My partner's half-yearly correction pile and my delivery deadline landed in the same fortnight

breezy_veranda_197925 Sept 2026

My partner teaches the senior classes and the half-yearly answer scripts have come home. Four sections' worth, stacked on the dining table, due back in ten days. I have a delivery milestone at the end of the same stretch, and that isn't moving either. My mother-in-law lives with us and is a huge help during the day, but bedtime with our daughter has always been the two of us taking turns. Now she wants both of us, every night, and gets upset when one of us is 'working at the table'. How do you get through the weeks when both parents' crunch lands together? We're trying two-hour evening blocks each. It's day three and already wobbling.

1 comment

peach_rain_592026 Sept 2026
Quarter-end is my crunch every year, and our daughter is still a baby, so take this for what it's worth. What helped us was deciding the night before who is 'on' for the evening, instead of negotiating it at 7 pm. The one who's off goes to another room with the laptop, and the one who's on doesn't call them back for anything short of an emergency. A clean handover, like at work. Working at the table in full view of a preschooler might be a bigger problem than the hours.