Senior “career” women and baby age gap

[LuckyA]

Those of you in senior roles and going back to work FT, can I please ask what was your age gap between babies and would you recommend?
DD1 is 6 months and I’m thinking it may be better for my career to have another soon (obviously in an ideal world if I conceive quickly). We have always wanted 2 or 3 kids. DH is also in a senior FT role and we will be relying on childcare and both chipping in at home.
I have gone back to work FT now but I have flex in my role so has worked out OK so far. We are thinking it may be less damaging to my career to get all the baby days over and done with quickly but don’t know if I’ve lost the plot by considering 2 under 18sh months or 3 under 3. Has anybody been in this situation who can offer any wisdom and what effect on their career it had?

Have children when you want them and work hard at your career whenever you can or want to. Ursula von der Leyen has a great career and she has 7 children.

I had my first at 32 and 2nd at 37. The 5 year gap worked really well. Dh and I both made a lot of career progress in those years, which made having a 2nd easier. I would think this would have less of a negative impact than basically being out of work for 2-3 years in one stretch.

I had a four year gap. It worked out well as I was on mat leave when the eldest started school so I could do the settling in.

You do sound like you have a set-up that mitigates against the most stressful bits of having two working parents. Having your mum in the annex will take away a whole load of stress. Because if that, I’d be tempted for a small ish gap in your circs. I have found that I’m in quite a different place mentally with my 4 year old than the 1yo. When I’m just with the older one, I’m just that bit freer. I’m not wishing away my youngest’s baby years but I know things will be easier in a year and I wish our gap had been closer to 2y than 3.

One of my mentors at work gave me some good advice on balance which was that progression didn’t always have to be linear and that it was important to try to avoid both parents striving for promotion, starting new jobs etc at the same time. There can be comfort in stability. She also advised that at some point all the juggling plates would come crushing down and everything would go wrong. It was comforting to hear someone who had reached the absolute top of her profession admit it could be hard.

We have a full time nanny, part time housekeeper and cleaner and my mum comes every day to pick up other home related activities (food shop/cooking etc) so we are incredibly lucky and that enables my DH and I to both work FT. I should also add I have a lot of flex in my job so can still take DD1 swimming/classes etc and work once she’s in bed
and
DH takes on 50/50 home responsibilities- we just both muck in with whatever needs doing, but I do tend to do the clothes buying for DD1 and think more about her classes/future nursery/education. My mum then picks up whatever’s left and will do wraparound childcare (she’s just moved into our annex we had built)

Wow.
You couldn't have a more perfect set up for being a parent that WOTH.
I don't know what you are worried about.

Hi op, i had 3 while in a senior role working full time. 2 years almost exactly between them. So by the time i went back to work after the third i had three

And again!

Hi op, i had 3 while in a senior role working full time. 2 years almost exactly between them. So by the time i went back to work after the third i had three who were 4, 2 and 5 months old.

Very very hard and I'm not sure I'd recommend it necessarily but it's doable with team work and clear routines and responsibilities.

Your set up sounds perfect for shorter gas, though it depends how long you want to be away each time. My two DC are exactly 12 months and 2 weeks apart.

I took 7 months maternity leave each time, so was already pregnant going back after DC1. I was promoted at work coming back as well!

Although we had a lot of help from my parents, meaning both DC started nursery at 1 year old, we had two in nursery paying full London prices and no 30 hours entitlement for 2 years because we earned too much. Childcare was more than double our not insignificant monthly mortgage payment!

Also coming back from the second maternity leave, a role had been created above me that I could have done, so I left to work at Exec level somewhere else. Being in the new workplace was helpful, as people knew me for myself, rather than as the one who had had 2 maternity leaves back to back (I was in work for 5 months in between).

*shorter gaps

With two toddlers it becomes hard work to look after them. Asking your partner to take them both for a weekend day so you can do extra work becomes a big ask. Add in double trouble for night disturbances and working late evenings is also out unless emergency. Since having two we do not work outside office hours. I could see it maybe coming back when youngest is 3ish.

I imagine these issues would be reduced with a bigger gap. But then- I wanted 2-3 so they could play together. With a huge gap it wouldn't be the same- although I'm sure it could be nice that way too- but not what I hoped for personally. I figure you can catch up from a period of slow progress on your career but your age gap/ shape of family will stay forever.

As a previous poster said, with all the daytime help you have the two things that would concern me are:

• A difficult pregnancy, I was told by a physio it takes 2 years for your body to recover from pregnancy - the smaller the gap the harder it is. A difficult pregnancy would obviously impact your performance at work while pregnant. Also, the risk of quite a few complications goes up with each pregnancy, e.g. hyperemesis, gestational diabetes and both can mean time off work (for additional appointments if nothing else).

• What help do you have at night? We have 3 DC now aged 5.5, 4 and 16 months so fairly close. DC2 goes through spells of waking multiple times a night and DC3 is still waking multiple times a night. Nights when both are up really kill as you can't take it in turns, you each have a child to deal with. When they are ill, you can end up with all 3 up. The smaller the gap, the more likely it'll be a problem.

I find this so interesting as I had a senior role and didn't go back after my first Dc. Slightly different situation, as I needed to find a new job as I was a contractor and started a six month contract already pregnant. So was out of work just before baby was born. But I did interview around when baby was 7/8 month and having a DH that couldn't flex his role I couldn't see how I could do it. Having someone else look after my baby and only seeing them asleep just didn't work for me ( this is how it is for DH now as long hours out and commute.) I realise WFH changes this a bit especially now Covid flexibility. I just don't see why you would want 3 children and both be working full time senior roles. Surely spend your quality time with one or even two children. I have two now and it's quite hard. My age gap is 3.5 years. Planned age gap was 2.5 years, but things didn't go to plan and I had a loss and was just totally knocked out by it. I still don't work and I will return to it, however seeing my youngest start school at just turned 4, I see how much he has needed me after school. It's so hard to know when to return to work. My 'baby' maybe a different personality and will be one of the older children in the school year, so may cope better if had to go to after school care. It just breaks my heart thinking of them like that. Obviously a nanny is the next best thing as children are in their own homes. I don't mean to be horrible, it's just so hard once they need more input and are awake more. My DH says about a third child as he is one of four, and there is no way, it's too much, dividing yourself by two is enough. I do have a lot of friends who have 3, maybe this is a new middle class thing ?! But all apart from one,have because they had two boys and wanted to try for a girl. The one with boy- girl-girl is a stay at home mum like me and had the third to keep busy.

Thanks everyone, such interesting info here to consider.
My thinking was that if I got the babies out of the way quickly, work gaps would be over a shorter period of time. But as some of you have rightly pointed out, that could also do me a disservice. There are other challenges that I need to consider too as babies get a bit older, it seems it will get harder rather than easier to juggle.
I probably have somewhat an unrealistic view (or I just majorly lucked out) as my first pregnancy was a breeze (no sickness/complications so worked happily until the day before I gave birth) and DD1 has been great (bar her erratic night sleeping which we recently did some sleep training). I know things could be massively different next time round though. @Duckchick we have no night help and I can imagine how hard it would be if 2 babies were up!
@Bacter I think a supportive partner who shares equal home responsibility seems to be key to making 2 parent FT working work.
@Starseeking as great as I think my company is, who knows they could become arses and I may want to leave too.
The more I think about it, the more I think we have to make the decision based on whenever we want them regardless of work/career path as there are too many variables that I can’t foresee/control

The thing is op whatever happens you make it work. As long as your partner has the same attitude in that there will be times when you both have to make sacrifices, then you will just create new solutions for each new phase that comes along, whether you've got 1, 2 or 3 children. I have 3, all still in primary so the baby years are close enough for me to remember. We went through so many phases of different routines, who's picking up this week, who's dropping off, who's on overnight wake ups etc. And then something changes, and HR routine gets tweaked.

Without doubt our hardest period was after i went back to work having had dc3. I had one in school, 2 in nursery (totally separate location to the school), we were both commuting in to the office and dc3 did not sleep through, ever, until she was 3.5yo. I used to quite literally keep myself sane by counting the years months weeks and days until that period was over. You do just cope but i found being very firm with dh from day one that this was a joint effort and insisting it was 50/50 in all areas was the key, because frankly he would have been quite happy for me to have just done it all.

A pp mentioned not wanting to end up having to put kids in after school care etc which i can understand. For us it was the only way to make it work, along with breakfast club, but i knew it would only be for a short time relatively speaking. As they get older they can sort their own breakfast so now they don't go to breakfast club and after school wise, more interesting clubs open up to them as they grow so they actually want to do the gymnastics and cooking classes etc. Everything changes basically and you just have to be able to adapt.

Work wise it certainly helps to have a flexible employer. I'm very lucky, as is dh.

Not what you asked but DC3 can often be a career killer. But you sound like you have lots of help and also the kind of help which really makes a difference.

The only thing I’d add is that it’s usually the school years that are the hardest. When kids are younger they are less fussy about who feeds them and plays with them. Once they are at school it’s their parents they want to come to events etc

The FT senior career women I know who are also mothers have two kids close in age.

I don't know any senior career women with more than two kids!

I would echo what a PP said in that I think children need you (as in you specifically, not a nanny or grandparent) more as they get older, and it's much harder having two or three at different stages in school, with different educational, emotional and extra curricular needs than it is having toddlers and babies. This may influence your age gap decision and the number of children you have.

@KittenCalledBob

The FT senior career women I know who are also mothers have two kids close in age.

I don't know any senior career women with more than two kids!

I’m a lawyer and know a few with 3, but the majority have 1 or 2 (or none). I’d really like 3 but my plan is to push for partnership after the second and then have a slightly bigger gap and go for the third. I’m 33 and have just had my second so hopefully will have time.

Maybe your body will need a good 12 months to recover in between babies

I think the length of mat leave has more of an impact than anything else - whether your babies are close together or far apart. If you take 12 weeks regardless, then you're in a good position.

Mine are 22 months apart (I didn't plan it this way!!) and I've always worked FT. Took 6 months off each time with lots of KIT days and it's not impacted on my career progression at all. The plus point for having a small ish gap for me, is that I know I'm way past ever having any more and I know I never need to consider the impact of another baby on my career. My children are 5 and 7 now though and I feel need me more than ever - I found the juggling much easier when they were babies.

In our house, we went with "we love her very much but 1 is enough". DH and I both have stressful FT professional roles, both involve international travel at times (generally not overlapping when DD was small, but has occurred a few times in more recent years, she's now a teen). We rely on paid childcare also, and while there is some flexibility in both our roles (DH often was more able to drop things and rearrange when DD was sick as a smallie, and on day 2 and onwards of any illnesses, we juggled who needed to be in which half of the day, swopping at lunch if possible, doing an early-start morning or late-finish afternoon in work, and both catching up at home once she was in bed) - there is only so much we could take on.

DH is very hands on, still is, I tend to do most of the cooking and prep but he tends to manage most of the laundry (and washup). So it's relatively even.

But while we love her very much, we are both happy with our decision to stop at 1. Being able to give her plenty of attention, but also able to keep doing what we do at work.