Day in the Life of a SAHM in Sydney, Australia

Guest Post by Rebecca Sharley

Today we’re featuring a guest piece from Rebecca (Beccy) Sharley, a freelance writer and mom of a toddler in the land down under!

Beccy’s cat, Siri, at home

I am the mum of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, (E) a wife to a full time PhD student (L) and a freelance writer/editor. My daughter is in childcare two days a week, but otherwise I spend my time caring for her in between other things. We live in Sydney, Australia (we relocated here from elsewhere in Australia for my husband’s PhD). Because my husband is doing a PhD in theology at a Bible college, we live in college housing, two minutes from campus, in a street where all our neighbours are students or staff of this particular college. A lot of our life revolves around the college community, which is a blessing mostly. But this context is important for understanding a lot of my life in this current season!

5am - E wakes up and knocks on our door. We’ve been trying to teach her to stay in her room playing until 6am (with varying success). My husband gets up and redirects her a few times before giving up at 5.45am and getting up to take her downstairs. We are working on toilet training, so the first thing he does is put her on the toilet.

6am - I check my notifications and emails, then get up, put together clothes for both myself and E for the day, and head downstairs for breakfast and coffee. We let our toddler have some screen time each morning on an old, cracked tablet I used to use in the classroom when I was a teacher (we don’t own a TV at the moment). It’s the only way everyone gets fed and caffeinated without drama.

7am – After breakfast, we somehow get everyone through the shower (I am requested to sing ‘the duck song’ while my daughter acts out the drama of little ducks being lost and then found with her bath toys), and then with a lot of negotiation I get my daughter dressed and her hair done. She requests ‘twin tails’ (pigtails) and wants to look at photos of herself as a baby while I do this.

8am - We say goodbye to L, who heads off to start work across the road at college. E and I bob around at home, her playing with various toy animals, me packing her lunchbox and bag. I make and drink a second coffee while reading some stories to E, then we feed the cats (we have two cats). I attempt to do some washing up (E ‘helps’) before it’s time to leave the house.

9.30 – I drop E off at our childcare co-op in the college playground and head to Bible study. As part of the college community, a co-op of mums have started a rotating Friday morning childcare and Bible study system. My group had been on childcare for the first two weeks, so this is the first week of the year I get to go to study.

11.30 – Having enjoyed a peaceful two hours reading some Psalms and praying with other women, I return to the playground to pick up E, plus a bonus child. My friend is off getting a scan for her second pregnancy, so I take E and my friend’s little boy back to my house to play.

12.30 - My friend returns and shares the delightful news that everything is progressing well. My daughter, who has been having an amazing time with her friend, promptly has a meltdown when it is time for him to go and her to have lunch and get ready for a nap.

1pm – E has requested noodles for lunch. She is not patient while they cook. She eats about half the bowl before encountering some frustrations with her fork and deciding the best solution is to flip the entire bowl. Now she is upset about the rest of her noodles being on the floor. I give her a yoghurt pouch to calm her down and fill the rest of her tummy.

1.30 – Upstairs to her room for a nap. There is some screaming and protesting (including repeatedly asking for Daddy) but she is pretty tired, so she falls asleep eventually.

1pm - I eat my lunch (leftover lasagne reheated from the freezer) and make the foolish decision to catch up on the horrifying news on my phone, rather than what this time is meant to be for, reading historical fiction (currently The Pearl Thief by Fiona McIntosh) from the library. I used to try and do chores during my daughter’s nap, but we’ve reached the stage now where I can do things like washing up and laundry with her in tow, whereas rest and book reading are impossible when she is around, so I prioritize. I also send some emails and let E’s childcare know about upcoming holiday dates. I’ve also been sent the files for an editing job I will be doing next week, and I have a quick look to see what state the manuscript is in. It’s similar to a lot of the work I do, where the person writing it is an expert in their field and has lots of knowledge to share, but needs the help of a writer to communicate it clearly and well. It’s going to take me slightly longer than I anticipated, but as I charge by the hour for my editing freelance work I will still get paid fairly.

2.30 – We have to get to a GP (general practitioner - in Australia this kind of doctor is a one stop shop for basically all medical things) appointment for an ongoing, mild issue my daughter is having, so I bundle her into her pram still half asleep with her pacifier and a blanket and get the bus two suburbs over to my fantastic GP. She listens to my concerns, we come up with a new treatment plan, and she renews some medication prescriptions for me, which is one of the benefits of sharing a doctor with my toddler! We stop by the pharmacy to fill these scripts and then get the bus back to our place. E is not fully awake really until about halfway through the appointment. But she gets stickers from the GP so she is satisfied.

3.30 – E wants to go to the playground, so off we go. She spends a lot of her waking hours when it isn’t raining in this playground, and because it’s shared with our college community, there are usually friends around! She finds some little friends, I half chat with other parents and half make sure my daughter isn’t causing herself or anyone else issues. E has been playing in this playground since she was eight months old, so she is very confident with the play equipment. But being two and a half, she is still navigating all the nuances of playing with other children. We’re working on being gentle and kind with those younger than her, and also on using her words if she needs a break from someone (she is getting pretty good at yelling ‘space please!’ when necessary).

4.15pm - My husband texts that his afternoon meeting has finished and then comes and joins us in the playground. He offers to take over so I can have a break before a solo bedtime, so I head home to bring in the washing before it rains and then lie on the couch for 45 minutes.

5.30 – L and E come home from the playground. Part of my husband’s PhD involves Latin zoom classes that are based in Europe and therefore at weird times. L says goodnight to E and heads back to college for his Latin class.

6pm – E and I eat dinner mostly together (it’s leftover green tofu curry and rice from the slow cooker I did yesterday – E picks out and eats the tofu and rice, ignoring the vegetables). She struggles to stay still while eating, so we change locations from the kitchen to the living room and back to the kitchen again, but eventually have both consumed our dinners.

6.30 - We do showers in the morning, but sometimes E will also have a bath at night as well, but she hasn’t asked for one tonight and I don’t have the energy to offer, so I get her to sit on the toilet and we brush her teeth. We head upstairs for some playtime and wind down (I play some calm music in a hope to prepare her for bedtime). She sets out a blanket as a picnic rug and instructs me on where all her animal friends should sit. She ‘makes tea’ and it’s pretty cute, even if she is bossing me around about what food goes on which plates.

7pm – I negotiate E into pyjamas and then we look at her prayer folder full of pictures of people we pray for and things we pray about. She tells me she wants to thank God for her friend coming over, and also dinosaurs. Very fair. I put her to bed.

7.30 – I thought she was asleep but now she is knocking on the door telling me she needs the toilet. We trudge downstairs, put her on the toilet and I sing nursery rhymes while she does what she needs to do. As we are cleaning up from the only mostly successful toilet trip, my husband gets home and takes over. I make a cup of tea and take it to drink upstairs while he makes a second attempt at bedtime.

8.30 – Okay, she is actually asleep now. L and I talk a bit about various things, I update him on the new plan from the GP, and we make a plan for Saturday (I have a different editing job due before the next one starts, so he will take E for the morning while I finish it). I listen to a history video (“Reading the Past with Dr Kat” tonight) and play some games on my phone while a cat comes to sit on my pillow and purr extremely loudly, before I eventually go to sleep later than I should.

The flexibility of my work (and to some extent my husband’s work) is a huge blessing and challenge at this stage of life. It’s so necessary, as you never know when a virus will hit and suddenly you have a toddler home sick from childcare, but it also kind of means I am always working and always not working. I snatch time for edits and emails in nap times or half an hour pockets in the evening when my husband is home. Most weeks I get two days of concentrated work time while E is at childcare, and for that time I am incredibly grateful.

But it does feel a little bit I am always weighing up priorities and making sacrifices - do I stay at the playground for an hour and enjoy chatting with friends and catching up with my husband while she plays, or do I do an hour of work, an hour of cleaning or that most coveted prize of all - an hour of relaxation time to myself? Whatever I choose to do, there will be a cost for it somewhere else, and I’ll always kind of feel like I am missing out on what I am choosing not to do. Again, I am so glad I am able to do work I enjoy to help support my family and still get so much time with my toddler or have the choice to do other things - a lot of working mums would love to get to go to a weekly Bible study on a mid-week morning with childcare provided. But it’s all a balancing act, and sometimes I wobble. I don’t really know yet how life might change once my husband finishes his PhD (hopefully at the end of 2027), or when E starts school, but this is what my life looks like for now, and so I’m trying to soak up the good and not get too caught up in the bad. Both will pass, all too quickly.

Rebecca (Beccy) Sharley is a freelance writer and editor at Rebecca Sharley Writes, who also writes her own substack at Searching for Grace. She lives with her husband, her daughter and too many cats in Sydney, Australia.

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