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Work schedules w/o...
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Hi!
I usually post in 2nd tri but I'm curious to see if any of you have been or are doing something similar with your working/baby schedule...
My DH is a cop, he is switching to midnights. He leaves the house at 11pm and gets home around 8:15 am. At that point I will be going to work and I will get home around 5pm. He will eat, then sleep for about 5 1/2-6 hrs and then leave for work.
Him and I will be home together for the 1st 12 weeks so we will be able to work on both of our sleep patterns. He will be up all day with LO and I'll be up all night i'm sure.
DH is a former Marine, sleep deprivation is normal to him, but we still need to get a routine down..It's going to be tough but we have to do it.
The positive side to this is I'll be able to be home all day with LO on weekends if DH wants to sleep, and we will probably see each other more often since he will be home during the day anyway.
Anyone have experience with this kind of schedule? Thanks!
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Re: Work schedules w/o...
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
At night. I get home at 5pm..he will sleep until 11pm.
LOL I told him the same thing!
I'll be honest, that could be very tough. What if your DH gets stuck working late? Or what if you get stuck....could he make it without sleep?
How much sleep does he *need*? Is 5 hours going to be enough for the next few years of his life...I know for me no way, but everyone is different.
Well, he already gets anywhere between 5-6hrs of sleep. We luckily have my SIL that is a SAHM that lives down the block from me so one of us can drop LO off if the other gets stuck.
We are looking forward to him switching his schedule in the next week or two so we can figure out some sort of routine now. Def. going to be tough!
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
I do...
I figure we will have the weekends but DH may want to sleep...we will figure it out I guess!
There is no way I would do that kind of schedule unless I absolutely had to. And I only sleep 5-6 hours a night.
Can you afford daycare?
We can afford daycare, but not comfortably...This feels like the only option..
And, he gets 3 days off a week, and it is usually when I am working and when I'm off he can relax before work.
How many days a week do you work?
If your DH is used to the lack of sleep it may work, but it's going to be hard on you to do the house stuff, take care of the baby at night, etc AND work full time. I know what has saved me from going crazy is having DH there to help cook dinner, clean, wash bottles, wash my pump stuff, etc in the evenings after I get home from work. Neither one of us 'relaxes' at all from the time we pick the kids up until we go to bed.....it would be Very hard to have no help (since your DH would have to sleep during that time) every single day.
I wouldn't do it. We are all sleep-deprived in my house already and we work "normal" schedules. Throwing in lack of sleep on an alternative schedule, plus taking care of a newborn solo is a recipe for disaster, IMO. A newborn is hard enough without this added strain.
Can you do daycare parttime, just a few days per week? Can your family help out?
Can you do part time day care? If $$ is the issue then, I would try to do that. This way DH can get some real sleep with no one around.
Also, is your house big enough that DH will be able to sleep when you and DC are home making normal noise? Or is your DH a good sound sleeper that he can really get a good rest in only 6 hours?
This routine will get old really fast. My DH is a former marine and does not function like before. Age and other stress has changed him.
I also worry because 1. you dont want a sleep deprived parent taking care of a child and 2. you dont want a sleep deprived cop out in the streets.
I really hope that the cops in my area that are responsible for my safety get more than 5 hours of sleep every night.
I don't care how "used to" sleep deprivation someone is. It's typically detrimental to their overall functioning, and in a job where you HAVE to be alert it seems like a horrible idea to set yourself up for only getting that much on a routine basis.
And like everyone has said, that routine is going to get real old real quick. You'll both essentially be single parents (you'll both be super stressed not having someone there to share chores with), and people who don't even share a bed anymore and who only see each other for a few hours on the weekends (obviously detrimental to any marriage, especially one that will already be under stress with 1) a new baby, 2) sleep deprivation, and 3) a very stressful career).
I wouldn't do this unless you two seriously have NO other options.
That totally doesn't sound reasonable.
pinterest
My H is a cop too but he works afternoons - he has a 3 week rotating schedule. I work M-F 38 hours a week (so full time). 3 days a week I work until 3 pm and if my H is working (he works at 3:45 - midnight) we meet at his work and swap our daughter. The other two days a week I work till 5, if it's his day off then he's with her all day till I get home then we are all together. If he's working then DD either goes to my il's and they bring her back to our house after they eat dinner and I'm home or my mom comes over to watch her when H goes to work and I get home. It works great for us - we've been doing it just about a year. My H gets home from work around 1 am and sleeps between about 2 and 8:30 ish and on the weekends he sleeps in. He can deal with less sleep where I can not. Our DD is a great sleeper and had been STTN since about 4 months. If she does wake up in the night I get up with her. My H has always worked the afternoon shift so we're used to our schedule. It was hard to adjust to the baby and the schedule but we keep the same routine even if it's the weekend or a day off or something.
Is there anyway your H can work afternoons instead of midnights? A few nights of sleeping around 5 hours is probably ok but after time it's going to get hard. My H LOVES his time with our DD and she is lucky to get to spend this time with him but if he got any less than 6 hours it would not work. he would be short tempered and frustrated with everything and that would not benefit any of us.
we do this. dh is a college professor, he works out of the home m-f, but works late a few days a week and works from home a lot in addition to these hours in the office/lab/classroom. I work 2 night shifts a week as an intensive care RN. I work a lot of weekends, but try to schedule myself off at least 1 or 2 weekends a month. So... I'll do a thurs, sat, sun, thurs , repeat. doesn't always work out but I try. when I work a weekday shift, I sleep from 1-5... eat dinner with the fam, go... the next morning is a weekday, I stay up until the kids nap , then nap. it's tough, I get cranky. But it's usually only one week day every week or two that I do this and I get a full night's sleep the night prior. weekends, I get to sleep more. it is HARD not seeing him . I stay up late waiting for him on my days off. I have only been doing this since moving here not quite 2 years ago. I can see how it's gonna be much easier once ds is in preschool. Then I can do more weekdays and do my bare minimum required weekends. But now, it's rough. I would not be able to do this full time though. Plus, we have the bene that between semesters and summer sessions, dh has flexibility to do his research whenever and can take a few days off here and there... whether it be for me to get more sleep or for us to have fun days. Plus I get a ton of time off. 4 wks vaca, + holiday time, + personal time. that helps. would I recommend doing this? no. if we could afford daycare in nyc for 2 children, we would not be doing this. dd goes to the preschool on campus, but ds is not old enough this year... he starts in the fall... still, that is preschool. not full day. their full day next year will be 9-2:30... but after school care is until 4. I cannot wait! hoping also to switch to a day or evening position when they start school.
my recommendation... if you're hell bent on doing this, get a sitter for a few hours before you get home...so he can sleep more than 5 hours and there's coverage in case you're late. I saw that he works 4 shifts a week right? what do you work? I would make sure you're getting at least a full weekend off together a month. and make sure he gets the rest on the weekends. dh at times thinks that when I come home I can do do do... let's go for a walk, wanna do this, wanna do that? ... uh, I've been up all night. I'm going to bed. thanks, sweets.
good luck.
I agree with this. I've been back to work for a month now. While I was home on maternity leave, I wasn't able to accomplish anything during the day besides taking care of DS. Once DH was home, one of us could take care of DS while the other did chores, fix dinner, etc. The evenings are basically the same now that I'm working. I think we could do it alone if we absolutely had to, but seriously, that's the last thing I would choose.
*UPDATE*
I enrolled at the child care center that came highly recommended to me near my house.
I did it so it's part time, I can bring LO whenever I want, and they charge hourly, so I can bring LO as much and as little as I want, so when scheduling becomes conflicting or difficult, we have that to fall back on!
Thanks for the help ladies!!!
DD #1 passed away in January 2011 at 14 days old due to congenital heart disease
DD#2 lost in January 2012 at 23 weeks due to anhydramnios caused by a placental abruption
The problem with that schedule is that you're having him work 2 shifts. He does the cop job and then comes home and does child care for another 8 hours. It is just not humanly possible. Maybe if his night job was sitting at a desk but being a cop makes it too risky. Not worth it.
I know you feel confident that you'll figure this out but you really don't understand the sleep deprevation and stress that you're about to encounter.
Pay you SAHM sister to do 4 hours in the morning so that your DH can sleep when he gets home. Or at least nap.
My DH will be home with me for 4 weeks in the beginning so I am really looking forward to that too!
Sorry...but since your DH is a cop, shouldn't he go to work a bit more than 5 hrs of sleep? And, you are in NY? Who knows? Maybe you are in a small, uneventful town...but wouldn't the middle of the night be a fairly busy time for cops?
Back to the actual question at hand...you should find in-home daycare. It is usually much more affordable than a center and would allow for you both to get adequate sleep and time as a family. Maybe even a few days a week to give your poor DH SOME time to sleep in peace?
GL with whatever you decide to do.
You need more than part-time care. That schedule is insane.
If you get home at 5pm and DH needs to eat dinner and be out of the house by 11pm, he's getting a MAX of 5 hours sleep if he falls asleep instantly. And like others said, your relationship will suffer. Adding a new baby is plenty stress enough on a marriage without piling on extra sleep deprivation and very little time together.
DH is also a cop and works evenings (3-11:30pm). I work from 7am-3pm. We have someone who comes and watches the kids from 2pm when DH leaves until 4:30-5pm when I get home. It has worked out really well for us. DH and I both get to spend a lot of time with the kids, though we don't get to see a lot of each other (his schedule rotates on which days he has off, so a lot of weeks he is off in the middle of the week and has to work on the weekend). DH sleeps from about 1am until 7am, when the kids wake up, and then also takes a nap with them from ~11-12:30. We really can't afford the cost of full-time daycare, so we make it work. It really helps us to appreciate the time that we do have together and to make the most of it. And as to the replys asking about chores, honestly, some stuff slides. We each make an effort on our days off to do some cleaning around the house (vacuuming, dishes, etc), but on the days that we both work, we focus on the kids and leave the house alone.
Some friends of ours did the midnight schedule you are considering and it worked really well for them. I would make sure that you have a back-up sitter for the unexpected. As I'm sure you know as a cop's wife, there are some times when they get tied up in an arrest and are late coming home, or have to go testify in court and do a day tour, or get their shift switched for whatever reason. It is much less stressful if you have someone that you can go to in that situation instead of having to scramble or take the time off of work yourself.
Good luck with whatever you decide! And if you need some support/ commiseration, I'm here