Anyone else have no family help with young DC?

[twoanddonee]

DC and 5.9 and 2.3. We are in the unfortunate position of having very very little family help.
In the 5.9 years we’ve have DC1, our only night away from him (when my DP had him) was when I was in hospital having DC2.
We have always paid full wack for nursery fees as we’ve had to put them in every day that I’ve worked. And my DC1 now at school does wrap around care again on the days i work.
We manage to have a day off together probably twice a year when we manage to do a date day, but now DC1 is at school it’s very difficult to use holiday. So we’ve both pulled a sicky a couple of times which isn’t ideal when we usually have to pull a sicky for sick DC as well.
We do have, maybe twice a year max, someone over (usually my mum or sis) if we go to DH works do or a family event etc, but that’s about it.

I love them both dearly, I really truly do, but I am feeling resentful at the lack of help we get. All my friends seem to have regular date nights, even weekends away/abroad, or even just a few hours at the weekend to clean to run errands. I feel like we are constantly on the go, juggling everything, having to be extremely organised to cover everything, and we have next to no time for DH and I to connect.

Anyone else in the same boat?

My in-laws made it clear to us that they weren’t prepared to babysit regularly and both my parents died before our children started infants. It wasn’t usual in my friendship group to have the level of grandparent help that you describe your friends as having.

I was fortunate to have a very understanding manager whose family lived overseas so she had also raised her children with no outside family childcare, just her and her husband.

A lot of juggling and compromise was involved and at times I did really miss the support I know we would’ve had from my parents. And obviously I missed them, too.

Is it for financial reasons that you can’t use babysitters? Or other?

I remember when our kids were that young, our circle of friends switched to dinner parties for socialisation purposes. We’d each take turns to host in our own homes. Kids had a sleepover so they were happy.

i presume you can each go out with your own friends whilst the other parent does solo, so presume this is just date nights with your dh we’re talking about?

thd other thing me and my friends did was we’d take it in turns babysitting each others kids, so we could go out as couples.

Yes, no family help and disabled child means we can’t use a babysitter.

Nothing here either.

I had a non sleeper. We both worked full time, I did night shifts and day shifts with no help so had to do my night shift then stay up all day looking after my child then was up all the following night with my non sleeper over & over & over. (5 years old when they slept a full night through for the 1st time)

I had multiple miscarriages, I was hospitalised with most of them. Had to go through them alone as we had no one willing to take our child so dh could be with me.

My family live less than 5 miles away, all drive.
My 2 sisters have kids. My mum and their ILS all contributed to regular long hours of childcare for both.
I no longer have contact with any of them. My kids wouldn’t know any of them if they saw them in the street.

They genuinely do not give a shiny shite about us or our children.

I'm in the same boat and these years are really hard. There can be a real element of tag teaming, becoming a bit distant and trying to reconnect later.

I think the only thing that you can do is try not to compare your lives to other people's and be realistic about how many extracurriculars that you can cope with. That and stick with two, I don't think bigger families are a good idea without support. If you stick with two then it will start to get better as they get older.

We've never had the option of family support with kids because we have no family living in the country. We have gotten by with relying on nursery, now school, after school clubs etc and it's been fine. I guess it's because we have both been lucky to have very flexible jobs and positions which enabled us to flex time as needed for emergency childcare.
Never done date night, but we both have never felt the need to either, both prefer the company of our kids. We have always had our alone time together when the kids are either at school, at a club or with a friend, which means we have had a decent number of "lunch dates" or done other activities alone over the years (ever few months perhaps?)
We never had the option so don't find it hard, but I suppose if you have family around then it might create resentment.

We have family abroad so no help. We had for years a babysitter 2-3x a year, money well spent.

I had no help at all. My parents lived hundreds of miles away. We moved closer to them for a few years, and they showed themselves to be disinterested and never offered to do anything. My in-laws also lived hundreds of miles away. I never felt hard done by, no one else I knew had family close by either.

Find a babysitter.
Enquire at your local.college for students doing child care qualifications, or if using child care give a flyer to staff.

It's tough OP and I feel for you. This is a really hard stage when you don't have any help. I was in a very similar position to you and was so envious of my friends who did have help whenever they wanted and even had weeks away whilst the grandparents would have them over summer holidays.

We relied on trusted babysitters or doing babysit swap nights with friends in the end.

Fast forward to today where my dc are all grown up. My parents moan that they don't have a close relationship with my dc and now that they are elderly they constantly want help. I feel no guilt putting myself first - exactly what they used to do. You reap what you sow.

Have patience.

Yeah, same here. All our family live a minimum of 4 hours away, friends nearby in the city are dwindling and have their own kids to tackle, babysitters are tricky as our youngest won’t be put to bed by people they don’t know (never mind the cost of a babysitter just for a date night). We use full time nursery and school wraparound. Lucky that we can take some annual leave here and there during the week. Otherwise, we just knuckle down and try to ignore friends who moan about the help they do get.

Nearest parents lived over 200 miles away. Individual nights out, local babysitting groups, paid babysitters.

We have no help at all (both sets of parents dead, no siblings/ nearby). There's very little we can do about it so we just get on with it. It's absolutely bloody difficult juggling them and we have maybe 1 day/ night away a year if we're lucky (I have a lovely friend who has them for our anniversary).
All of our friends seem to have loads of support. Grandparents and siblings who help out a lot. It stings because we really are on our own and it can make us bitter with the grief.
That said, there's not really any resentment because nobody is choosing not to help us even if they could, if that makes sense. We're alone because we're actually alone, not because we have family that can't be bothered. I imagine in that circumstance I'd be really gutted.

We celebrated our 20th anniversary recently with one night away. It's the first time since having kids that we've been able to. And that's because my oldest is 18 and capable to looking after younger dc.

It has been hard at times (I had 4 under 6) but I remember that comparison is the thief of joy and just cracked on. It gets easier as they get older. And I'm close with my kids because we have spent so much time together.

I have no family help and a lone parent so just me and they don’t see their father, haven’t had a night to myself in a decade, you won’t be the only one.

My parents are lovely people, they live 5 mins away. But have to care for a disabled relative so they are unable to help much and they have apologised for this.
DH’s mum has mental health issues so cannot help. And his dad is only 25 mins away, but his new wife wouldn’t allow him to help even if he wanted, and I’m not sure he wants to help anyway. I sometimes get the vibe he’s sad that our kids don’t really know him, when we occasionally do see him, but I think well don’t be surprised when you offer no help.

We didn't when the DC were little - it was bloody hard at times, it felt relentless. I don't have any advice, just sympathy.

Our nearest family are 250 miles away.
The only date nights we have are when daughter has been on a school residential.
We’ve never had help with childcare or babysitting and our 9 year old has very rarely stayed away from home.
But we knew all of this would be the case before having her. Support from family is a luxury, not a right.

My DC are young adults now but we didn't have family help. DH and I had our first night away together without children when the eldest DC was 20. Before that we would have trips away individually or family trips.

TBH now they're adults it feels as if the 20 intense years we spent raising them has passed in the blink of an eye. I didn't want to be away from them when I wasn't working.

I had little help when mine were young. We just had to get on with it, using baby sitters.

Me too although our children are now grown up. We threw money at it which meant less for other things. We also made friends with other working parents and we did end up swapping our kids around and it worked well.

PIL did come over occasionally but they lived 4 hours away and of course needed to stay. They didn’t like our dog so she had to go into kennels. They drank all our gin bar 1 inch in the bottle plus they used to find the special champagne I kept for special occasions and then called us asking whether they could tuck into it.

It all got not worth the faffing around so we just saw it out. Then used a nice babysitter every so often.

Yes, other friends seemed to have loads of support.

We have no parental help either. And yes, there are babysitters, but where we are they're expensive! If we hire one for four hours it adds £60 to the price of a night out...

It's fairly common in my circle not to have any family help really, we're in a part of London with lots of international families so many GPs are abroad. DH's parents are abroad and in their 70s so aren't helpful in a practical sense. My parents don't live too far but we don't see them often. I've found it OK really, but I don't work and DH's work is flexible so we just manage between us. We've never had a child-free night since eldest was born. We can afford babysitters and that's what most families do here, but I've never felt comfortable enough to have them in my home as I'm very private.

Most of our lives revolve around family-friendly activities and we spend all evenings and weekends together. When we go out to celebrate our anniversary it's a family brunch for all of us. We have weekend city breaks as a family and take the dcs on art gallery trips, family raves, theatre and concerts. I run errands and schedule appointments during the week when they're at school (and just brought the dc along with me before they were at nursery).

Zero help here. We’ve had one night away from the kids since they were born and that was for our wedding night. Our parents didn’t even offer that, my brother did 😕

Never had any babysitting offered either. Not even when one of the kids was rushed into hospital - my DH had to push 2 prams into a&e and stay there 2 days as I was working away.

there are no reasons for my parents not to offer other than they just don’t give a shit. They’re local too. They’re happy to watch us to juggle our multiple jobs and wrap around childcare yet make comments about how tired the kids must be and that they must have no life outside school/nursery.

All 4 of our parents were dead by the time we had DC so there was never any question that we'd have no help. Perhaps in some ways this made it easier as we had nobody to resent for not stepping in to help?

We couldn't afford babysitters and it was many years before we had a night alone, but we honestly didn't mind, it's just how life was. But yes, I suppose it would have been easier/different if we'd had someone to share the load with...