With so many moms on our board returning to work it makes me realize that there are unique needs for those of is who work shift jobs or odd hours. Any restaurant, retail, hotel, medical, factory, emergency services or other shift working mommas out there?
What kind of hours do you work? Days/nights? Fixed or rotating schedule? How are you handling "day"care? How are you handling baby feeding? Are you still getting time with your SO?
Re: Momma Works the Swing Shift
I work a regular office job, but my DH is firefighter and a paramedic on an ambulance and works crazy hours. Right now his shift is mostly night and weekend hours (12 and 24 hour shifts) so there is only one day a week that we need childcare and my mom is watching LO that day.
The down side is that we hardly ever see each other. Most days he leaves soon after I get home from work and comes home the next morning. He is gone almost the entire weekend with the exception of a few hours on Sunday. To be honest, I would rather have LO in daycare a few days a week and get to spend time as a family on the weekends, but right now we can't do that.
Ware also in the process of interviewing babysitters from the local university child care and nursing programs for the days where he needs to swap a shift or is called to work over time. We need to have a few backups that we can call since this is unpredictable and we don't have much advance notice.
I work in a progressive care / step down unit from 630-1900. It is the classic "three 12s" schedule with the commitment to work at least three weekend shifts a month. My husband has the typical M-F 8-5 work schedule.
After much debate we decided to schedule baby Noah into daycare three days a week. Some weeks we will need him there all three days, some weeks only one. Some days he'll go solely so that I can get my schoolwork done and graduate on time. Full time nurse, student and mom should be interesting...
Biggest sucky factor in all of this is that there will be times when Noah goes two full days without seeing me because I am working two in a row. Now that does break my heart!