My husband is my hero because I rarely changed an overnight diaper that first year. Had to get up to feed/pump, sure. But when the crying wasn't due to hunger...
In fact, we ended up with me being in charge of "input" and him being in charge of "output". As in, I make the overall nutrition decisions, and when he became really worried about the chemical smell of disposable diapers, I did a little shopping to find ones we both could live with (he rejected the idea of cloth diapers), since I agreed the chemical smell probably indicated the presence of stuff our kid was better off not having in contact with his body 24/7, but wasn't as wound up about it as he was. He's also taking the lead on potty training, while I'm the one who's handling most of the execution of that because I'm the one on a part-time work schedule.
In that vein, when one parent cares about something VERY much, and the other kind of cares but not deeply, we've found it best to let the one who cares more have their way... as long as they're willing to do the extra work.
It also really, really helped that he was able to take a month off after our baby was born, and then the first month I was back at work after a year of maternity leave and our kid was starting daycare. This is available to all regular employees in Germany - 14 months of parental leave per child, to be split with at least 2 months to each parent, overlap allowed.
If you can at all swing it, time off that first month is critical if there's not a close relative or friend who will be living with you.
I make 120k and I could only afford my wife not being at work for 2 months. I don't live in a HCOL area. Nearly everyone I know that makes a household income of around 100k right now struggles, and that is with mortgage payments closer to the 1000k mark than my closer to 2000k mark. I'm in my 30's and just bought a home recently, like many my age.
We had to budget hard, food cost in general is high. Add a baby to that, it really hit home. Wife pumped, and it helped offset cost in the first few months. But luckily Wife was able to get back to work in only two months time. I would have loved 6-12 months for her to be at home. But America sucks, and I would need to pretty much make 180k to justify it.
My husband makes about what you do, but I was still pulling in 2k a month on maternity leave: 1800 in Elternzeit (parental leave) pay, plus 200 in Kindergeld (child benefit), so we were fine. We also only had one paid-off, liability-only insured old car and our rather moderate mortgage to contend with.
To be fair, Germany got an awful lot of income tax out of me the ten years previous that I might have otherwise saved and invested, but I’m ok with this - this system means that long maternity leaves are expected and more easily accommodated, and two months of paternal leave is considered doing your minimal fatherly duty.
I will add that our kid is in 500 EUR/mo daycare, even with parents pulling down 1.5 engineering/IT salaries.
The 0.5 is the 20 hour work week my employer was obliged to let me choose during the first 3 years of my kid’s life. After that, I can convert my contract permanently to part-time, or go back to full-time. They can choose to be more flexible, but that’s their minimum obligation. None of my female friends back home in the States has managed to stay in a technically/professionally-demanding job only part-time after kids: they either drop out of paid employment entirely, do something they’re overqualified for part-time, or deal with 40+ hour workweeks to keep doing what they’re good at.
In fact, we ended up with me being in charge of "input" and him being in charge of "output". As in, I make the overall nutrition decisions, and when he became really worried about the chemical smell of disposable diapers, I did a little shopping to find ones we both could live with (he rejected the idea of cloth diapers), since I agreed the chemical smell probably indicated the presence of stuff our kid was better off not having in contact with his body 24/7, but wasn't as wound up about it as he was. He's also taking the lead on potty training, while I'm the one who's handling most of the execution of that because I'm the one on a part-time work schedule.
In that vein, when one parent cares about something VERY much, and the other kind of cares but not deeply, we've found it best to let the one who cares more have their way... as long as they're willing to do the extra work.
It also really, really helped that he was able to take a month off after our baby was born, and then the first month I was back at work after a year of maternity leave and our kid was starting daycare. This is available to all regular employees in Germany - 14 months of parental leave per child, to be split with at least 2 months to each parent, overlap allowed.
If you can at all swing it, time off that first month is critical if there's not a close relative or friend who will be living with you.