my partner's evening calls keep landing on the baby's bedtime

teal_violin_20561 Oct 2026

baby's 9 months. our nanny leaves at 6.30, which was fine when the evenings were ours. now my partner has client calls three evenings a week, 7 to 9-ish, and they move around depending on who's travelling on the other side. so bath, feed, settle, all of it ends up with me on those nights, plus whatever reports i've brought home. i don't mind doing it. i mind that it's decided by whoever's calendar fills first. how do people split this so it isn't just 'whoever's free'

1 comment

ivory_pigeon_2781 Oct 2026
Opposite timing in our house. My calls are early, 6.30 am with a team abroad. What stuck for us: each of us owns specific bedtime nights, written on the fridge. If a call lands on your night, you swap a night with the other person, you don't just drop it. Mornings are mine by default since I'm up anyway. It felt very formal at first. It also ended the 'I thought you were doing it' arguments.
- maple_diary_40201 Oct 2026
  We have a four-month-old and my calls cross time zones too, so this is close to home. The swap rule sounds fair on paper. Our difficulty is that my calls get moved with a few hours' notice, which makes a pre-agreed swap hard to honour. What do you do when the call moves on the day itself?
- teal_violin_20561 Oct 2026
  Replying to @maple_diary_4020
  that's exactly ours. the calls move on the same day. i think the swap still helps though, even if it gets paid back a day later. right now nothing gets paid back at all
- teal_violin_20561 Oct 2026
  Replying to @maple_diary_4020
  talked it through tonight. partner's blocking tuesday and thursday evenings as no calls before 8.30, and those two bedtimes are fully theirs. the other nights stay messy. not perfect, but at least it's written down somewhere other than my head