[Devora]

While I never had second thoughts about our decision to adopt when we did, I do understand your concerns about not having time with your husband. My husband and I are both professors and we have scheduled our classes so that one of us is always home with our son (see one exception below). While this is great for our son (and financially saves us a lot in child care), it does present challenges for us as a couple. Here are some things we've done to make it work for our relationship as well as for parenting:

* We have a standing Saturday night babysitter. So every week we go out and do something together. It doesn't have to be dinner -- sometimes we run errands together, sometimes we browse in a bookstore, when it's warmer I imagine we might go for late evening bike rides or walks.

* We make sure that when my husband comes home from teaching evening classes that we take some time to sit down and talk. If we've both eaten supper already (on his late nights when he gets home at 9pm) we might sit and have a cup of tea or a bit of dessert together -- anything to make us sit down and have focused time together so it's not just "How was your day? Fine. Yours? Good. [watch news / go to bed]"

* I often delay my supper so that on my husband's earlier evenings we do eat together. When I feed our son I have some fruit or toast with him so that he's not eating alone. Then I have a late meal with my husband when he gets home.

* We are having a babysitter now for 6 hours on Mondays. This lets both of us get some extra work done at the office so that we're not constantly working when at home. We had noticed that it was like we weren't home together even when we were because one of us would be with our son while the other would be holed up in their office working.

* Every weekend we set aside clear family time to play, go out somewhere, go to a museum, etc.

I hope this helps. It really is so important that you have time together as a couple and as a family. They're both important.

Best wishes,
Stephanie