I am 41, married with two sons who are both at school. Our youngest started kindy this week and will do the 2 days/3 days rotation as per other kindy schools.
Prior to Xmas I was seconded into a new role which is a promotion and it was offered to me permanently which I accepted after the new year. I have been loving it and it was what I wanted after gaining my HR degree in 2015.
It has a lot of responsibility and stress and to be honest its freaking me out a bit. Everyone is assuring me I am doing a great job, but my confidence feels low and I find I am a constant ball of adrenaline. I like this but not every day of every hour. Sleeping is now difficult as I wake often thinking of work, dreaming of work and feeling like I could throw up at 3am.
This week has been hard as my youngest did the half days at kindy and I had to work from home to be there for him. I've been juggling full time work and kids since they were 1 and they are now 7 & 4. Next week I drop down one day on a Wednesday so I can do school pick up drop off and my employer has been amazing when I asked for this request.
I'd like to hear from other mum's who have experienced similar and what I could do to relax a bit. I don't feel like I am doing a particularly good job of wife, mum and employee and feel stretched. I am aware I have made this choice, but I need to work for our family and finances.
I do envy the mum's at school who have lots of leisure time while their kids are at school to exercise or catch up. I feel like the husband with the stressful job, lol. When my husband and I both have stressful jobs.
TIA x
3 Replies
Give yourself time to get into the flow of things. You mentioned you were only seconded just prior to Christmas and also with the kids returning to school (along with Christmas, New Years etc) it's a bit to handle over a short period of time. You will grow more confident in your role as you learn it more and this should reduce your stress.
I'm in a role which is effectively 2ic in a professional firm. We have predictable busy periods and slow periods with the busy period being extremely tough. To ease my stress for the busy time I do a bit of overtime every week (may range from one hour up to ten) so I'm minimising the impact of the busy period. The overtime is actually done when my daughter sleeps at night. I bring work home and do it when she sleeps. That helps me massively stress wise. For me I'm fine with this as I'm quite career orientated and really enjoy my work...it's my time away from the kids and hubby.
I also take a day or two off about once every two months (almost an rdo) just for myself so I can have that balance to not think about work.
Also gym/jog about 3-5 times a week helps and definitely some couch potato time just thinking about zip!
Fingers crossed you find the balance that suits you. Just remember that whilst you may envy the time some of the mums may have relative to you, some of those mums probably envy how successful you are and wish they had a career just like you! Best of luck!
I work full time sometimes 7days a week. I help my hsuband run 2 businesses run the household and juggle 3 kids. Its not fun sometimes its just darn right crap. I find being orgsnised helps. I also try one day a week to make a heap of meals ans freeze them so their ready to go on busy nights. My kids have a very strict night routine that doesnt get deviated very often as once their in bed i usually work. I find the best thing is that after a particular time at night or during the day i turn off no work of anysort and try and so something different even if the house is trashed i still sit down and do something for my self.
Cut yourself some slack. They're telling you you're doing great, as long as you're doing the best you can and they're happy with it, it's a win. It sounds like you're trying to take on too much. It's great your boss is flexible, it makes life so much easier so just look at little routine things that you can do to make life simpler. Slow cooker meals, pay someone to clean one day a fortnight (you know those jobs that really suck like the bathroom, mopping, cleaning the oven - outsource!), cook ahead or at least prep and freeze ahead, organise bills and payments to be if not automatic at least methodical. Have everyone pitch in, youngest is in kindy so all are old enough to do chores and a big one for us has been that we all clean up after ourselves as we go. I've held onto the motto it takes a family to run a household. Research methods of relaxation, I don't do it enough but I love meditation for a good grounding and do things that relax you (listening to music, drawing, sewing, gardening etc). We don't get a lot of time so it's time to invest it in important stuff. If you don't feel you can do it on your own I suggest a psychologist, just to learn your stress triggers and learn some coping strategies to work through it.