to do this commute?

[takethatlady]

Hi there. Any help appreciated here!

DH and I currently live just north of Cambridge. He's a teacher in a school 20 minutes west of here and I work at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. I'm nearly 25 weeks pregnant with DC1

We had initially hoped to move to Norwich but a thousand different problems have occurred which now means that isn't very likely.

So now, after my 6 months' maternity leave (plus some annual leave) we're considering the following plan:

I work 3 very long days a week in Norwich and catch the train there. This is a 90 minute journey plus a 20 minute bus journey to campus. I would leave at 7am, get there at 9, stay until 7pm and get home at 9pm on those three days (Tues-Thurs).

This sounds like hell, I know. But it would mean that I would only need to bring a smallish amount of work home to make up my hours, which I could do on a Sunday afternoon/evening when DH will be free to take care of the baby. And it would mean that on Mondays and Fridays I would be free to just be with the baby and not doing any work.

On the days I am working the baby will go to a nursery near DH's school (there are 3 to choose from in the nearby area) and he will do pick-ups/drop-offs/evening care, etc.

I know this is going to be hard. But please tell me it's not impossible?

I wouldn't do it.

Can you financially/practically either change your role to more part time or a jobshare? I just think you are going to be exhausted and also I would not have been able to leave my 6 month old for essentially half the week because it would have destroyed me.

I have commuted long distances by car and also by public transport and the resentment of the time spend doing it becomes huge.

I also agree with the poster who has warned that it could put a strain on your relationship. Both of you will be tired and not see much of eachother.

nanny share ?
Can you still drive, drop DH + LO ?

Given the choice, I would far rather do a long commute by car than by train. When I used to do a 2 hour drive I got through huge numbers of book tapes (showing my age!), I actually rather enjoyed that!

My DD1 was 6 weeks old when I went back to work full time. The 2 hour commute came along a few months later. While I can see for some people this would seem terrible it was necessary for us. Needs must when the devil drives!

My top tips to make it work would be:

• make sure you have a contingency plan
• look at ways to make the commute enjoyable, dont use it for work. Trying to work will add to the stress and is unlikely to be effective
• dont plan to do it forever
• make sure there is flexibility in the childcare arrangements. This will reduce the stress if everything goes bottom up one day (believe me this happens!)

All best wishes!

I did a two hour commute each way when ds1 was 2-4 years. That was full-time for me, with his dad doing the taking to nursery near his work. The plan was to carry it on when ds2 was 6 months old. I coped with the commute (train) ok at the time, managed to get work done sometimes. Unfortunately when ds1 started school and dad had to do rushed pick ups in opposite directions it all got too much for him and was a contributing factor in our relationship breakdown. It is doable, but you need to have contingencies in case you find the reality doesn't match your expectations, and keep the lines of communication open (hindsight - my ex was just head in the sand about it all, until it was too late) in case one or more of you find it too much. I now work 15 mins away from home which is a life saver now I'm a lone parent.

Why not cycle from home to the station if it's only 2 miles? Surely much easier for dh not to have to taxi you around?

Ha ha fattyarbuckel you make it sound like I'm being really precious! I can cycle if necessary but I don't think DH would mind 'taxiing' me around since it's 5 minutes in the car for him and I'd have been on two buses and a train and out of the house for at least 12 hours!

Thanks gnome and cumfy for the constructive advice and the link :) And I'm so sorry about your experience bumply, which has given me a lot of food for thought. No way I can go part time cumfy ... my DH and I earn relatively similar wages (me a little less than him but with more potential for earning more in the future) and only one of our wages covers the mortgage and bills, while the other one pays for food, petrol, clothes and everything else (and childcare, soon!)

I will still give it a go next week as a trial run but the more I go through this thread the more I think I may be jeopardising a lot of things which really do matter more than work - health, happiness, even my marriage, family life ... I can't help thinking, after a night's sleep, that nothing is worth all that.

It's still an option on the table, but maybe we need to go back to the drawing board. Perhaps renting somewhere nearer Norwich is a better idea. There is a job for DH an hour away from Norwich by train that he could apply for and I felt it would be silly but an hour on the train is better than the 2 hour trek I'd be on ... and maybe we just need to be brave and get some tenants in our house.

Goodness me what a pickle! Congratulations to all the other ladies on the thread who are pregnant or have had babies recently :) I really am so excited and I'm sure we'll work it out. I'm lucky I do have a very lovely, very communicative DH ...

Hi there,

I'm not sure if any of you will see this since it has long dropped off our watch threads, but I thought I would update you with a decision DH and I have made, taking into consideration a lot of the amazing help and advice I got from this thread.

We are going to stay where we are, as planned, and not risk renting our house out and moving nearer to Norwich only to have to do it all again the next year. But DH's parents have a cheap car they're getting rid of and have offered it to us for a very low price so we're going to bite the bullet and buy a second car. The baby will go 3 days a week with DH to a nursery in the town he works in (we're looking at 3 of them next week) and I will drive to work, which only takes an hour and ten minutes.

I will try to leave early so I can get to work without traffic and cram extra hours in at the beginning of the day, meaning I can be home by 6pm and DH won't need to pick me up from anywhere. I will also space my days out (I'm going to request Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays since that fits with some of the centralised timetabling I can't get out of). Hopefully this will mean I will be less tired. We'll also have spent less money on moving, though we'll have the extra cost of the car, so I may even be able to eek out another month of maternity leave.

Staying put means DH won't be commuting (he'd be doing it 5 days a week) which means he'll have more time for childcare than if we moved, meaning (theoretically) I'll have more time to catch up on the rest of my work when he's at home. We're thinking Sunday afternoons/evenings can be my time to work in.

It also means that when the right job does come up, either for me or DH, we can make one move. Our aim is going to be to both live and work in the same city - whether that is Norwich or London (I know London comes with its own issues), but not to make any drastic moves until that is possible.

I keep telling myself that if we moved closer to Norwich, DH's longer commute would mean I had to do four days at work instead of 3 in order to make sure I could get everything done. So we're buying an extra day out of nursery and with us for our LO. Hopefully this schedule, as punishing as it will be, is a vast improvement on what I first suggested.

We still need to think about back-up childcare options, though this is a problem wherever we go. But we're working on it.

Thank you so much for all your help.

I can't offer any practical help but I just want to say how much I respect and admire you OP and so many other contributors to this thread what difficulties you have to face and what guts and ingenuity you show getting round your problems. I am sorry to admit in the past I have guilty of judging you working mums I am a old style north country Mam and I really didn't have a clue about what you have to go through. This MM is expanding my mind a bit!

Thanks beesimo, for your lovely post :) Whatever works, I say!

takethat - good luck with everything... I know quite a few mums who do hugely long days in exchange for less working days... And quite often it is the dad or the grandma who does the childcare. It can work.
thinking of these type of situations, I always think about women in other cultures/from different eras; they often travelled abroad (or to Downton Manor!) to work whilst extended family did the childcare... doesn't mean they love their child any less, just means they are trying to do the best for their family.
And I'm thinking the train commute might be good SLEEPING time, not essay-marking time!

And it would only be term time!

I was just coming on here to suggest you get a second car, when I read your post, it seems you have managed to find a way to work things out and that is great.

It's nice to get a different perspective on things.

I wish you lots of luck and hope it all works out for you.

Thanks ladies :) I feel a lot happier about this plan - at least, I feel like we can actually do it.

Plus it means we're probably not moving after all, so I can ring up Mamas and Papas and get them to deliver the furniture earlier than planned and get cracking on the nursery !

This thread has been invaluable - I was so unhappy about the other plan, as similar as it is to this one, and the tweaks we have made it to it, partly because of hearing about all your experiences, have made me feel like I can do it and keep sane and not feel resentful, which I would have done. The comments about marriages being put under strain really put things into perspective - when you're working to keep your family together it seems idiotic to do it in a way that puts your family under additional stress! But that's what we would have been doing and I think I would have got angry about it down the line (probably angry with myself, for embarking on something about which I had so many misgivings ...)

Thank you again :)

So glad you are sticking with your job. Academia jobs already scarce will be as rare as hens teeth soon. A second car is a great idea.

You have to do what you have to do. Giving up a hard won post would also cause heart ache. You can make it work while you get back on track with your house and your DH possibly finds another school. Financial pressure on a relationship is also rubbish.

All the best of luck.

Oh what a lovely outcome. Your original lift-train-bus route sounds much better as a contingency plan than the main one.

I totally understand how tricky this is, DP and I have had 2 job changes and 3 moves to try and make the best use of our time and commitments to our 4 combined children. What we have now works but we had to make lots of compromises - we now live in a small flat in London compared to the semi with a garden in the lovely part of Kent we lived in before - but for the most parts, the books are balancing and the childcare is working and everyone is mostly happy. :)

Thanks fing and mackerel. Yes, you're right about academic jobs fing - in fact, we started ttc when I was launched in my first permanent job, because we need two incomes to cover the bills and felt we now had the financial security to start a family (big mortgage on a tiny house taken out about a month before the credit crunch!). I love my job and it brings a lot of security, stability (and, luckily, flexibility) to our lives and to the life of our LO, I hope. My own parents divorced when I was 3 and my brother was a newborn and while my own childhood was very happy everything was always precarious - my mum tried to work at nights and during school hours, but that put her in very low paid jobs and needing help with benefits, and we clung on to our flat by the skin of our teeth. We had no hot water, no transport (we used to get free bus travel because my mum was pretty and shouted at all the naughty school kids on the bus!), no telephone, money was always a worry, and my mum was pretty lonely and vulnerable to a couple of bad eggs. I watched my mum slowly build a career and to me a career means stability and support, which I desperately want for my own baby.

Not only that but I have no choice financially anyway!

mackerel I'm so pleased for you that you have made the right compromises and got everything ticking along. At the end of the day a home is a home, small or big, and it's better you're all happy! Big decisions are so hard because you always worry you could have gone down a different path, but it sounds like you have made the right choices for you and your family :) It's really lovely and encouraging to hear that, no matter how tricky things are, it can work well :)

Hi Takethatlady, glad you have found a solution. No practical advice to offer but just wanted to say good luck. I do the opposite commute, norwich to cambridge by car 4 days a week. It's not ideal but doable and means I can do a job that's great and enjoyable as well as live with DP. Hope it works out for you

spangers shall we swap houses?

Thanks for your post - it helps to know other people do it too!

Thank you so much cloudsofwitness :)

Good point about the guest rooms. I'd hate to use them very often but, like you say, when needs must it's good to know they're there.

Thanks again :)