I feel like my life has gotten so mundane, boring, and frustrating – lacking any pleasure or interesting aspects, and I don’t know how to change or where to even start. I’ll explain…

My life before having a family was fun and spontaneous. I used to have a wide circle of friends, go out often, go to concerts and parties, travel a lot. I loved it! Then I met the love of my life, moved to the city he lives in (a French-speaking area), we got married, eventually wanted to start a family and bought a house in the suburbs. We had our first child (she’s almost 2 years old), and I’m currently pregnant with our second. I work in a stressful office job where we’re shortstaffed and I keep getting more and more work dumped on me, without any raise or promotion yet. However it pays the bills and the working conditions are okay.

What makes it really hard is that neither of us have any family around to help with our child. So other than daycare, the rest of the time it’s all on us. I feel like my child is a bit too young to leave her alone with a random babysitter – if anything bad were to happen, she’s too young to explain it to us. I haven’t had a vacation or any time alone with my husband since 2017. Before I had kids, I regularly did sports like cycling, swimming, horseriding/show jumping, scuba diving etc.  I’ve had to stop all of these since I first became pregnant due to health issues (but hoping to eventually start some of them again after our second baby is born)

My days usually look like this:

• 6:15am – wake up (my kid usually wakes up crying at this time anyway). Husband has already left for work at this time.
• Get kid dressed, teeth brushed, fed (this is always a struggle), myself dressed and ready for work
• 7:45 am – drop her off at daycare, and then head to work (1 hour – 1h 20 min commute)
• During work hours: squeeze in lunch between calls/meetings (no fixed time)
• Around 4:30pm – head back home (1 hour – 1h 20 min commute)
• Around 5:45pm – Arrive at home. Husband is already home with kid and is getting dinner started. Kid is super attached to me and as soon as I arrive, I don’t have a minute to myself (literally). Like she has a meltdown when I go pee.
• Dinner, 30 min of playtime, one of us (usually me or else she has a huge meltdown) gives kid a bath, then get her into pj’s, do storytime, tuck her into bed (other person is cleaning up the kitchen). She usually tries to postpone her bedtime so by the time I get to leave her room it’s around 8:30pm.
• By this time both my husband and I are dead tired and don’t have the energy to do much else than shower and crawl into bed. I might read a book or netflix a little bit before I pass out.

Then repeat again everyday. Everyday is pretty much exactly the same with little to no variation. Weekends also start at 6am because that’s when my kid wakes up) and they’re packed with basic housework and chores: groceries, laundry (it never ends!), cleaning, cooking, prepping for the week ahead, taking care of our child etc plus making time to actually play with her because I do want to spend time with her. The only moment where I get a tiny bit of time to myself is during her 1 hour nap (but to be honest, I end up napping too because I’m so tired).

So… I feel utterly exhausted and defeated, frustrated and bored. I need a break so so so badly. For the last several months I keep thinking that I hate my life, and that there must be more to life. I feel bad for even complaining about all of this, because I realise that there are other people who are much worse off. But I don’t know what to do or how to change anything. Open to any tips or advice!