https://boards.hellobee.com/ Pregnancy, Baby and Parenting blog, by Hellobee en Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:34:40 +0000 https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516314 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 15:35:27 +0000 hb3233 2516314@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@Mae: Thanks for sharing! I definitely agree that one of the big challenges of stepping back a bit is that it can be a hit to pride. My industry is very hierarchical, and there's a strong assumption motivating a lot of people that your worth is proportional to your place in the hierarchy and you don't have much worth professionally if you fall further down. I hate this being a factor in life decisions, definitely working on not letting professional success, defined in the traditional way, determine my self worth - and have been a lot happier since I started working on this in my mid-20s - but there's still scope to work on this. </p> <p>@rachiecakes: completely agreed on renting. DH owned a place when we met, and we still live there now. Renting was so much easier, though we are pretty lazy homeowners.</p> <p>@T.H.O.U.: I really like the one activity per season rule. I grew up in a part of the country that was pretty chill, and it was not that common to overload kids with activities. Where I live now is the exact opposite, and it seems just crazy to be shuttling around to that many activities, for both the kids and parents. </p> <p>@Mrs. Sketchbook: I love your approach. I really like the saying "don't let perfect be the enemy of good," because so many times it can be. I also agree 100% on getting rid of stuff. I've been in an obsessive purging mood in general, both with stuff and with projects at work. I feel like life got way too complicated. I really like the idea of only owning a small number of items that I love and use all the time - our place is still a cluttered mess but with less stuff, it can't be as bad. Now I just need to figure out how to incentivize DH to declutter. :wink: Our place is pretty small, and I really don't want to move until we absolutely have to. Good luck with everything, I feel like grad programs are complete pressure cookers, I'm sure you have much more perspective than most people. </p> <p>@jetsa: Glad you are able to go back to the small, flexible firm. My job is reasonably flexible which is one of the main reasons I think I'll stick with it, even if there are other downsides...I didn't think a lot about that when choosing careers, it's a happy side effect, but now I'm so glad for it. </p> <p>@gingerbebe: It's really inspiring how you and your husband were able to work everything out - good luck with the new baby, and I hope your DH is able to get a teaching job nearby!</p> <p>@JoyfulKiwi: Daycare discount - that's awesome! I also really need to work on saying no more. At some point I was just so utterly exhausted trying to do everything I'd said yes to, that i realized that whatever unpleasantness came from saying no, it had to be way better than all the work that came from saying yes. There's a big cost to saying yes, so I should also be willing to pay a non-trivial cost to say no...Still working on it... </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516195 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 14:09:07 +0000 Mrs. Sketchbook 2516195@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@Ms maths: This post absolutely turned it around for me earlier this year <a href="http://www.postpartumprogress.com/getting-rid-of-the-guilt-after-postpartum-depression" rel="nofollow">http://www.postpartumprogress.com/getting-rid-of-the-guilt-after-postpartum-depression</a></p> <p>Basically the idea that we identify feelings of regret as guilt. So instead of just regretting that life doesn't allow us to have family dinners, then instead I feel guilt about it. But if you can reframe guilt as regret, then it becomes easier to grieve the loss and move on. And I do think of everything as part of grieving. Because we do have an idea of what married/family life will look like and we do have to "grieve" the loss of those expectations. I definitely think my movement to self- acceptance followed the stages of grief pretty well. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516188 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 14:07:36 +0000 JoyfulKiwi 2516188@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I had a hard time with my career after having kids. I teach (elementary/preschool) and that job is so easy to get "lost" in. Late hours, weekends, meetings, etc. I wanted to pull back after my first child and the principal at my school didn't understand that &amp; gave me a difficult time about it, so I called her bluff and I left. Originally I thought of transferring to a different school, but I decided to teach preschool instead. I'm happy with that choice, although I miss the teacher perks (vacations, being salaried, etc). I'm so much less stressed and it's allowed us to financially afford a 2nd child (daycare discount!) I know I'll eventually return to public school but my kids will be older so I think it'll work better as far as balance.<br /> For everything else, I do what @Mrs. Sketchbook: does and see a therapist when things are stressful. My big things are learning to relax, communicating better with my husband, and not feel guilty about saying "no" or causing "trouble". I can say no, but it makes me feel so bad I almost never do! I think counseling is a huge support in the increasing demand on people to do "more" or "better" like you talked about. But also, prioritizing is just a fact. Some things have to fall to the bottom of the list &amp; we need to take the pressure off ourselves and say it's okay (for me, it's housework. I hate that our place is a cluttered disaster, but it's not filthy &amp; that's got to be enough for me) </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516185 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 14:05:54 +0000 Mrs. Sketchbook 2516185@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@hb3233: I thought of one more thing. We also downsized into a place half the size of our last home and got rid of probably 70% of our possessions. We just closed on a house that is about as large as the other one, but the additional space is mostly a big bonus room that we are just going to use as storage space/playroom for our kids and let them beat it up. Also the yard at our new place is really small. So there's another option-- just eliminate the thing that is causing you stress (in my situation, I was constantly nagging my husband to do home repairs/upgrades and finally the solution was just to not live in that house anymore). That actually is probably the biggest leap we made for mental health. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516176 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 14:03:01 +0000 gingerbebe 2516176@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I guess DH and I are just really intentional about planning our careers around our family life. Maintaining a health spiritual life, marriage, and family come first for us. Careers and jobs are important to us, but only to the extent that they serve our family's interest. </p> <p>DH and I got married at 30 as I was finishing up law school and he was still unemployed and looking for work a year after graduating from law school. We spent a hungry summer while I studied for the Bar Exam and extreme couponed to get by while he applied for a zillion jobs. </p> <p>We spent a lot of time talking that summer about how we wanted to structure our life and family because 1) we were starting from scratch, and 2) law school had actually been a career change for me as a means of finding something more stable and structured from the zany 100+ hours a week I'd been working in politics. I went into law school looking for a lower-paying, but very steady government job that would allow me to have security and flexibility for the family and future I wished to have. DH was just looking at dollar signs because we had 2 sets of law school loans to pay back and thought the only way we could get ahead was to land a big-firm job working heinous hours. But I questioned whether that would really work for us in the long run and we sorta brainstormed what our "ideal" would look like and took intentional steps to try and reach that.</p> <p>Looking back, that summer was extremely valuable and we were lucky in a lot of ways because we didn't start our marriage in a place where we had existing careers to work around. Instead, we set goals and ideals of what we wanted our family life to look and and endeavored to accomplish them systematically. I found and started at my ideal government job, which gave us a small but steady paycheck and cheap health insurance while DH started his own law practice in our spare bedroom. He eventually also took a pseudo-legal crappy government job that required 4 hours of commuting a day, but we weren't willing to let go of my job, which had incredible benefits and the ability to work part-time down the road. The hours and pay at DH's job were bad, but it gave us some extra money to put towards our student loans, it didn't conflict with his law practice, and it allowed him to convert his years of military service to federal retirement credit and buy airtime for a pension later in life. It also gave us a fallback in case I got pregnant and needed to take time off work. In the meantime, DH worked nights and weekends to diligently build his business.</p> <p>DH even took on a third job teaching paralegal and criminal law courses at a vocational school for a year and a half on top of this. His work hours were insane, but we did it because with his RA/TA experience and journal publications from law school, it allowed him to apply for teaching jobs at other colleges. This eventually led to him teaching business law at a 4-year university while also running his practice. This would give him the ability to work from home several days a week and give him school breaks off - ideal for a small business owner and eventually a dad. DH's business grew, but we lived super frugally in the meantime and dumped all our spare money into our loans. I had several health problems during this time, so having my secure government job was invaluable, since I didn't have to worry about losing my job.</p> <p>DS is 19 months now, and while I'm due with our 2nd in a month and I'm nervous about how the balance is going to work out after he arrives, we're overall very pleased with how our current family life has played out. I took a full year off for maternity leave for my first under my job's benefits, and we were able to afford a largely unpaid leave it because we'd learned to live so frugally the first 3 years of our marriage. I was able to return to work 3 days a week and we can afford that because we paid off my law school loans. That extra time allows me to take on a lot of household chores to balance my husband's work hours and be more present for both DH and DS. </p> <p>DH still works long hours between his business and his teaching, but he has the summers and winters off and since he only has to go in to teach 2-3 days a week, he's at home the rest of the week to help pitch in with daycare pick up and drop off. Having his own business means he can schedule things in his private practice around our family schedule when needed, even if he has to make up for it later. He often works several hours after DS is in bed for the night, but stops to eat dinner and go to the park with him in the early evening on most days. And we're able to enjoy Sundays as a family with church, lunch, and play time.</p> <p>We're constantly still planning and tweaking things to try and support and improve our family ideal. We have regular conversations about next steps for our careers and job opportunities and we're always trying to be more frugal. For instance, one tough thing since DS was born was that DH has been getting his Executive MBA on nights and weekends. But we were able to get the degree for really cheap with his remaining GI bill benefits and we knew that while it would suck to do this with a newborn in the house, in the long run, having a JD/MBA would open up more job opportunities at other colleges for him and there wouldn't be a better time for our family. (Sounds odd, but he's been turned down for business LAW positions in the past because he didn't have an MBA!) Currently, the school he teaches at is 75 miles away from home and while he only has to go in 2-3 days a week, those are still 12 hour days where he's spending 3+ hours driving. Obviously, that's just a lot of time wasted, so he'd much prefer to teach closer to home at any one of several colleges near us that have perfectly good business programs. </p> <p>We still live frugally for the most part and are working hard at trying to pay off DH's law school loans in the next few years and bought a much more modest house than we could have afforded to continue to give us the flexibility we value as a family. I'm extremely grateful that I'll be able to take another year off with my second child and will be returning to a part-time schedule after that as well.</p> <p>The trade off here has been that I'm obviously not contributing a lot financially to my family, both on a day-to-day income basis and from a retirement standpoint (my pension working half-time is accruing sloooooooowly). That's a lot of money stress to put on my husband, since he's basically gotta support all of us, save enough for retirement for 2, and keep our kids' college funds growing while paying off our student loans. It goes without saying he's always thinking about profits and maximizing our tax and savings potential. But we think of it as a team effort - I help him with his business building and he knows could never do all this stuff with his career and schooling without me having his back, doing the behind the scenes things to keep our household running smoothly, and providing the stability, cheap health benefits, and flexibility my job affords. Overall, we are happy with the situation the way it is since our marriage is stable and we get to spend time with our son every day. It just takes a LOT of planning and forethought and a lot of prayer and luck! </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516151 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 13:51:05 +0000 jetsa 2516151@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Super interesting to me as well.</p> <p>I am a consultant and for the last 6 years had been in a tiny little firm that supported me and my kids. Need to flex hours, no big deal, need to work 30 hours a week done. Need to stay home because someone is sick or fussy do it. It was busy and I had night meetings and it always seemed like those responsibilities fell on nights my husband was not home so we were constantly in a bind. Work being busy is great for the company but I let myself get burnt out so I started applying elsewhere. I managed to land a job with my state and knew that it would be a strict m-f job with little flexibitliy but also without night meetings or outside phone calls. I took it, it was a hard hard decision because I knew what I was leaving behind was so flexible and I was good at it but the state had a pension and I would make more money over time. I am 8 weeks in and I hate it. I gave my notice yesterday and am going back to the small firm, the money and pension are not worth being miserable everyday; not being able to be home when my kids are sick or being able to leave when my sister has a flat tire 5 mins from my office. Another factor when I started at the state we hired a nanny and that has tremendously helped and as I go back to my small firm having someone to watch my kids when both my husband and I have meetings will be essential. In this experience, I have learned that while I value my work and enjoy what I do I need to balance that with flexibility for my kids and the small firm does that. I will get to interact with my clients but everyone knows my kids come first. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516148 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 13:47:44 +0000 Ms maths 2516148@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@Mrs. Sketchbook: I love your way of gaining perspective! I'm going to try it out. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516132 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 13:39:34 +0000 T.H.O.U. 2516132@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@Mrs. Sketchbook: Ugh dinner time with kids age 6M-18M is SOO tough for working families (well probably for all families). I finally feel like with baby #3, I too am going to just loose those expectations of a family dinner and have individual eating times (aka I will probably just join for dinner and feed the kids and then eat later). </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516128 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 13:38:01 +0000 Mrs. Sketchbook 2516128@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Probably the biggest leap I made was from full time SAHM to full time grad student and part time teacher. Then I had another baby and now I'm back to full time SAHM while also taking some online classes, until this fall when I'm back to work/school at the equivalent of a full time schedule. The experience taught me that I definitely prefer being outside the home to being a stay at home mother full-time, but it also taught me how not to put too much of my identity into one thing, because motherhood, work, and academics all come with their drawbacks. Probably the best balance was when I was taking online classes, working two days a week, and had my older son in daycare 3 days a week. That was the best for everyone I think, except financially it was a stretch, thus why I have mine at home full time now. </p> <p>Not related to work/life balance, the biggest leap I made was to go to a therapist. One thing we work on is how to acknowledge how something may be "best," but is not always best for us as a family. For example I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to have family dinner every night, but this was too taxing on my youngest, who goes to bed around 6:00 so right in the middle of dinner. So we acknowledged that family dinner is ideal, but not now realistic, therefore we can let it go, even grieve the loss of the "ideal" and instead move toward something more realistic. So now my youngest eats leftovers from last night or I roast him some veggies. Now he's 11 months and he can stay up a little later and he eats more of what we eat. This approach of acknowledging perfection, grieving that it isn't possible, and then moving toward a healthier standard really came in handy last week when I missed an important deadline in my grad program. It was sobering because I usually don't make mistakes like this. But that same week we closed on a house and I have been working on my relationship with husband and kids and trying to put more time into that, so I sort of had to acknowledge that I had truly put other things above school, and that was the cause of my oversight...it truly was my fault, not my "plight," but also not something to beat myself up about.</p> <p>For a long time I put my kids over myself and my marriage. After about two years of that, I started to realize that wasn't manageable. So now the order is: me, marriage, kids. I can feel myself get depleted and I try to correct it fast. Because if I'm depleted I can't do anything for anyone else. So my number one priority is emotional regulation for me, and everything else flows from that. No one expectation-- homemade dinner, sex 3 times a week, no screen time, weight loss...whatever else the world demands--comes before that one for me. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516127 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 13:38:00 +0000 T.H.O.U. 2516127@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>My big trade off to consider right now is how much do we expose our kids to extracurricular activities without ruining our sanity and our family balance. I want them to learn new sports and lessons, but I also want them to have time at home to be with us. I dont want to stretch our budget and our time even further if not necessary. I think we will have a "rule" or something about 1 activity per season. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516125 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 13:33:31 +0000 rachiecakes 2516125@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Interesting..<br /> Where we live it's practically unheard of to SAH. The cost of living requires that two parents work, in most cases. Although we don't make as much money as our peers, I feel fortunate that my husband has made it work with his jobs so that he can spend half the day time with DS and we only need to put him in preschool for a half day.<br /> Now, could he find a full time job that pays more? Sure. But we'd then be paying more for preschool and he'd lose that time with dad.. I don't know. There's pros and cons to both situations. </p> <p>Right now I work a full time job in an office that's very understanding of family needs (sick days, appointments, etc.). I also get to work in a creative position where I truly enjoy the work I do. Could I make more money somewhere else? Probably. But I might not have the flexibility or satisfaction that I do now. </p> <p>Another thing: we rent. We LOVE where we live and could never afford to buy here based on our current salaries. We could move and it would add a commute and my husband might not be able to work in the way he does now. So do we make a decision to purchase a home somewhere we don't want to live and that would make our work days longer and more stressful, less satisfying? Probably not. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516104 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 13:17:30 +0000 Mae 2516104@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I haven't read the article yet but I'll read it later! This all is something I think a lot about because I have this gut feeling/belief that America's values are all wrong. I think most people are just of the mindset that "it is the way it is" with regard to workplaces demanding so much time and penalizing a focus on family and I feel like there must be a better way. And that happier, more balanced employees would be better for the employer as well! </p> <p>I think I have decent balance but I'm new to the working mom thing so I guess we'll see how I feel over time. I made a big change to my career in terms of the type of job I pursued. I am a lawyer and before I had my daughter I was a civil litigator, which is a job that traditionally is pretty heavy on hours and can require sort of round-the-clock attention when you're approaching trial. When I had my daughter I took 1.5 years off and when I was looking to go back to work I set a hard limit on the number of hours I was willing to work. I wanted a 40 hour/week job with very limited night/weekends required because I wanted to know that nights and weekends were for my family. It was HAARDDDD to find a job in law that is "only" 40 hours per week. They are like, almost nonexistent. </p> <p>I ended up taking a job that is basically entry-level lawyering and pretty well below my skill-set because it fits my needs in terms of schedule. It was a bit of a hit to my pride honestly to take a step back, and I'm a little apprehensive about where I can go from here (and if it will mean a lot more hours). But my schedule is great and I feel like I'm able to do what is needed at work and do what is needed at home because I specifically set out out to find a job that didn't require more than I was willing to give. </p> <p>And honestly I'm pretty happy right now with my work situation. Other than being unsure where it is heading, it's great. Because I came in over-qualified I was able to be very honest about my priorities/family focus as early as my first interview and my employer has been fantastic about letting me do what works for my family. I really like my coworkers and it is nice to be among working adults again anyways. So for now, I guess I have balance. But it was definitely through a lot of effort. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/life-priorities#post-2516075 Tue, 05 Apr 2016 12:57:36 +0000 hb3233 2516075@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Another thread about working and parenting made me think of these issues more broadly..I recently read this great (long) article on how not to let work explode your life: <a href="http://www.thebookoflife.org/how-not-to-let-work-explode-your-life/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thebookoflife.org/how-not-to-let-work-explode-your-life/</a> In a nutshell, it talks about how in historical perspective, work is (much) more demanding in terms of hours required than it's typically been in the past, the notion of what makes a good relationship with your spouse is more demanding than it's ever been, housework is also more demanding for many people (it used to be that most people either had/shared a maid or were a maid - this is still true in lower wage countries today but not US and Europe - but maids have yet to be fully replaced by housekeeping robots), and parenting is more demanding than it's ever been. Time use data shows that full-time working moms today spend more time parenting than stay-at-home moms did in the 1960s. It used to be that we thought adults spending too much time with kids would spoil them, and so kids spent most of their time at home doing unstructured play with neighborhood kids, without a huge amount of adult supervision. In contrast, women in the 1960s spent a lot more time sleeping and socializing with their friends. The model of parenting today is very different, and I'm sure with many advantages. But there's no more hours in the day, and just about every aspect of our lives is demanding more time and attention. </p> <p>Granted, no way do I want to live in 14th century England, there may have been a lot of leisure time, but dying of the bubonic plague, no thanks. But still, we're making demands of ourselves at a historically unprecedented rate - and sometimes I wonder if there's a better path. I have a very intense - but somewhat flexible - job and have been working hard for years to be at a point where I can fit kids into the mix. Finally getting there, or at least I'm out of time to work on it more, and I think it will be worth it, but the balancing act is going to be kind of crazy. I think it would take a pretty radical change in thinking to leave my industry, as I like it in general, but I still feel like it's worth always being open to finding a better path. Mostly, I really don't want to spend my life feeling like I'm not good at anything because I can't live up to the idealized versions of being a good producer, a good mom, a good wife, a good homemaker that our culture promotes, which tend to emphasize devoting 100% to a single thing...</p> <p>Sometimes I wonder if there's more to be done thinking outside the box - and outside the modern American cultural mentality - about how to use our time and live a meaningful life while still managing to put food on the table. So many questions come to mind... Did you make major career changes, major changes in your parenting style, or in other aspects of your life, etc to find a balance that worked for you? Or are you just embracing the craziness and trying to enjoy the ride? How long have you just endured through a tough situation before taking a leap to make major changes? What prevents you from making changes? What's the most radical change you've ever considered? Sorry, big questions, I know... </p>