If you and H/SO both work out of the home

Sonadora · January 2012

How do you do bedtime for LO?

Who does what?

Does one person do everything?

Do you switch off nights?

Does the other person make your dinner or do the dishes or do something else besides sitting on their butt if only one person is doing the bedtime routine?

sarahandeddiejune212008 · January 2012

I work days and DH works nights so I handle all the bedtime stuff 5/7 nights. When he is home he will help with bath time, but he doesn't go to bed at the same time we do, so I still do bedtime routine.

xleslieraex · January 2012

I work Tue, Wed and Thurs nights, DH puts M to bed those nights and I put him to bed Fri, Sat, Sun and Mon. DH doesn't bathe M ever, so I do that when I'm not working.

When I am home, I am M's primary caregiver. AKA, I do everything for him. DH sits on his asss. It is frustrating at times, but it makes me feel better when DH sends me texts like he did yesterday, "You are an excellent mother to M! Good night. Love you best."

It's tough right now cause M has a cold with a cough and it has been waking him multiple times during the night. I don't have to work until 3pm most days and DH has to work at 6am so I do all of the night time wakings as well.

DH does dishes and I do laundry, this has been going on for quite some time now. (He bicthed at me for not getting both done one day so I asked him wtf he does around the house. He did nothing and he knew it, so he decieded he wanted to do dishes instead of laundry. I gave him a choice of one or the other.)

BritanyV · January 2012

Well, we don't both work out of the home, I'm a SAHM. I wanted to respond about bed time though. With DS#1, we switch off nights. Mainly because he can be a pill to get to bed, he is always stalling with something (...I'm hungry...I need to pee...Cover me up (again)...). We both loathe bedtime because of the stalling.

The benefit for ds is that he gets to spend some special one on one time with us during his bed time routine and parts of it are special to us too (like reading books and singing silly songs).

rock-elle · January 2012

Sonadora:

How do you do bedtime for LO? I work eves and start bedtime when I get home, play-nurse-rock-bed

Who does what? I do 99.999% of everything

Does one person do everything? See above statement

Do you switch off nights? No, again, see above

Does the other person make your dinner or do the dishes or do something else besides sitting on their butt if only one person is doing the bedtime routine?

No, he might wash the bottles & take the dog out

eta: to be fair, dh travels a lot so often I'm on my own, I work eves and our schedules are far from typical though, we're not 9-5ers.

magdalina.h · January 2012

We share responsibilities. We both enjoy the evening with him. We both do bath time, I pump while MH feeds him a bottle. We snuggle him until he falls asleep. MH is a night owl so he usually does the dishes and runs a load of laundry after I go to sleep.

Sonadora · January 2012

So here's our situation.

Once H's full hours start back again, week after next, we will likely pull in the door between 7-7:15.

B's bedtime has been 8 pm since she was very very wee, with the routine of bottle, bath, pjs, finish bottle, bed.

We commute together. There is no way to change our existing hours/commuting short of H getting a new job.

So once we get home, B will need to be fed immediately, then pretty much whisked upstairs for her bedtime. I'm betting that the later dinner time will help facilitate the end of the bedtime bottle which will free up about 15 minutes in the bedtime routine.

Other things that need to get done besides feeding B and getting her to bed:

Making dinner for us.

Wash her daycare sippy and resupply her daycare bag.

Brown bag lunches for us.

B's dinner dishes

Right now, one of us cooks B's dinner while the other entertains her. We switch off nights of feeding/bathing her, so if I bathe her, H feeds her. (Her last bottle that is.) Together we lotion her and get her dressed for bed. The person who isn't feeding her the last bottle goes downstairs and makes tomorrow's lunches.

I think with the later coming home time, we are likely going to have to opt to have one person do her whole bedtime thing while the other person cooks dinner for us and makes lunches and does the other misc cleaning stuff?

Does that make the most sense to you? Any other solutions? I hate this because we will spend so little quality time with her. I also think we are going to have to prep something the night before that we can quickly re-heat for her to eat because there won't be time to cook something for her from scratch, get her to eat it, and still get her in bed by a reasonable hour.

theprincessPAT · January 2012

I pick up DD and we usually get home around 4:30. I immediately give her a snack and start on dinner.

DH gets home around 5:15. He walks in the door, changes, and then we all eat dinner together.

After dinner DH does the dishes while I play with DD. He will come play after he's finished with the dishes.

Around 7:00 we head upstairs and start the nebulizer treatment. Every other night is bath night so that comes next. DH warms the bottle and sets out PJs and a diaper while I do the bath. After the scream-fest that is getting dressed, DH reads and book then I do the bottle.

This routine works for us because I get home earlier and DD always wants to eat earlier. It feels like our only other option would be to eat dinner after DD goes to bed.

We do like to do a lot of crockpot meals because they can cook all day while we're at work and there's little to do when we get home.

Days like yesterday where a little bit of stupid snow makes it take two hours to get home really throw off the schedule.

ksulli · January 2012

I do bedtime. I love it- it's our time, and it's the only time she's boarderline snuggly.

DH picks her up from daycare and has her for an hour or so before I get home, so that's their time. Then when I get home, I nurse her, feed her solids, either play a little or bathtime (during this time DH sits on his butt), then I take DD upstairs to lotion, change, nurse & go to bed while DH gets dinner going. DH & I eat, I get back to work (I almost always have more to do) while DH sits on his butt. Then I do dishes, while DH continues to sit on his butt.

In the morning, I feed her, he takes her while I get ready, I feed her while he makes her bottles & gets her stuff ready for DC, and then we're off.

I feel like I get the short end of the stick only because I work so much.

hopingwaiting · January 2012

I do dinner, bath. Take turns on stories and putting to bed, though on bad nights the latter is a two parent process. Our dinner is after LO goes down.

amberdaz · January 2012

M,W,F DH p/u from DC. Feeds DD and will start on our dinner. I try to make or prep dinner nite before. Always have something ready for DD because she is always starving once she walks in the door. I get home around 5ish, eat dinner, play time. At 6pm I start bedtime routine (bath, milk, read, music) and most nites she's out by 7-7:15pm. During this time DH is cleans up kitchen, does other chores or watches TV. We each make our own lunches.

T, Th are my long days. I do everything. DH doesn't arrive home until 8:30-9pm. I leave work @ 3pm so I can pick DD up and have time to do everything. After she's down I log on to do some work.

Gem17 · January 2012

Sonadora:
How do you do bedtime for LO?

Who does what? I am spoiled, cuz DH does most of it. We trade off giving her baths. He reads her stories and he sits with her in her room while she falls asleep. We are currently sleep training her, that's why he's sitting in there.

Does one person do everything?

Do you switch off nights? We used to switch off more, but since I am in my 3rd tri, he has been stepping it up without complaint.

Does the other person make your dinner or do the dishes or do something else besides sitting on their butt if only one person is doing the bedtime routine? When we trade off, one of us does dinner, dishes, folds laundry, etc. DH is also taking online classes at night that have just started again, so that is two nights a week that I do the nighttime routine. I can't complain!

JuJuBe3 · January 2012

We are both pretty much 8-5ers.

We both do bedtime every night. No switching nights. We start at about 6:30 on non-bath nights. We try to eat really quick between when we get home and that time. It's hard. We are still doing a lot of take out, but are also working on some meal planning, so we can get away from that.

My DH will do the dishes when I am nursing. And we're working on him making the next day's bottles too. He's willing, so I'm happy.

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