Mumsnet Talk

No family (both of ours are abroad) and of our combined close friends that we would have asked/had offered before we conceived:

- 1 couple is away in Australia
- 2 couples are getting married (1 when I will be 40+7, 1 when I will be 40+10, so both pretty busy!)
AND
the babysitter is ALSO getting married when I am 40+7!

Timing! I honestly can't think of anyone else who can do it.....

how pregnant are you?

how old is DS?

How are your finances?

Gosh, I hope your baby comes early! I think I've read before about dc being there for the event (have you considered home birth?) or could you speak to midwife to ask advice? Don't envy you, thankfully my friend was available but with no family around it really felt like a huge strain. Could you cm recommend another? Your dc could get to know them before the event.

If you can afford it there is excellent childcare, my friend had to put her ds in nursery 1 day a week from 3 month and he loves it, I luckily had family to look after ds from 11 months part time and 14 months full time, but illness meant he had to go to nursery at 20 months and I had read "raising boys" that told me that putting boys in nursery under 3 years is psychologically damaging, but I can tell you now that is RUBBISH. I felt so guilty about ds going to nursery but he loved it so much that we now put him in one day a week purely because he loves it so much!

You can get child minders that look after children in their own home, or a nursery where they have several members of staff that look after lots of children. Both have advantages; childminders have a more homely environment and possibly more one to one depending on how many they look after, nurserys have more equipment and might have a more structured day.

My ds is very unstructured at home but since going to nursery likes eating his dinner at the table and having books read to him, so I am very happy with it :-)

sorry I missed the point!

I thought you meant having your unborn baby minded when you go back to work.

Just ignore me (shame)

What about a doula? They could support you before and after the birth too?

Homebirth?

Do you have time to introduce Ds to a new babysitter?

No problem IHAFWAILI!

Ds will be 2 and a half when baby comes, am 23 weeks now, went to 40+13 last time...

Finances... well, I don't know! Not fantastic! Current babysitter I knew at university and to be honest I am nervous about having someone I don't know at all in my home. No one I know uses a babysitter, all have family etc, and I would prefer to have had word of mouth but perhaps I should just get on with finding someone else as a babysitter. How do you book them when you don't know when you will need to go, though? .

you could try an agency? they may be able to advise

you have plenty of time to build a relationship with someone new

or get to know your neighbours

Are you chums with any mums from your previous ante-natal class or toddler groups? Are you close with any of your neighbours?

Invite family to share the happy event... oh and by the way while I am in hospital could you look after ds please

A doula would be on call, they are there to support the mother in whatever what is needed.

Neighbours not really an option around here, mainly very elderly folk and a couple next door that we get to hear screaming their lungs out at eachother in a drunken state most weekends!

We do have friends a bit further afield (e.g. 15 miles away or so) that we could maybe rope in if necessary, it's just the logistics of it all that seem hard to organise. No one in the locality uses a babysitter outside of their family and to be honest, I'm not really that close to anyone from the immediate vicinity. Friendly terms with lots of people but not really that sort of friendly, a lot of the connections fell away when I went back to work.

Not thinking of a homebirth really, because last birth was a bit frenetic and I don't think dh could handle the fear of things going awry at the last minute at home.

What do people do? Does dh drop me to the hospital, then drop off ds? If anyone has had an agency, how much is the cost involved with being on-call? How long would you expect someone to be on call for?

I had a doula for similar reasons,and I went into hospital with her as DH was with DD (it was night time).I was lucky as for one day a lovely neighbour had DD while I had dd2,and the next day DH's sister had her for a few hours. I would try and rope in the further friends-15 miles is not too far. Could you arrange a doula to be with you for part of it and then a friend to have Ds the rest of the time? At least then he'll be with someone he knows quite well.

Another vote for 15 mile away friends. I had my friends son (age 2.7) while she had her second- well, until her husband's family could get up from other end of the country. It was extremely inconvenient - the one night in 14 months we had friends to stay and i had to rush out, collect a car seat for her ds, collect her ds, make him up a bed, settle him etc instead of spending any time with our rarely seen visiting friends. But i feel privileged she trusted us with her ds and I'd have him again for her, having a baby is a special and unusual time for most families and I'd say majority of friends would be delighted to help out. I was. just wish it hadn't been the one night since my dds birth I had a social event planned!

This is one of those actually people are so pleased to be asked things - so condsider nearby people you dont think you know well enough or ask far away people to come. we used neighbours that until then we may not have called friends - we do now!

Working. We have had that problem. Lack of urgent emergency childcare and an absolute need for it (lots of ah hoc school assessments all over the place at last minute for ds).

It's actually quite a good time to 'bargain' with childminders, as a lot are losing children and income due to redundancies. You may find more flexibility than in the past.

If you find someone with low numbers that also does babysitting or overnight care you may well be able to negotiate something. You May want to use the childminder for an afternoon a fortnight and then closer ti your due date an afternoon a week so that you develop a relationship and your ds is happy there, and of course that costs.....

Btw I'd offer

I know exactly what you are talking about.

Our families live abroad, no friends close by etc.

That is the reason we ended up having a live-in au-pair for our 2 year old.
She started 4 weeks ago and I'm due in a few weeks time. Although my DS was 3 weeks early.

If interested have a look at www.aupair-world.net/

Have you thought about hiring a doula and having your dh stay with your ds? My dh will be overseas when i am due and although his family will be around to stay with dd, I will be hiring a doula to support me.

I guess the biggest problem is that you don't know when the exact time would be.

Thanks Star!

We only live in a 2-bed so au pair not an option, doula may be expensive. But need to think about it.

Need to meet up with those friends 15+ miles away again.. but if it's our other friend's wedding, they'll all be at that!

Is DS in nursery? Sometimes the nursery staff will also do childminding and I'm sure in this situation they'd agree.

Otherwise, like others have said, if I was an acquaintance who lived near or a friend 15 miles away, I'd be honoured that you'd asked me and would happily look after DS. I think you might just need to bite the bullet and ask them!

Oh, and I only discovered recently that my dad was looking after me when my brother was born so mum was on her own. Even though it happened over 30 years ago and there was clearly nothing I could do about it I felt really guilty! She said that it really didn't matter though as she was so focused on what she was doing iyswim and she didn't want to be worrying about me.

If you really can't find anyone, could DH stay with DS and just bring him to the hospital with him as soon as humanly possible after you've given birth? Or even head to the hospital at the pushing stage and keep DS with him in the waiting room until LO is here? That way DH and DS could meet LO as soon as possible.