH works 7-4 and whenever the Army calls! we've learned to live with it, its not always easy but it makes me appreciate the days he is home by 4 to help out.
10 pm - 6 am, sun-thurs it kind of sucks because we don't even get to sleep together and we just got married in March. It will be nice when the baby gets here because he's used to being up at night (he stays on the same schedule on the weekends) so I can pump bottles and he can take the nightshift on nights he's home. He can also take the early mornings when he first gets home. That's our plan so far.
4:30 am -12:30 pm sounds like a nice schedule. I bet you once you get into a routine it would be really nice. DH used to work 6 am - 4 pm mon - thurs he had a 3 day weekend every weekend it was really nice, he did have to go to bed by 8 pm each night, but I liked it better than the nightshift.
Yeah I thought about that. I guess thats something he would have to figure out. I am not so much worried about the night time alone part, I am more concerned with how much time he will see me and the baby. Which, on his current schedule, it wouldn't be much. He is gone from 11am til 9pm with travel time. Thats pretty much the whole day and evening. Either way, we will just have to make it work.
Thanks for all the responses!!
I agree, I think it would take some getting used to, but it seems like he would be around a lot more. With just the 2 of us, the current schedule is just fine. A baby adds a whole craziness to the mix!
Mine works a different shift everyday, but it's always a 10 hour shift with a half hour commute each way. It looks like this:
Sunday: 9a-7p
Monday: off
Tuesday: off
Wednesday: 1:30p-11:30p
Thursday: 10a-8p
Friday: 11a-9p
Saturday: 9a-7p
It doesn't work for us at all. I hardly get to see him as it is, then once the baby comes, I'm afraid he won't get to see him/her at all =(
Sounds a lot like ours. My husband is off Wed and Thurs. Thankfully I can be flexible with my schedule so we can at least have the later night and days off together. Sometimes it stinks.
DH owns a pharmacy so he works 28 hours per week as a pharmacist and then however many hours per week that are needed for administrative duties and meetings and crap (he gets called in for every little thing...most days he ends up at the store for at least an hour). His pharmacist shifts are either 8am-3pm, 3pm-10pm or 8am-10pm (he works the entire weekend, 14 hours per day, every other weekend). The plus side is he makes his own schedule, the down side is he has to be available all the time. If another pharmacist calls in sick, he has to be ready to step in. And he can't just leave at the drop of a hat (or the break of my water!), because there has to be a pharmacist on site for the store to be open.
My husband works a normal schedule, normally 8am-5pm Monday-Friday. It's me that has the odd hours.
I have an option of 3 shifts, and we chose a shift for the whole year. I could work 7am-2:30pm, 2:30pm-10pm, or 10pm-7am. I also work weekends 50% of the time and have them off 50% of the time.
I'm debating which shift to bid for. Midnights are my last option because they are hard for me. If I work days, LO will be in daycare the most hours, but we'll have family time together every night. If I work evenings, we'll still need daycare but much less time every day, but we'll rarely have time together as a whole family.
It's a tough choice, but I'm leaning towards working days and trying to work more weekends so we'll only use daycare 3 days a week instead of 5. People are almost always willing to let you work weekends for them, so it should work out well.
DH is currently a medicine resident so he works 10-12 hour days with one 24 hour period off per week (this can be from 8pm on Friday to 8pm on Saturday...so not really an entire day off). Every 6th day he has to work a 30 hour shift and stay the night at the hospital.
When he gets out of residency he will only work every other week. The week that he works it will be 12 hour shifts everyday for 7 days and then the next 7 days completely off.
I work 7-4 most days (excluding month-end) so that is much better for LO's schedule. I also plan on staying at home after he finishes residency.