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My husband and I are the parents of an 11 month old. I went back to work full time on a compressed 4 day week when our son was 3 months old. My husband works for himself as an acupuncturist and, therefore has somewhat greater flexibility in his schedule. Our son is in day care 3 days a week (my husband and I each taking a full day off to round out the week). Despie having to run his own practice, my husband does far and away more than the other dads we know. He drops our son off at day care, cleans and puts away all of the laundry, manages and labels all of my pumped breastmilk to take into day care and is the first to volunteer to whisk our son away to change his diaper. He also has a very sweet ritual of giving our son a full body massage with olive oil after his baths. What has been very surprising is to hear from my mother friends about how comparatively little their husbands do - even if both are working full time.

Because I am working full time, we has chosen to maintain a family bed with unrestricted breastfeeding. As a result, neither of us has had more than 4 hours of consecutive sleep since our son was born. We're older parents (41 and 47) so are really feeling the effects of sleep deprivation. I cannot image carrying all of the attendant responsibilities of child rearing without the help of my husband - even with the 2 of us doing all that we do it still feels like we are in triage mode. This is going to be his first father's day and we are definitely celebrating!

posted 4 years, 11 months ago
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