in

October 2025 Babies 🇬🇧

Am I being mean?

My little one is due to start her settling in to nursery and starting almost full time (4 days a week) next week.

However I'm also not back at work straight away and whenever I've told people that they've been surprised and said things about not spending more time with my child and how I could spend more time with her before doing that.

However I've got a few reasons why I'm doing it, hopefully you won't all think I'm a monster. I guess I feel like I need a little reassurance.

Firstly I love my little girl, but I've basically been solo parenting her. My husband does basically zero help, so no help with feeds, changing, playing, putting to sleep and this has been the case since day one. I'm lucky if he looks after her for 10 minutes while I make food, otherwise he just won't play with her if she's in the room with him, he'll sit on his phone or computer.

This has definitely taken its toll on me as she's almost 11 months. The killer being no help at bedtime and trying to settle a baby when completely sleep deprived.

So I would say I'm definitely touched out and struggling with giving my little one constant entertainment while also being so low on energy. It means I've been snappy and I really hate doing that 🥺

I don't deal with huge change that well so in the few weeks I have where she'll be at nursery it'll give me some time to get used to it while being quite emotional, and also a chance to try and batch make some more foods for her as I need to provide her lunch each day, while also sorting her breakfast and dinner.

Since having her I've gotten zero done in the house and to say I have lots of things waiting for me is an understatement. I'll get a chance to do these things and try to ensure the overwhelm of all this won't get to the same level.

Oh I'm also the first person in my family to put my child into child care which I think I'm also being judged for, which makes me worry that I'm not raising her.

I've been told sometimes settling in can take some time and I may need to pick her up, so being available for this is a must.

I also work in an office in a high demand industry and worry that if I'm worrying about her all the time I won't get the work done I need and might loose my job.

And then lastly for us to qualify for free hours of childcare myself and husband need to be working and be working when the term starts so I needed to be back for that and my work were excited about me returning. But told me I need to use my holiday before returning.

Am I a monster? I've got so much going round in my head right now and I'm really fighting myself about it.

And to be honest I have put myself last for almost 11 months, this means all forms of even just basic frequent hygiene and even sitting to relax. I would like to be able to do these things again, or even have a tiny aspect of myself back to feel like I'm me again, as I completely lost myself back in October and haven't seen her since.