Enter Through The Bin Room

Reflections on my first two months as primary caregiver for our eight month old daughter, Saoirse.

The details aren’t important and I won’t go through them here, these are just some things I’ve dealt with in my working years:

Power’s out to the hospital, it’s 50ºC outside, the 30yo gene has also upped and died;

This thirteen person workshop isn’t doing what it could, carve it down to 5 and tell us all is good;

Partner living over east the borders are shut down, stay and build this hospital in a western desert town.

This is just a sample for there’s really quite a lot, suffice to say it’s been a slog but easily forgot.

“Why is this in sing song” I can hear you ask yourself? Maybe because nightly this is how we soothe ourselves.

Every evening hour when the clock has barely moved, baby is awake and screaming where is my next boob?

Daddy is my caregiver yes he’s the one on deck, but mummy gives me nourishment – parents what the heck?

I can’t go on in sing song because there’s really lots to tell, let’s go back to writing so out clearly I can spell:

Being a Primary Caregiver is The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done.

Being a primary caregiver is, without a doubt, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I say that as someone who’s had a fair share of stressful jobs and crisis situations in my career. Yet nothing compares to the relentless, 24/7 responsibility of keeping a tiny human alive and happy. As a dad, I recognise I have some advantages: I was never pregnant, I didn’t have to give birth, my body hasn’t gone through a major metamorphosis (see matrescence, the profound transition into motherhood) or recovering from severe physical trauma. Society also doesn’t treat me as “lesser” or ignore my pain just because I became a parent – sadly, women can’t say the same. Women’s pain is often minimised or dismissed by healthcare providers, a fact glaringly illustrated by the recent Retrievals scandal where dozens of women’s cries of pain in a fertility clinic were ignored to disastrous effect. In short, mothers face all the challenges I do plus a whole lot more – and too often, they face it without adequate support.

Is it any wonder, then, that birth rates are falling across the western world? So when politicians like our Treasurer Jim Chalmers (and other proponents of Western economic growth) lament that we need more babies to fuel the economy, I am frankly confounded. Chalmers recently urged Australians to have more children, saying “it’d be better if birth rates were higher” to sustain our ageing capitalist economy. Yet in the same breath, governments slash funding for support programs (bleeding initiatives like the NDIS dry) and push privatisation in healthcare and childcare. They bemoan a future of too few young workers, but ignore the ever-growing burden of unpaid labor on women that is contributing to the very baby bust they fear. You can’t have it both ways: If society wants people to raise more kids, society needs to make raising kids more feasible. Right now, it’s often a lose-lose proposition, especially for mothers.

Breastfeeding: Benefits vs Logistics

One area where the disconnect between rhetoric and reality becomes clear is feeding. We know from volumes of research that when possible, breastfeeding has immense benefits for babies’ health and development. Breast milk provides ideal nutrition and bolsters an infant’s immune system, reducing the risk of infections and even lowering long-term risks of obesity and diabetes, while also aiding cognitive development . These are huge preventive healthcare wins for society. Naturally, we wanted our daughter to get those benefits if we could manage it. Eight months in, Saoirse is still exclusively breastfed – something we’re grateful to be able to do. But let me tell you, it comes with serious challenges in a society that doesn’t truly accommodate it.

My partner had to return to work so we can afford to live in a city with good opportunities (and critical healthcare) for our daughter. Her work, as with many, would overwhelmingly prefer her to work from the office; a generous (in our current climate) offer is to work from the city one day a week. I’m lucky to have six months of government-subsidised parental leave (thank you, enlightened policy!) and during this time I’m the primary caregiver at home. But because our baby needs to nurse every 2–3 hours, we’ve had to get creative. One day a week, we all trek into the city together so that every few hours I can bring Saoirse in to her mum’s office for a 15-minute feed (much to the chagrin of building security), then scoot away again so my partner can continue working. It’s a crazy juggling act of schedules and commutes – all for 45minutes of feeding! We do it because it’s best for our baby, but it underscores how inflexible our work culture is for nursing mothers.

People ask, “Why doesn’t she just pump and bottle-feed? That’s what pumps are for!” Well, let’s compare the options:

 • Direct breastfeeding: It takes Saoirse about 15 minutes to drain two boobs and fill her tum, keeping her satiated for ~3 hours. Three feeds would total ~45 minutes of actual feeding time in a work-day;

 • Pumping and bottle-feeding: Using a double breast pump also takes ~15 minutes to collect roughly one feed’s worth of milk (to last ~3 hours). Then every pump session the milk needs decanting and pump parts need to be washed (~10 minutes each time). After bringing everything home, the kit must be thoroughly washed and sterilised (~5 minutes plus a 35-minute steriliser cycle). If we aim for three equivalent feeds via pumping, that’s ~45 minutes of pumping plus around 70 minutes of washing/sterilising gear. In total, we’d spend roughly two hours on pump-related activity in a work day. Oh, and I still have to defrost milk and bottle feed Saoirse, an infamously simple task.

That’s nearly two extra hours every single day to “just pump.” Two hours that could be used for productive work instead. In our case, it’s simply not worth the additional stress and exhaustion on top of an already maxed-out schedule to pump and magically transport cold milk. So yes, we choose to stick with direct breastfeeding whenever possible, but the trade-off is the logistical nightmare of hauling a baby back and forth to mum’s workplace or otherwise structuring our entire day around feeding availability.

And let’s talk about another reality: if we didn’t juggle things this way, our other option would be to use daycare so that my partner could breastfeed only mornings and nights (and pump). But daycare for an infant in a major city is in the order of $150–$200 per day (before subsidies but excluding nappies and food). Aside from the expense, sending a young baby to daycare comes with the virtual guarantee of frequent colds, fevers, and other contagious bugs cycling through your household. Every parent I know jokes that daycare is a petri dish and it’s true. Infants in group care catch everything, which means parents miss work to care for sick kids, which ironically kills the productivity that policymakers are always harping on about. In other words, the system sets you up to fail: if you keep the baby home to protect their health and ensure exclusive breastfeeding, one parent can’t work full time. If you put the baby in daycare so both parents can work, you pay a fortune and still end up missing work when the child inevitably gets sick. It feels like a no-win scenario.

Cities Aren’t Built for Babies (or Those Who Push Prams)

One of the most eye-opening parts of being a full-time parent (and one I’ve been blind to, even while working a career in social infrastructure) has been simply leaving the house with a baby. If you’ve ever tried to navigate a crowded city street or public facility with a pram, you know the struggle. It honestly blows my mind how poorly our public spaces accommodate parents with infants. Here’s a historical perspective that I’ve queried recently: the first baby carriage (“pram”) was invented in 1733 and significantly improved in 1889, yet it wasn’t until 1992 that Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) mandated accessible infrastructure like ramps and lifts in public premises . That’s nearly 260 years in between. In other words, for centuries,  society expected women to push babies around in prams, but nobody thought to design cities to make that task even remotely convenient. Only when disability advocates fought for accessibility did changes like ramps and elevators become standard and incidentally benefit those pushing prams. In a World built by my counterparts (#men) it’s a telling reflection of our priorities (or lack thereof).

Even today, navigating the city with a pram feels like an obstacle course. Here’s what a typical outing entails:

 • “Yes, you can access our building… just go around the block, down the side alley past the bins, and look for the ‘goods lift’. If you’re lucky, a staff member will let you in through the back ramp. Welcome! That’ll be $18.50 for a ham-and-cheese sandwich. Oh, no, we don’t have a public restroom or baby change facility.”;

 • “The parents’ room? Oh, that’s been shut permanently due to vandalism. It was also doubling as a shelter for homeless in winter…Since there’s no funding to actually help the homeless, management decided it was easier to just lock the parents’ room indefinitely.”;

 • This elevator was flagged as “low use” on our automated asset management system and so has been left ‘out of order’ to more efficiently allocate maintenance funding to high utility assets. “We Apologise For Any Inconvenience”; and

 • “Excuse me, sorry, sorry excuse me, yeah I need to use the ramp thank you; hi sorry not sure if you saw me, can you please not smoke next to us?”

In a nutshell, doing anything in the city with a baby is a test of patience and endurance. You plan outings like an orienteer, accounting for which train stations have lifts, which cafés might have space for a pram, and how long you can be out before the next feeding or naptime meltdown. By the end of the day, you haven’t just run errands – you’ve run a gauntlet. And let’s remember: my body hasn’t even been through pregnancy or childbirth, as my partner’s has. I’m dealing with the city’s challenges from a relatively privileged standpoint, I’m a 6foot white man for Christ’s sake the place was built for me. Which brings me to the next point…

The Physical and Emotional Toll (a.k.a. Why I’m Exhausted)\

Caring for an infant full-time is physically demanding in ways I didn’t fully appreciate until I lived it. I’m in decent shape, but my 8-month-old is already ~9kg of squirming, growing human. Lifting that weight repeatedly – out of a low crib, into a car seat, onto a changing table, into a high chair – can wreck even a strong adult’s back and arms. Just the other week I woke up with a nasty bruise along my bicep. Puzzling, until I realised I’d likely strained it rocking Saoirse back to sleep in the middle of the night. Why was I overusing my bicep? Because my shoulders and triceps were shot from hauling that “deadweight” baby up from a knee-height cot 8 times a night. Could the cot be more ergonomic, higher off the ground? Not really, because safe-sleep guidelines (to prevent SIDS) mean the mattress has to be low once babies can stand, and drop-down sides on cribs have been deemed unsafe. So you bend, and lift, and bend, and lift – ad infinitum.

People suggest, “Why don’t you exercise or do Pilates during the baby’s naps? You’re not working, after all.” I have to laugh. Being a primary caregiver is constant work, it’s just unpaid and done in torn old blacksmithing shirts. My “primary function” each day is simple in theory: keep this tiny human alive and well. In practice my JDF looks something like: scheduling and attending regular health checkups, teaching how to eat solids, socialising with other baby’s (thanks mum’s group for welcoming me), naps which involve pram walks, house chores that can be completed wearing a baby carrier, book buddies, story time, singing to sooth (see intro), changing nappies, endless washing of reusable nappies so I’m not overwhelmed with the guilt of passing Saoirse a planet on fire... Oh and reading, I’ve never felt so uneducated on such a high risk assignment before (Ever had a Tamagotchi? Remember how often it “died” before you threw it in a drawer and forgot about it until just now? Imagine that, but it’s a real baby and failure is not an option.) If I manage to accomplish anything beyond those basics – like cooking a meal, emptying the gutters, making it through my stretching routine, or god forbid having a moment to myself – it feels like a major victory.

And the sleep. This is one aspect I haven’t articulated well but let me emphasise it now: I am exhausted, and I’m dumb. Bone-tired in a way I’ve never experienced before. Not only is it the cumulative effect of disrupted nights, but even when Saoirse does sleep, I find myself half-awake, ears pricked for the slightest rustle or baby cough, ready to spring into action because soothing early is quicker than de-escalating a nuclear meltdown. Every parent of an infant knows this hyper-vigilant state – part of you is always listening to make sure the baby is still breathing safely in their cot. (The spectre of SIDS looms in every dark corner of the room, making it hard to ever truly sleep deeply.)

Saoirse has something called Diastasis Recti, essentially her six pack isn’t joined down the middle, a common issue. She also has an intolerance to dairy milk and soy proteins, also a common ailment. The abdomen issue alone causes havoc for her in that she struggles to pass wind but the combined effect is a baby full of wind that is in pain lying on her back or on her stomach; until 7mo she couldn’t roll from front to back either - so side sleeping was out of the question (SIDS strikes again) even though it was one position she was comfortable in and could fart freely.

So here we are. We have a society that urges people to have more children for the sake of the future economy, yet offers fragmented support and seemingly shrugs at the personal toll exacted on those who oblige. Governments celebrate babies in rhetoric but don’t ensure affordable childcare, workplace flexibility, or robust parental leave beyond a few weeks or months - and dare I mention housing affordability? No. A telling stat: only 3% of large organisations in Australia provide on-site childcare for employees; 68% offer no childcare support at all ( ). (So much for “family-friendly” workplaces.) The result? Couples are rightly asking themselves, “How can we possibly afford a child financially, physically, or emotionally in this environment?” Many are concluding that they can’t, they stop at one when they might have wanted more, or they move somewhere not WEIRD and fall back on hundreds of thousands of years of societal child rearing norms (see Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff)

Being Saoirse’s dad is the most rewarding and love-filled role I’ve ever had, but it’s also exposed the cracks in how our society is structured. We need to talk about this. We need to acknowledge that raising the next generation is real work – hard work – and given the literal need for it and the future potential economic gains, it deserves real support. That means parental leave policies that actually cover the first year of life for both parents. That means childcare systems that don’t bankrupt families (and maybe even workplaces and cities designed to accommodate human needs, not just corporate efficiency). It means valuing the health and sanity of primary caregivers (mums and dads alike) as a matter of public interest – because it is. The experience of being a full-time caregiver has humbled me. It’s made me admire single parents (like my mum ❤️) and all mothers even more. And it stoked a fire in me to speak up about how we can do better.

It’s taken five days to write this while struggling to justify to myself (and my partner) if it’s time well spent. I could have washed some bottles, caught up on a podcast reminding me of what I’m doing wrong, finished my parenting infographic for the fridge, or finished a much needed Pilates routine. Maybe this was a waste of my time, but maybe another parent who’s worse off (and there’s a lot of them) can send this on and say “don’t talk to me until you’ve read this”. This is the life of a primary caregiver. It’s exhausting, it’s under-appreciated, and at times it’s frustrating when I see how little our systems adjust to make it any easier. Sure, when my daughter looks up at me and gives that tiny toothless grin – when she leans forward and gnaws my gangly oversized nose – all of it feels worth it. I just wish our society valued that moment, and the hundreds of mundane tasks leading up to it, enough to truly help every parent get through the day and the night.

In summary: 

Western nations can’t expect people to answer the call for more babies while ignoring the realities of raising them. If we want thriving families and future generations, we must create an environment that makes child-rearing less punishing and more sustainable. Until then, new parents will continue doing the impossible, one sleepless night at a time – and many will quietly decide that one child is challenge enough. Let’s fix this, so that choosing to raise a family doesn’t have to feel like an act of heroic endurance, but simply the joyful, shared journey it’s meant to be.