New Mums - stay at home or back to work?

ellie27

My children (ages 3 and 4) are both at nursery 3 days per week and I work those 3 days per week. My eldest will be going to school next year.

I reduced to part time when I returned from my full year off maternity leave, 4 years ago now.

I was able to have a full year off maternity with both children and can work just 3 days per week as we are financially able to. It costs £1100 in nursery fees per month! I will look forward to when they are both at school! However I do not see myself returning to work full time - 3 days is enough!

FatVonD

I sold my house and bought a flat outright when my son was born so I could take 4 years off work while he was small.

Once he started school I went back to work full time and we moved house and with hindsight I wish I'd stayed in my paid for flat and just found a local job with school friendly hours.

I hate that I couldn't be there at the school gate waiting for him and to offer support when he was being bullied. I hate that I wasn't there to encourage his friendships by having his friends back to tea etc. You think that they will need you less as they grown older but they don't, they just need you in a different way.

If I were to ask him which he'd have preferred, me to be there more or a better standard of living now he'd say a better standard of living but I'm not so sure that would have been his choice at infant/junior school.

You will get lots of opinions from working mums who all think that what they chose was the right thing for them and maybe it was. What you won't get so much of is working mums who admit it was the wrong thing to do so just throwing my experience into the mix!

millysg1

As a scientist, numbers are my salvation for making tough decisions. Ive looked at how much I would bring home if I went down to 2, 3, 3.5, 4 and 5 days a week.

I feel at the moment that I really want to go back to work for a few days a week. Not just because of money and to have a standard of life that isn't a struggle every day.
I think no harm is done by a child being away from their parents for a day or two a week and given the chance to socialise with many other children. I don't want my children thinking only mummy and daddy can take care of them. Also, I feel like if I gave up work for the next 5 or so years, until all kids start school, then all that incredibly hard work going through uni and working at the same time to pay for it myself, and the years working hard to climb that ladder, would sort of feel like for nothing.

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millysg1

Finally, I don't want to "loose who I am". Sounds odd but that's what my SAH mum friends have said has happened to them a bit. they are just Mummy now and have lost some of their own personal desires and identity. One of my friends has just returned part time after a break for 3/4 years and even though it is tough, she has loved that adult, non mummy time. Is that really selfish? Only individually can people decide that, I think.
Main problem with deciding how many days I can go down to is that my husband owns and runs his own business for the last year. It has mostly been steady income with peaks and troughs but he takes home minimum wage monthly and then when enough profit is in the pot, we take out a lump sum out. That can be from every 3 months to every 6 months so (after only 1 years of books) I feel like I have to base my calculations on pessimistic numbers.
Ive worked out I could go down to 3.5 days and still pay the bills with his monthly income but Save zero money. Still got some more thinking but have a year to decide and have to agree it with my company also!

bll78

I/we tried really hard for our 1st baby( 3 miscarriages over 3 years) and so we planned to both have about a year off with our new arrival to enjoy her. However (and this is going to sound terrible) after a few months I felt bored, the baby slept constantly and I felt I'd enjoy the time off more when she was a little older. So I returned to work when she was just 3 months old (1 day a work, 2 days working from home) which to me gave the 3 of us a good balance and afforded us luxuries like a holiday. There's a 14 month gap between the 2 children so I only worked for 9 months before going on mat leave again. My fiancee returned to work Fulltime when the 2nd was born and I became SAHM with the 2 of them. I did enjoy it much more being able to attend playgroups, swimming etc... so I'd do it again, although I think people found me odd at the time.

Pidge_jen

I am having this dilemma even though I am not a mum yet! I'd love to stay at home but as the main breadwinner it will not be possible. I have plenty of access to free child care (courtesy of retired dad, dad in law, part time mum and part time mother in law who all live less than 20 minutes drive away who have all volunteered to do a day each - obviously id give them something towards it and an emergency fund so am very fortunate!) so there is no reason for me not to go back full time. We've talked about hubby dropping a day a week but his work are rigid and unlikely to let him - it's full time or nothing, and we can't afford to lose his wage as well.
For me to drop a day (ideal compromise and we could make it work) would mean me moving to a different team (doing the same role) as it is recognised my team needs a full time leader due to its size and huge geographical area, so would mean a lot of change at work, and would also mean taking on a troubled team, working in a deprived area, and would make my job a lot harder. I'm up for a challenge but dunno how id feel about it on sleepless nights!
Writing all this down it seems logical to go back full time. Just worried about guilt and lack of bonding

Trixsie1989

I'm having a think about this atm and I'm not due to go on maternity leave until end of march! Atm we both work for,the same company on shifts which are either 6-2pm 2-10pm or 10-6am and there's no flexibility in the times or anything so I'd either have to go back 2 days a week and work oh's days off to not have to pay for childcare or go back more than that and end up working completely opposite shifts to oh permanently or it's a case of looking for another job because we wouldn't be able to afford for me to,not go back at all. Such a hard decision to,have to make xxx

shell_girl

I was the main earner in our house and on paper it was ridiculous for me not to go back to work. I realised about eight months into my maternity leave that I would struggle with any option other than me caring full time for our little boy.

Luckily my partner agreed with me, so we embraced being poor and happy. We can just cover our bills etc and live simply and cheaply. I take our little one to around 3 or 4 free groups a week, and Christmas and birthday money goes on season tickets to attractions nearby so we always have somewhere to go.

I've never been poorer or happier. We are trying for another baby even though our house isn't (by usual standards) 'big enough'. We have two bedrooms and a converted attic for storage. We need storage as I've kept everything from baby one for baby two!

Some would say we're financially irresponsible, we have no savings and struggle when something major goes wrong with car/ washing machine etc. Our attitude to money is it's nice to have it, but it doesn't make us happy. It would be nice to not worry about bills and the price of food but it wouldn't make us any happier than we are.

Our way of life isn't for everyone, I know my career path is nothing like what it could have been, I'll be lucky to find work when the time comes. But I don't regret a second of the time I've spent with my amazing boy :-)

Gigglepig

For us the long term perspective was important. Not the salary vs. child care costs just there and then, but also longer term satisfaction, financial situation, pension etc. I would not be happy if I had to worry about fianances, and I know I would be worried on a tight budget and probably also a bit annoyed later on if i had to return to a more menial job after having struggled my way up the career ladder. More pain in the short term, but for my family i believe working will be a win for all of us in a long term.

It was also important what I would have to offer my family, not just financial security but so many more options later on. In the long run i would like to make my child proud, I also want to be a high achiever for my own sake, I want to be self sufficient and not rely on anyone else or benefits - and I would like to be able to pay for sports and activities, travels, and possibly higher education when they get older.

Nursery is hard at first, but in the longer run I believe the nursery has a lot to offer. They do all sorts of fun and educational activities, and I know I would not offer half of the activities for a toddler if I stayed at home.
If my baby had been timid or unwell I might have felt differently. And also if they were younger - i felt we already had a strong foundation after a year on leave. In order to feel comfortable about leaving the baby with others during the day we spent unusually long settling into nursery part time before the baby went full time.

My focus has been on what I can change and do in order to look after my baby and work at the same time. i don't have a cleaner but it would have been nice. Slow cooker meals, buy nothing that needs dry clean or ironing... In an ideal world I would have worked different jours, but as it is I try to leave promptly and put in overtime after the baby is in bed. And considering moving jobs/house to have no commute - but this hasn't been sorted yet.

It is all about priorities, and I feel I can manage the baby and the job - but not much else. For a long while spent no time on hobbies or friends, but I am slowly trying to fit it back in.

notanewuser

One other thing to consider is how things will work when they're a bit older. I didn't return to my job after having DD, choosing instead to form a consultancy company with my husband. I work as and when I want to really.

DD turned 4 2 months ago, and started full time school (nursery class) in September. Apart from hand foot and mouth when she was 2 she's never caught much more than the odd cold. She's had most of the past 5 weeks off due to different illnesses. She was banned from school for a week with scarlet fever, and again for 48 hours with a sickness bug that's going around. Had both DH and I been in "normal" jobs I don't know how we'd have managed that.

I'd worked with mums in the past that were always the ones calling into work when their children were sick and didn't much appreciate it.