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Mar. 26th, 2019 09:37 pmMaybe things will seem easier after the April break, but right now, everything just feels like so much. Year 1 of baby-having is basically survival, like "all I need to do is get through this day." Year 2 of baby-having is like "oh wow, you are becoming a real person! Soon you will be able to do things yourself!" and Year 3 of baby-having is like "oh crap, we're going to be dealing with this small opinionated person for the long haul, aren't we?"
We keep trying to make our old activities work with the new lifestyle and it's really not working. We can't really hang out with our pre-baby friends because "hanging out" now means one person watches the babbu and the other person hangs out with the friend while feeling guilty. Only one of us gets to play taiko at a time, and only one of us gets to go to comics club at a time. This has caused a lot of guilt and resentment and misery, especially as Rutabaga has grown more demanding of our attention.
From an introvert perspective -- hanging out with the Hoosband used to be restorative. Hanging out with Rutabaga costs social/emotional energy, which leaves me more exhausted. Hoosband is also introvert like whoa. And with Hoosband feeling all this child-related misery and world-news-related misery, hanging out with the Hoosband sometimes costs social/emotional energy, too. So after a long day at work (where I have to be socially "on" from 11 hours), all I want to do is sleep or escape into fandom. (Which then leaves Hoosband with the child care, and adds to Misery).
This last year it's really become this bad cycle where we take turns watching Rutabaga while the other person goes and does something, so one person's enjoyment is always at the other person's expense, and never actually get to hang out with each other. The recent daylight savings change has exacerbated these issues because Rutabaga, who used to sleep between 8:30-9pm, which leaves us 2 hours before our bedtime, now sleeps at 10:15pm, which leaves us ~30 minutes before our bedtime.
And it turns out that not actually spending time together makes both of us feel more miserable, in that "why am I even in this relationship" sort of way.
Anyways, a lot of this pent-up misery came to a head this weekend, and then we spent a fair bit of time talking with the husband and we're starting to take steps to figure things out.
Step One is to have a mutual disarmament re: bringing work home. (Awkwardly, this was during a weekend where I was hoping to finish my narrative writing.) Bringing work home just means we spend pre-baby-sleep time being like "honey can you watch her while I finish..." and then we spend post-baby-sleep time just doing our work instead of hanging out.
Step Two is to have a similar disarmament re: other activities that pull us into a similar situation of "can you childcare while I..." I'm the main culprit of this, so I agreed to stop modding fandom things and to stop picking up new fandom projects.
Step Three is to look at our previous/current activities and figuring out how to actually make it fit our current lifestyle instead of trying to get our current lifestyle to fit around our old activities. For example:
- Hanging out with friends should probably happen on a Sunday afternoon, when Rutabaga isn't around, or by getting friends to visit us after 9:30pm.
- Maybe we can go to comics on alternating Thursdays, and then also have our place be open to post-comics-club hangouts
- We should probably not do Taiko -- it's 2 hours in the car + 3 hours of trading off child care. Or maybe we can do taiko with Rutabaga at home? Or maybe we can do air-drumming after Rutabaga sleeps?
Step Four is to change how we handle our child care time. Instead of always tagging in and out, we should try to make child care time into Family Time. I think that'd be better for Rutabaga, too. (There will definitely be turn-taking on the weekends. On weekdays, hopefully the combination of slowly nudging her bedtime earlier and the above-mentioned disarmament will make it easier)
Step Five is to figure out sustainable activities that we can do together for the next few years. (I'm sure things will change again when, say, Rutabaga gets old enough to let us do Taiko as a Family Activity). We've brainstormed a list! (Now if only we have the energy to try some of them!)
Anyway, fandom participation is definitely on the table of Things to Re-examine, as is pretty much everything else. Let's see what comes out the other end!
We keep trying to make our old activities work with the new lifestyle and it's really not working. We can't really hang out with our pre-baby friends because "hanging out" now means one person watches the babbu and the other person hangs out with the friend while feeling guilty. Only one of us gets to play taiko at a time, and only one of us gets to go to comics club at a time. This has caused a lot of guilt and resentment and misery, especially as Rutabaga has grown more demanding of our attention.
From an introvert perspective -- hanging out with the Hoosband used to be restorative. Hanging out with Rutabaga costs social/emotional energy, which leaves me more exhausted. Hoosband is also introvert like whoa. And with Hoosband feeling all this child-related misery and world-news-related misery, hanging out with the Hoosband sometimes costs social/emotional energy, too. So after a long day at work (where I have to be socially "on" from 11 hours), all I want to do is sleep or escape into fandom. (Which then leaves Hoosband with the child care, and adds to Misery).
This last year it's really become this bad cycle where we take turns watching Rutabaga while the other person goes and does something, so one person's enjoyment is always at the other person's expense, and never actually get to hang out with each other. The recent daylight savings change has exacerbated these issues because Rutabaga, who used to sleep between 8:30-9pm, which leaves us 2 hours before our bedtime, now sleeps at 10:15pm, which leaves us ~30 minutes before our bedtime.
And it turns out that not actually spending time together makes both of us feel more miserable, in that "why am I even in this relationship" sort of way.
Anyways, a lot of this pent-up misery came to a head this weekend, and then we spent a fair bit of time talking with the husband and we're starting to take steps to figure things out.
Step One is to have a mutual disarmament re: bringing work home. (Awkwardly, this was during a weekend where I was hoping to finish my narrative writing.) Bringing work home just means we spend pre-baby-sleep time being like "honey can you watch her while I finish..." and then we spend post-baby-sleep time just doing our work instead of hanging out.
Step Two is to have a similar disarmament re: other activities that pull us into a similar situation of "can you childcare while I..." I'm the main culprit of this, so I agreed to stop modding fandom things and to stop picking up new fandom projects.
Step Three is to look at our previous/current activities and figuring out how to actually make it fit our current lifestyle instead of trying to get our current lifestyle to fit around our old activities. For example:
- Hanging out with friends should probably happen on a Sunday afternoon, when Rutabaga isn't around, or by getting friends to visit us after 9:30pm.
- Maybe we can go to comics on alternating Thursdays, and then also have our place be open to post-comics-club hangouts
- We should probably not do Taiko -- it's 2 hours in the car + 3 hours of trading off child care. Or maybe we can do taiko with Rutabaga at home? Or maybe we can do air-drumming after Rutabaga sleeps?
Step Four is to change how we handle our child care time. Instead of always tagging in and out, we should try to make child care time into Family Time. I think that'd be better for Rutabaga, too. (There will definitely be turn-taking on the weekends. On weekdays, hopefully the combination of slowly nudging her bedtime earlier and the above-mentioned disarmament will make it easier)
Step Five is to figure out sustainable activities that we can do together for the next few years. (I'm sure things will change again when, say, Rutabaga gets old enough to let us do Taiko as a Family Activity). We've brainstormed a list! (Now if only we have the energy to try some of them!)
Anyway, fandom participation is definitely on the table of Things to Re-examine, as is pretty much everything else. Let's see what comes out the other end!
