Divide And Conquer
Even though we both chose to have a baby, to create a tiny human, there are bound to be things we don’t want to do. Things like dealing with tantrums, shitty diapers, cleaning bottles and endless laundry… So the best way with dealing with everything is to actually not deal with every single thing—divvy up the tasks and it’s like you’ve only got half the crap to deal with. Literally!
We decided early on that mama was responsible for input and daddy for output (when he’s home). For a few reasons. It makes getting up in the wee hours of the morning that much easier since neither of us have to stay up for very long (but let’s be real—mine is always longer! also why he often lets me sleep in after the morning feed, like today—crawling out of bed at 9AM on his days off from work to enjoy some me time is a huge win!). I’m the only one with functional boobs between us, so this also requires me to do all of the pumping, and with that comes bottle filling, cleaning, etc.
There are also many other tasks around the house that were divided between us long before baby. Hubby’s domain is the kitchen (meals and cleanup) and he does most of the laundry. Unbeknownst to him, my domain are the toilets (he found us after I was on bed rest after birth that when I don’t do it every day there are these weird rings that show up, lol). I also take care of most of the nursery organization and you know, childcare most days.
There are other household things like vacuuming and dusting, the basement is a huge undertaking in itself, the master bedroom and en-suite—which let’s face it don’t get done nearly as much as we’d like—that are done on an as-needed basis by whoever is free at the moment. But our main floor is cleaned daily because my studio is always clean for clients.
Eventually there will be more tasks to do like preparing lunches for kiddo and taking her to activities, and we can tackle those as they come. Until then, we got this covered.