It’s Friday evening. My instagram feed is full of glasses of wine and TGIFs, people looking forward to spending time with their family over the weekend. But all I can think is that my working week is about to begin. Now, before I go any further I just need to say that I know I’m incredibly lucky that I only work three days a week. I know that I’m blessed to be able to spend the rest of the time with Lyra, I do. I really do. But I’m struggling and since this blog is a place to document my journey through motherhood I have to write about it. I’ll try to keep it from becoming too whiny though, I promise.
Just to set the scene a little let me explain our current childcare setup. Matt works normal office hours Monday to Friday with an hour long commute thrown on top. I work Saturday to Monday so Lyra is obviously with Matt at the weekends and then our Mums alternate the Mondays. We have this setup as I don’t bring in too much income and so paying for childcare would just make me going to work pointless. So there we have it. Oh, and I went back to work in January so we’ve been doing this for a good few months now.
Now, I’m not struggling too much with the leaving Lyra side of it if I’m honest. I think it’s really good for her that she gets one on one time with her Daddy and I love that her grandparents have a chance to really build a strong relationship with her. So that’s all good. What I’m really struggling with is missing my husband and family time! Whilst I was on maternity leave our weekends were full of adventures and I loved it. And I loved the non adventure days just as much, we were spoilt and could afford to ‘waste’ a day just lazing around together. I miss it so much. I miss hanging out with my husband, I miss those days filled with possibility.
On a positive note I’m going to try and change the little part of my weekend that I do have control over. I don’t start work until 11 on the Sunday so that gives me a few hours. Those few hours are usually taken up with sneaking a little lie in in our preparing for the day but instead I’m going to make a conscious effort to squeeze a little adventure in. Just a little bit of family time. It may just be a trip to the park or a walk, maybe some baking or breakfast out. Something. Anything. Because this is time that I’ll never get back. I can’t change the fact that I have to work those three days but I can change how I spend those first few hours on a Sunday morning. Here goes.