It has been quite awhile since Ihave managed to write anything in
this phlog. My time has largely been given to my, now, four month
old and my job. Any left over time is spent sleeping... for the
most part. I am someone that always needs to have a hobby project
going, so I have had a few other things as well... but mostly
just baby.
I have sadly discovered how difficult it is to have a child and
actually be able to spend time with that child. To afford to live
where we live my wife and I must both work. That means childcare.
We wake up in the morning and take the baby to daycare and then
we go to work. We pick the baby up on our way home. By the time
we get home it is time to feed the baby, then feed us. Then there
is a really brief period of getting to actually spend time
together... then the baby goes to sleep. We each take a nighttime
feeding... but those only sort of count as the kind of time I
would really like to have. Really, during the week, we see her
for maybe 2 hours of non-feeding non-sleepy time per day. That
feels wrong. It feels like either we as parents, my wife and I,
or we as a society have failed. It makes me sad.
I recently took four weeks off to spend with the baby on my own
when my wife went back to work after her, far too short, leave.
At first I was overwhelmed and stressed out and really missed
work... but by the end of the four weeks I was really sad that
we had to start taking her to daycare.
This is, of course a secondary - but not small, concern: cost.
On top of not getting to see her very much we are paying what
seems to be a fairly average rate here of ~$1800/month. Which
is essentially a second rent.
As a result of all of the above, we are trying to negotiate
with our boss (my wife and I both work for the same company
in the same department) to be able to work remote. This will
allow us to move somewhere more affordable while still working
our jobs for a decent wage. We have been looking out houses
in coastal Oregon and are hopeful we can make something work
out. If we manage to make this happen we would be able to
work from home and with two of us working from home we would
likely be able to have the baby with us (our workloads are not
so crazily demanding that we have to be at attention at all
times during the day), or maybe one of us could cut to part
time or something.
Parents out there in gopherspace: How do you do it? How do
you get enough time with your child(re) and still manage
to afford to live? It seems a tricky balance these days,
especially in the US where support for families seems to
lag behind a number of places in the world (though I
imagine it is in turn better than some other...maybe?)
