2 DC under 3 and no family support - any advice?

[OxfordDonna]

Looking for tips / thoughts from anyone who's been in my situation and come through the other side! We have 1 DC will be 2 in June. We would like to have another child as I'm 40, but we have zero family support and I have found toddlerhood quite hard work. My husband works till late at night and so I do everything during the week from breakfast through till bath and bed time. I work PT running a business and DC1 is at nursery PT. I've realised the lack of family support, even just to have a grandparent look after DD for an hour is something I've missed.

Trying to look ahead and think about how we could manage things better this time around if I do get pregnant. We would really love a family of 4 in the long term so trying to make it work as best we can. We were slow to organise childcare last time due to pandemic as you weren't allowed to look around nurseries. Now we have our DD there, perhaps we could put a new baby's name on the list before they were born? Sounds crazy but we live in south london where it's a total frenzy.

Any tips around ways to help me manage 2 young ones? "Throw money at it" is a thing I see on MN quite a lot. We are lucky enough that we could probably afford to extend childcare a bit. DD would start state preschool when she turns 3 which would be cheaper anyway. Do you think a home help / nanny or au pair (not sure of the correct role) would be a good idea? Eg on the days when I collect DD at 3pm up until bedtime? To support with that busy part of the day? Do such people exist?

Are there any mums of two or more pre-schoolers who have no family and whose partners work long hours? How do you cope and do you have any advice?

Thank you x

I have 2 under 4. Partner works long days and is also is not hands on (that's another story). My advice is to get help with as many household chores as poss - things like hanging up washing etc can be so hard to fit in when you have 2 kids running about. As others have said, batch cook, eat simpler meals yourself etc. Declutter before a second baby comes to make life simpler and cleaning easier. And find time for yourself even with the kids - if older one at nursery, go out for coffee with baby sleeping in pram to give yourself space in your own head.

You've had some ridiculously harsh replies!

It is hard work but is doable with routine, structure and planning!

What's your family set-up in terms of money, career ambitions, career flexibility...? Would it be an option for either DH or you to cut your hours for a couple of years or would that be very unattractive/financially impossible/career suicide? I know you already work part-time, but I don't think you've said whether that's more like 4 days a week or 2. I think a lot of people do take a big step back when the children are young and dial it up again later.

If DH is working until 10PM every night what time does he start work? Could he take over in the mornings and do breakfast so you can have a lie-in and he gets to spend some time with DC while they are little? Otherwise they're not really going to see him except at weekends. If he can't help during the week then get him to take them out on Saturday mornings and give you a break.

For the future, finding friends with similarly-aged children who would be interested in reciprocal babysitting would be a good idea if you can when there are no grandparents to babysit. As would everything everyone else has said - cleaner, repertoire of easy healthy dinners, and so on. And lower your standards - no need to do bath time every night, for example.

You could get a mother's help to come in, maybe 2 or 3 times a week, and have a regular evening babysitter or two so they have a regular income and are there as back up.

And you'll probably bite my head off for this but his seniority might give DH an opportunity to do a bit of shaping round his work. For us there wasn't a lot DH could do but he always picked the kids up on Wednesday nights and dropped them off Thurs morning. Yes he travelled with work, yes he was away but he always managed to either fit trips round his Weds night commitment, or swap with me if that worked ok for me. That one night a week that he really committed to freed me up enormously, especially once the children were at school. It was difficult for him at work in the early days, but he won people round and showed it could work, and now others are following in his footsteps. It hasn't broken his career at all. People are just resistant to change.

I know there is a handful of careers where this is genuinely impossible. But I think there are a LOT more careers where it just seems impossible until someone - usually a woman - finds a way.

Think what you will do if one turns out to have higher needs. Having a 1 and 3 year old, one with SEN, pretty much broke me. I think a 3 year gap would have been a bit easier.