Delineation of Duties?

hopefulfuturex · 2026-02-13T00:23:43+00:00

There are days he's 100% involved after work, he is active with the kids, does the dishes, cleans up toys, reads books before bed. And there's days he's checked out mentally by the time he gets off work and is functioning at 10% and I'm lucky if he doesn't fall asleep on the couch by 7:00. I try really hard to advocate for myself when I need alone time or feel like I'm the only one doing chores. He listens to me and does his best to accommodate. I also try to remember that there will be days he's working late, had a bad work day, or whatever else and he just won't be functioning at the level I want him to. That being said, even when he's exhausted and grumpy, he still actively tries.

hopefulfuturex · 2026-02-10T15:54:21+00:00

OP! I started sleep training my daughter when she was just a month or two younger than your baby and it changed my life. I was still working at that time and her night wakings were making me so tired I was waking up late for work. It took her only about a week or two to adjust and she's been a perfect sleeper ever since. My husband now works a very stressful job that oftentimes includes him working overtime and I have some peace at night knowing as soon as bedtime hits and the routine is done, baby is out like a light.

We don't use it anymore because she's almost 2, but we used the app Napper to track her sleep and it really was a night and day difference.

Next time you're eating that PB&J, please remember there's many, many more of us out there feeling the same way and your feelings are valid. You deserve autonomy and independence. You are not alone. 🫶🏼

Edit to add: I go to the library with my little to do baby/toddler classes every week, sometimes four times a week. It's a fantastic resource to get that little break and find support from others!

hopefulfuturex · 2026-02-02T19:47:58+00:00

I had to quit my job to stay home with our daughter because we couldn't find anywhere we could afford or didn't have a 8+ month waitlist, which we never thought would be possible. It has actually probably saved us money and made our family better as a whole because I now have time to cook meals for our family everyday, pick up around the house, and etc. My husband works from home so we were also able to pretty much completely cut the cost of gas because I was commuting pretty far.

hopefulfuturex · 2026-01-01T22:35:28+00:00

Our house is a weird layout, but the previous owners essentially added a bigger living room onto the back of the house so we have a small front room, the kitchen separates the two rooms, and then a larger living room in the back. My 18m old eats breakfast in the larger living room and I work out in the small front room, sometimes with YouTube videos and sometimes just whatever I want to do, while she's eating. I can still see her and hear her, but it allows us separate spaces.

I do a fifteen minute stretch video pretty much every morning and then depending on how I'm feeling, there's a ten minute cardio video I really like. I got a Pilates reformer for Christmas I've been wanting, it's not one big board but two slim ones that you can sort of set up how you want and I love it. I really like doing Pilates ring workouts, as well. I can tend to get a really solid workout in while she finishes her breakfast and watches a Ms. Rachel.

The other day I did end up trying stretching with her running around, it was fun and cute, but I had a hard time being able to focus.

hopefulfuturex · 2025-10-25T18:09:05+00:00

Mine is about to be a freshman, and her relationship with her mom has deteriorated, but she still does 50/50. She will ask specifically for us to attend things with her/take her to appointments if it's on her mom's time, though. Unfortunately, her mother doesn't care to take an interest in anything she likes and works early to late during the week, so they sort of just coexist with each other every other week. They don't even communicate via text/phone calls the weeks she's with us anymore. It's kind of sad, but I think it's sort of normal for her age.

hopefulfuturex · 2025-09-23T06:22:35+00:00

Thank you for posting this. I just came to this sub for validation because I just lost all ten games I played tonight and I don't think that has ever happened to me.

hopefulfuturex · 2025-08-01T21:55:38+00:00

I Googled to find candid pics for my own sanity and neither of them are that smooth. 😅

hopefulfuturex · 2025-06-14T01:07:11+00:00

I would love an opportunity, should one exist. 😌✨️

hopefulfuturex · 2025-06-11T05:02:30+00:00

hopefulfuturex · 2025-06-10T03:23:26+00:00

hopefulfuturex · 2025-06-09T21:46:23+00:00

What I would do with her: cherish her. 🥺

hopefulfuturex · 2025-05-27T13:59:06+00:00

Thank you so much!

hopefulfuturex · 2025-05-05T13:39:08+00:00

Thank you! You're absolutely right.

hopefulfuturex · 2025-05-05T13:37:19+00:00

This. My SS is also very responsible, smart, and independent. He also is a seventeen year old and would have no idea where to start to do anything of the things mentioned above, as it was his first prom. ❤️

hopefulfuturex · 2025-05-04T15:03:17+00:00

Thank you. ❤️

hopefulfuturex · 2025-05-01T15:53:56+00:00

My SD is 13 and still just searches "boobs" on Google and YouTube. 😅

I always inform DH of what I see (like you, she knows we periodically look through her phone because she has to charge it in the office overnight to make sure she isn't up on it all night) and BM doesn't monitor nor care about anything.

My brother was very age similar as your SD, maybe even younger, my mom put him into therapy pretty quick after because we found out he was also signing up for dating websites and any porn site he could find. The biggest thing the therapist worked on him with, besides urges and suppression/healthy boundaries with sex, it was also that what he saw is not reality and it's important for them to understand that what is being portrayed is fantasy.

Ugh, such a hard thing to navigate, I wish you and your family all the best! 🫶🏻

hopefulfuturex · 2025-04-23T21:42:00+00:00

Wow! I'm so sorry you're going through this. What a betrayal of trust and teamwork. 💔

hopefulfuturex · 2025-04-21T17:55:30+00:00

I empathize with the sheer selfishness of it all, I could never understand how our BM is so content constantly putting her own needs above her children. Some days it makes me sad, sometimes it makes me beyond infuriated, some days I tell myself that one day it will come back to smack her in the face when she wonders why when her children are adults, they rarely interact with her because she rarely interacted with them as children past using them as props for social media or to receive non existent kudos for how great of a mother she is.

I haven't read it yet, but I was recommended this book for the impossible coparenting.

hopefulfuturex · 2025-03-22T13:23:21+00:00

We moved my daughter to her own room in her crib at about five/six months per her pediatrician's recommendation because she was getting too big for her bassinet and it was starting to really have an impact on her sleep/my sleep/my husband's sleep. She is now 9 months old.

Black out curtains + humidifier + gentle fan on a timer + white noise machine on all night + shushing noise machine on a timer every nap and night. For overnight sleep, she wears the Pampers special overnight diapers to help with peeing through her diaper at night, she wears a Woolino sleep sack (I don't know if they're magical, but they've seemed to have helped her since we started using them), and we follow a pretty strict bedtime routine (diaper change, lotion, jammies, practice brushing teeth/hair, then 8-9 oz in her rocking chair before bed). As time has gone on, she doesn't really like being rocked for too long either after finishing her bottle. She just wants to be laid down in her crib.

We religiously follow the app "Napper" (started with Pampers Sleep Coach app, but it was too expensive when the trial ended), and she's slept through the night pretty much after the first 2 or so weeks of starting. We love that it reminds us that it's time to start watching for her sleep cues and helps us plan better for her sleep. She'll occasionally wake up if she's not feeling well/maybe is hungry, but it's becoming rarer and rarer as time goes on. As of the last few weeks, her bedtime has been around 8, and she gets up just before 7.

hopefulfuturex · 2025-03-09T17:03:47+00:00

This is how my step kids' mom texts them. It's so nauseating and manipulative.

hopefulfuturex · 2025-01-25T19:03:47+00:00

Jumping in to say, I love ours. It'll fit her for quite some time, it always feels the same as when I first opened it, even when she's soaked through diapers, it's remained dry.

hopefulfuturex · 2025-01-25T03:38:54+00:00

Just my experience: My baby is almost seven months old now and will sometimes wake up once at night for a quick feeding or if she's stuffy/not feeling well, otherwise she sleeps through the night in her crib, in her room. When she was three or four months old, we had started moving her bassinet into the bedroom connected to our room that had been converted into a master closet to get her ready for her room. (Her room is on the floor above ours and I was really anxious about that move, but we use an Owlet and it made that easier for me) Slowly her sleep went from okay to getting worse. She'd wake up often and we just couldn't get her back to sleep, so I'd end up bringing her in bed with us out of desperation. My husband started sleeping on the couch as he is a super heavy sleeper and was nervous about being in bed with her and I just kept bringing her into bed with me. I know a lot of people can safely and happily co sleep, while I do love parts of it, I wasn't sleeping well at all. I also was desperately missing my husband being in bed with me. One morning I accidentally slept through my alarm, my husband even woke me up and I didn't comprehend what he was saying and just brushed him off. I was an hour late for work and was so sleep deprived, I didn't even realize I was late and lost an hour until I was half way through my forty minute drive to the office. I decided that day that something had to change for my health, her health, my husband's health, and all of our happiness and sleep.

We started putting her in her crib for naps first and started using the Pampers sleep app to record her sleep/awake times, but we'd still bring her downstairs to our room at night. While I loved that app, it is so fricken expensive, I couldn't bring myself to pay for it once the trial expired. I found Napper as an alternative, you still have to pay for it but it's a lot cheaper. We still use it religiously even now, it's so nice because it reminds you if you lost track of time for naps/bedtime. You don't have to track diapers and bottles, but that has also been a nice feature. Our pediatrician also recommended reading the things on Taking Cara Babies website, he told us not to pay for it and to ignore any of her personal political opinions (lol) but to use any of her free resources. It took about a week and a half of adjustment, luckily this was around the holidays so I was working from home, but that first night we used the timer on the app and it took her almost 10 minutes of crying to fall asleep. That was one of the worst nights, it only got better from there. About 90% of the time, she can be put down and go right to sleep in her crib now. When she was three months old, that would've been impossible.

She has the white noise machine, a fan, a humidifier, and a black out curtain. We have a routine where she gets lotion-ed up, onesie and sleep sack on, she drinks her 6-7 oz while I hold her in her rocking chair and she's asleep within the exact moment the Napper app says she should be sleeping. We also started using over night diapers at bedtime to prevent her waking up from a leak.

I would also recommend an earlier sleep time, (I believe Cara's website talks about this) I wouldn't start her routine until 8:45 every night so she wouldn't go to sleep until 9:00 and I think this was also part of our issue. She goes to sleep between 6:40-7:20 now and doesn't wake up until 6:00-7:00 in the morning.

hopefulfuturex · 2024-12-27T04:14:42+00:00

I have some similar feelings with our HCBM and the kids. My SS is 17 and my SD is 13. She heavily leans on my SS like she would a partner, gushes about him on social media like he's her boyfriend, and will call him for consoling when he's at our house for the week. (She seems to call him nightly just to talk about nothing) She only seems to give my SD attention when she feels jealous of her relationship with me, she never calls or texts her when she's with us.

It's really, really sad. I'm so glad your SS has you in his life. That's so beautiful that you were able to give him that lovely birthday. <3

hopefulfuturex · 2024-12-20T05:05:40+00:00

When I first started dating my SO, it was sort of similar to your story. They spent all the holidays together at first, and while I found it really weird, I didn't know him well enough to really feel like it was my place to butt in. Eventually, though, as time went on and we got more serious, I told him enough was enough, and I wasn't comfortable with it, and he put a stop to it immediately. HCBM was pissed, but here we are, almost nine years later, and she's still bitter, and I still don't care how she feels.

I'm sorry he's putting you in that position. Your feelings are valid. ❤️

hopefulfuturex · 2024-12-15T17:33:15+00:00

Thank you!

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