Accepting that my needs come second and just generally trying to make things smooth for my son has made our relationship so much better.
I used to think that I would be able to get an hour or two of work done when he was asleep,but the result was never good. I was stressed out after my third month of paternity leave. For the remaining months (we get 195 days to use as we please at 80% pay in Sweden) I just called down and learned to be happy with my day if we managed to
1. Walk the dog for at least one 1-2hr walk
2. Have some kind of social inreraction with grown-ups.
I now just sleep/relax whenever he's sleeping. Good days he sleeps a good 3hr mid day, and those days I try to get things done, but depending on how the night was sometimes I just do 3hr of relaxing and doing things that I know are good for me.
We get 195 days/parent at 80% pay (my union has however negotiated an extra 10% if I take most of those days consecutive during the first two years after the child was born).
Then we get an extra 45 days/parent with something like 100-150 SEK/day.
Until this year there was an extra bonus when the parental leave was shared equally between parents, so we got an extra 15k SEK (~$2k).
I used to think that I would be able to get an hour or two of work done when he was asleep,but the result was never good. I was stressed out after my third month of paternity leave. For the remaining months (we get 195 days to use as we please at 80% pay in Sweden) I just called down and learned to be happy with my day if we managed to
1. Walk the dog for at least one 1-2hr walk
2. Have some kind of social inreraction with grown-ups.
I now just sleep/relax whenever he's sleeping. Good days he sleeps a good 3hr mid day, and those days I try to get things done, but depending on how the night was sometimes I just do 3hr of relaxing and doing things that I know are good for me.