...to think it's possible to go back to work full time after mat leave?

[Jumperoux]

Would work 37 hours over 4 days with DD in nursery. Every other week she would be in nursery on the 5th day of the week so I can do overtime. She'll be 12 months and a bit.

Please give me your best tips. I'm hoping to still be breastfeeding morning/bedtime. I've heard that without daytime feeds then babies can start waking more in the night when mother goes back to work? And the idea of leaving the house for 7:20 fills me with dread. Will I be expected to give her breakfast before nursery? Any tips more than welcome. Wondering if I've made a mistake saying I'll go full time.

Totally possible but only if the money is worth it. Went back to work ft when DD 9months. Breastfed her until 14months she just got used to the bottle during the day. Days involved (& still do) dropping her at nursery (for breakfast)@7am then pick up @5pm. Now I am more established with my employer I have dropped to 4days/week because I want to spend more time with my daughter. Even working 4days I still earn double my husband so the monetary benefit balances out missing my DD. She loves nursery now and is thriving.

Having said then when have baby #2 I am going to consider trying to get just 3days a week because I now figure work can come later when children are at school.

I spent 1.5yrs full time after maternity and it was fine just busy.

Good luck!

I went back to work full time when DD was a year old. Wasn’t breastfeeding. She quickly adapted to her new routine. I get up at 5.45 to get myself ready before waking DD. 7:30 we are out the door and on the way to the train. DD goes to nursery near where I work so if there are any problems I don’t have a long journey to pick her up. DH works up in London, goes to work at 6am and doesn’t get home until 7.30/8pm so I do it all on my own. It’s hard work and hardto adjust to at first but DD LOVES nursery. We don’t have any family nearby we can ask for help so we pay full time nursery fees which is a killer but DD qualifies for 30 free hours in Jan which will help massively. A full time day costs us £44 per day. She gets breakfast, lunch and tea. I have to supply nappies. I am totally tired the WHOLE time though. Good luck with going back xx

my advice is spend as much time with your child as possible while they are little - they grow up too quickly and that time is precious.

Well, I actually prefer to spend time with my 12 year old than my 12 month old.

I am so so heartened that only a handful of responses have been negative and so pleased and thankful for all the good advice.

The thing with DH's job is that he will be able to do some nursery runs but not predictably - as in I/we won't know until the morning whether or not he'll be able to do it. So it's not strictly true that I'll be doing everything myself but it's the unpredictability that's annoying.

I'm returning on promotion and hoping to get another promotion in the next couple of years at which point I'll overtake DH in terms of salary and he'll be able to rein it in a bit and do more fixed rather than on call.

Oh OP! It’s a nightmare! I worked 4 days (one day at home) for three months and then straight back to full time. I also have a 2 hour commute each way so I definitely know the pain. All I can say, is that before I went back to work I posted a similar thread!!! It’s all working out, DH is taking a bigger role with our DS, and everyone seems happy!

I know it’s a cliche but it will all work out! 😊

Yes - the unpredictability is the constant friction for us - sometimes (rarely) I can get help but in fact, work needs space and reliability. The fact that your DH has no predictable expectation of helping will put you in the constant position of mendicant. I note that very few of the positive responses are in your exact shoes jump wrt dp/family help and using nurseries not cm or nannies. fwiw, if no dc2 is planned too quickly and you’re lucky with your childcare setting, you should still be fine.

Regarding bonding, I made sure I'd spend some one to one time with DS every day. Not just breastfeeding, but also playing and reading a book, for example.

Even if your OH is not reliable for pickups, he can contribute towards other parts of family life. Just make sure he doesn't bail out.

Try to pin your DH down a bit more 'unpredictability' is not great when it comes to sharing childcare.
Agree with brrrfreezy that most of the 'it'll be fine' responses will have different scenarios. With one child it may be doable. It's a shame your DH can't/won't help more.

See how things go before you make a full time commitment. My DD is nearly 5 and she has never slept through the night. I work 3 days a week and it was a struggle in the beginning. I was tired and stressed and torn between work and family. It got easier over time. I adapted to getting less sleep. I found routines to make things easier. I felt like I could make a positive impact at work as I was less burnt out than if I had been there 5 days. I felt like I could get to know DD on days away from the office and get chores done. It's also been so helpful to have 1 day a week with play dates with friends for DD and me to get the benefit of friendship and emotional support from fellow mums. Best of luck in this transitional time.

If that is what you want, go for it.

It will take a bit of organising but it is 100% possible.

I work 4 days, 30 hours. You will get into the swing of it honestly.

Please don’t take the advice above to stop breastfeeding if you don’t want to, you really don’t need to. I have continued to feed my daughter at bedtime and morning and for naps when I’m not working. Your supply will settle and it’s a really nice way to connect after a day apart. It also provides comfort and the anti bodies certainly help with the nursery bugs!

You will get into the swing of things, it helps to be organised (clothes laid out for everyone, bags ready etc).

Good luck

I went back full time 5 days a week plus a couple of hours travel time every day. I dropped the morning breastfeed but kept going with the bedtime breastfeed. It was a wonderful chance to reconnect after the day apart.

I used to wash my hair in evenings so I could just have a quick shower in the mornings. Always have the nursery bag already packed. Make the most of Internet grocery shopping, consider a cleaner, look for other ways of making life easier. I sometimes used to log on and do more work after putting my baby to bed if necessary.

I'm sure you can if you're super organised and have parents/in laws/partner to help as there'll be lots of picking up new bugs (which they have to do!) which means lots of days off! Nothing worse than feeling guilty about not looking after a sick child or guilty about not being at work! Also, you'll be permanently knackered. Very early on I realised that you can't 'have it all' without killing yourself. I went 3/4 days a week until my kids were all in high school then back to full time. Less money and a bit of a struggle (sole breadwinner) but I don't regret it at all. I had that day or two a week to take to and pick up from school like all the non working mums, and do play dates etc. Mine are 13 and 16 now and I look back with no regrets. Good luck on whatever you choose though, each to her own, your kids'll be fine!

Hi. I haven’t read all the posts. Just wanted to say that if you feel you want to continue breastfeeding please do. I am back at work fulltime and breastfeeding both my 1,5 and 3,5 yo in the morning and at night and it’s the thing that helps us reconnect and I treasure it so much ... it’ll be a double blow to her if you stop breastfeeding - I was a bit saddened to see people saying you should stop breastfeeding. Currently 7 months pregnant with number three and hubby and I juggle drop off and pick up. I also have to provide all meals for school so they have breakfast at home and go in with 2 x snacks and 2 x hot meals I prepare the night before. I’ve invested in a separate under the counter freezer for £129 from John Lewis to help with organisation of meals etc. My daughter always refused expressed milk in a bottle and would just wait for me to breastfeed. They drink water at school and some water, diluted juice or cows milk at home and breastfeed whenever they want it. Good luck, you can do it. Won’t be easy though.

When my DD (now 23) was born you had no choice. I went back ft 5 days a week when my DD was 12 weeks old when statutory mat pay expired. If I hadn't we couldn't have paid the mortgage! I managed but it was really hard DD was exclusively breast fed so she had to adjust her feeding patterns to fit around my work so I spent hours every morning before work and when I came home pretty much constantly bf!

loving it you might think it seems a hard life but I think being a sahm seems like torture! I relish work and it's really helped me mentally and emotionally. I feel I'm a better mum now too (not saying all working mums are better mum's, just working makes ME better). I felt trapped at home, felt like I wasn't me. It was awful. We can afford for me to be sahm but I don't want to.

I did it. 5 long days. Carried on bf for a good 8 months after nursery started as well. He fed morning and night and more at weekends. It is doable.
His sleep did go to crap for a couple of weeks after I went back to work but the timing coincided with 12 month immunisations and winter bugs going round so not massively surprising, just meant I was tired at work for a while and we returned to bed sharing for a couple of weeks while it settled.

I returned to work full time when my children were 9 months, luckily my husband and I worked in flexible jobs and also found a great childminder. Don't worry about going back to work, choose good childcare (in my opinion a registered child minder is the best option for a child under 2 and make sure they don't have a lot of children to look after) and your child will thrive. Its sad to see that even in 2017 mothers agonise over these matters in a way that would never occur to most fathers.

There is plenty of middle between SAHP and pursuing a fast paced more than ft job though. Unlike sheryl sandberg, I also think it’s possible to work 4 (not compressed) days a week whilst your dc are pre-Primary age and then lean in later on when you are more able to put the hours in.

I’ve recently had to turn down an exciting promotion as my dc are not quite there yet but my experience is that firms do want to promote women where it makes sense, so you do have choices.

fwiw, I find all the ‘yes you can’ stuff slightly short sighted - I listened to it a before I had dc and pushed and pushed at work but I realise that plenty of the smarter parents at school leaned back slightly during the harder parts of having young children and are now much fresher than me.

Short sighted - not quite what I meant, I mean outdated - we’re lucky for the most part to live in a less misogynistic culture than the US with men that are not all dinosaurs expecting total commitment at all points.

One of the many good things my mum taught me was not to assume you should "feel guilty" because you go back to work . It's perfectly ok if you don't. So I didn't.

I enjoyed work - and I enjoyed being a mum. And I enjoyed breastfeeding. They're not necessarily mutually exclusive. Because of my great child minder - and a good partnership with dh - I was able to work ft without concern.

I'm a lone parent and I've worked full time since my son was 8m old. He is almost 2 now and absolutely fine as am I.

I agree brrfreezy . I think it's easy to get carried away by the 'oh you'll be fine' posts.
Of course it's doable but with little help something will have to give , be it time for
yourself, exercise (and yes you'll have superwomen saying 'get up at 4.30 to exercise it's so easy), house work (only so much a cleaner can do), weekend time
(You spend the weekend catching up with admin and cleaning).

I didn't enjoy it. But then I didn't enjoy being a SAHM either. So I retrained in something much more flexible and I'm so glad I did.

I think it's important to offer a balanced view. With all the 'it's so easy' posts, you can often put lots of pressure on yourself if you don't find it easy. We're all different and all situations at home/ amount of help we have are different.

There’s no reason why Nursery should impact on breastfeeding if you are happy to carry on. I work part time and find it a lovely way to reconnect at the end of the day. He does feed overnight but always has so didn’t notice a particular change when he started (at 1yo). Your supply will adjust and you will be able to feed as much/as little as you choose to.