Hellobee Boards

The biggest thing for us was creating an after-work routine. We scheduled it around F's bedtime and it goes: play, start dinner/take the dog on a walk, feed F while making dinner dinner, give F a bath/wash pump parts & bottles, nurse F/clean up dinner prep stuff, get F to sleep/do household chores, eat dinner together & clean up together, take turns showering/watching TV/prepping bottles & lunches for the next day. If there's a / it's because we're both doing something.

Having F's stuff and our lunches made is a life saver in the mornings! We're also lucky that we both get home by 5pm.

I went back to work FT when my LO was 14.5 months. I was sooo worried about how to manage our routines but everything ran really smoothly off the bat. It helped that he was weaned and on whole milk by then (no bottles, pumping, etc. I just stocked up on cups so we weren't constantly washing them).

My biggest tip is to meal plan and buy meat/protein in bulk that you can freeze then defrost the night before. When I was on mat leave dinner was always a last-minute decision because I could easily run to the grocery store. Now, if I don't plan ahead we don't eat until after LO is in bed and it's usually take out :/.

Re: illnesses, we have only dealt with a constant runny nose and the occasional cough in the past 3.5 months. Our snotsucker is in constant use!