4 Answers
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I think your questions not only apply to your situation, but any set of parents who are busy all day needing a break once in a while. Which seems to be pretty much everybody. :)
It seems like most answers will either involve getting rid of the stuff you need to do so you have more time to do what you want to do, or someone to take care of your child for chunks of time. I have a comment for each.
Years ago, my wife and I hired a gardner to maintain our landscaping and a housekeeper to clean our house. They come by twice a month.
Initially I really resisted hiring anyone, because I had it in my mind that's for rich people and we're not rich.
But not only do they save us the time of doing these chores, they do a better job. I'd estimate they're saving us 15-20 hours a month. Totally worth it.
We also have an arrangement with another family who has toddler. Every month or so, they babysit our two kids and on a separate occasion we take care of their one (Yeah, I know we're getting the better end of the deal). But this doesn't cost us any money, and my wife and I get to go out on a date. Ok, the date costs money. But again, totally worth it.
Hope this helps.
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On that last question - how does the stay-at-home parent get personal time? - I feel like that's a super important question. And, unless you have family or family-like friends nearby, it seems like the answer has to - ultimately - come from your spouse or your nanny. And you get to decide which works better for you and your family - make that, which or both!
In our case, I value the whole family time a lot and there's a lot of external demands / engagements for the whole family on weekends, and we'd both like my spouse to have some time to himself (beyond work & childcare), so I'd rather take my me-time during the week while the nanny has the kids. To do this, we have her come for more than exactly my work time, added on there is also time for me to go to the gym, out to lunch, etc. This took some justifying for me - hard to justify paying for "extra" care, hard to justify being away - but I've been trying to live by the mantra of "happy mom + happy dad = happy family, happy kids" and whatever it takes to give each of us what we need that is plausible to do, we try to do...
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I have an activity every monday night, which I took up again since she was about 4 weeks old.
Also, computer time is important, but it also becomes a kind of off-button for the brain, I've found. It's nice to read email, catch news and all that, and necessary, too, but I find that computer time generally is not really good me-time. It's the junk food of the soul. It can be so hard to find time and energy for anything else, but find something. If you can't leave the house, at least try to do something you really enjoyed doing before baby came along, and make sure you get at least one evening a week to do just that.
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I can't say that I have the answer to this but I'd love to hear what other people think.
My partner and I are really struggling with this right now. I work full time outside of the home and she is at home full time with our toddler. She is also a full-time student but has her schedule arranged so that she's at school on just two days a week when we have family and friends watch our toddler. In addition, most days my 2 older children from a previous relationship are home and need help getting ready for school, etc while I am already gone for work. She does a lot, it seems like even more when I type it all out, actually. But I do a lot, too. I don't want to come through the door after a full day and a half hour commute and instantly pop into the kitchen to start supper or to take a restless baby to the park the minute that i walk through the door. But I often get the impression that she is overwhelmed and just counting hte seconds until i walk through the door so she can take her ow break. I think that both of us actually need some "me" time. And we need "us" time, too. This balancing duties thing is really stressful and it's a relationship problem.
