Panicking that we cannot afford this baby and we will not cope.

[Redrosesblue]

I have just found out I'm pregnant and completly freaking out. DD has just celebrated her first birthday this week and this is a completely unplanned pregnancy.
We always planned to start TTC for DC2 when DD was at least 2 years 3 months so that by the time the baby arrived, she would definitely be entitled to her 30 free hours childcare. I earn good enough money and am the breadwinner. DH is self employed and his income has been hit hard by Covid (perfectly timed for mat leave with DD1 to start) and I ended up going back to work much earlier than planned to make sure we were okay.
There's no way we can afford double the childcare. DD will only be 1 year 8 months when this baby arrives so even if I take her out of childcare for my mat leave, she'll still be far off 3 by the time I need to go back to work which means double the childcare fees! I am terrified. We cannot afford this baby. I also suffered very badly with hyperemesis last time and I don't know how I will cope. DD is still breastfed to sleep and DH can't get her to sleep on his own. There's so many reasons why this is just not a good time! I'm so scared. I don't want to have to consider termination and never ever thought I would need to but I am so worried that there's no way we can make this work.

Why does a tree surgeon only work office hours?

Have you actually done a calculation to see if your might qualify for benefit?

You only need to qualify for 1p a month of Universal Credit to be able to get help with childcare costs.

It might be worth reducing your hours slightly to bring your income to a level where you qualify for a tiny bit of UC than applying for 85% of your childcare costs back.

@Teentitansonloop well, it’s noisy so I’d be pretty annoyed if neighbours had tree surgery happening before 0800 or after 1800. But the weekend is fair game IMO!

Have read the whole thread and I sympathise, we were in the position of planning a 3 year age gap too, as paying for 2x private nursery would have been very very hard. However it seems obvious that the elephant in the room is your DH's earnings. It's not ok for him to be earning so little while you shoulder the burdens of being the breadwinner and also being pregnant, possibly with HG. He needs to either earn more or work around your job. You have already made the choice of compressing your hours, it's time for him to make changes to how he works/earns.

If you'd become pregnant accidentally at the age of 16, but you knew you wanted DCs in the future when you were in a better position financially and better able to cope, would you have had a termination?
I would have.
Just change the age....

Can you see how much you can save now, before the due date?
Also, if DH saved some holiday time to take two weeks off when you are due to go back, so save two weeks of paying childcare? Would any family do another week for you if they stayed with you? That would give you 3 weeks of no double childcare.

Also, I am not sure if it is still available, but there was the opportunity due to Covid of having a 3 month break in mortgage payments. That would give you £1,800 - so three months of childcare costs?

Hi Op!

Late to this and you’ve had great advice so hopefully you can get something sorted.

I think I would go for Dp trying to a childcare day, extending the mortgage or getting a loan. You can get as low as 3% if eligible.

I am due twins so we’re worried about the same thing- double the childcare costs!

What I don’t understand- is 30 hours starting age 3. It’s great but by then many women (and it is women), have been forced to give up their jobs. And it affects them for the rest of their working lives sometimes.

I think it needs to be changed!

@Parker231

Why are posters talking about the OP getting a loan - she says they can’t afford another baby now so a loan would just make their finances worse and she isn’t ready for another baby.

Except it wouldn’t make their finances worse at all. Someone posted a screenshot of loan repayments that showed taking out a three year loan - even at relatively high interest - would halve what they’re paying now for one child.

Being ready for another baby is a different issue completely. Do you think you’ll ever be ready @Redrosesblue? There’s no perfect time. I’m very far from pro life but I think I’d see this as the universe making the decision for me.

Good luck, it’s a very difficult place to be. 💐

Can your husband not leave work for a bit you say he brings in 1200 which is less than what 2 childcare fees will be.

I would take some time to look in to the mortgage some more. See what the fee is for extending the mortgage over more years to reduce the monthly bill so you can save more for childcare. Probably cheaper than taking out a loan. The bank will be able to tell you how much more it will cost by spreading the payments out by a longer term too.

I got pregnant first month of trying with dc1 but with dc2 (also a lockdown baby, just turned 1), it took a year of trying and I had a miscarriage in that time. Obviously this skews my perception on things because we were already trying for dc2 at this point where you are now, but if you want to have 2 kids and have got pregnant easily it may be easier in other ways to continue.

I suppose it's weighing up what you can cope with more easily, the emotional cost of having an abortion or the financial cost of having the baby earlier than planned.

Also could you stop contributing to your pension for a while in order to help you save more? Not ideal but you could come out of the scheme for a year or two to save some cash.

There is no shame in having a termination at all, nobody but you and your husband have to know about it if that's what you want. I had one 15 years ago, the baby was due 2 days after my sons 1st birthday. I had my termination for similar but also very different reasons. It wasn't easy, I'm not going to lie, but I had counselling afterwards too which helped.
A few years later when I was in a much better place, I went on to have 2 more beautiful children.
Obviously there's more to the story but I don't want to go into too many details here but please feel free to pm me if you would like ❤️

Ultimately having two babies together is not more expensive than having them consecutively. It's actually cheaper, long term, because you are compressing the time when they are dependent on you into a shorter period, meaning you can get back to full time working (if that's what you want) more quickly. Cashflow-wise, it's trickier, obviously, but that is a relatively short term problem and some creative solutions may be possible. Whether you are ready for another pregnancy is different, and I can see circumstances in which finances might be a driver to terminate a pregnancy, but these circumstances are different in that ultimately you are planning on having two children and paying for their childcare.

Any reason to believe you will struggle to conceive in future OP? If not, it seems clear that you can't afford this pregnancy, without significant strain on you, DH and your DD. No-one else needs to know, you should speak to someone about a termination. (((hugs)))

Time for your husband to take a career break like many women end up doing. Tree surgeon as a job sounds like it’s not going to go away while he’s raising children!

@Bluetrews25

If you'd become pregnant accidentally at the age of 16, but you knew you wanted DCs in the future when you were in a better position financially and better able to cope, would you have had a termination? I would have. Just change the age....

It's a bit of a difference between a 16 year old who hasn't had the chance to complete their education and a grown woman already running a home. Silly comparison.

@Teentitansonloop

Why does a tree surgeon only work office hours?

I'd imagine he needs good daylight

I'm not blindly defending my DH or putting his business partner above my family. I'm considering them. His job is not as simple as some of you are making it sound; he doesn't sell firewood to individuals, he sells logs to sawmills many of which have not been running as efficiently so are not collecting the wood. He doesn't have a lorry so he can't just deliver it. Yes, in theory one day they'll come and collect it at some point and we'll get the money back but in the mean time we are struggling and that has been the case for a year now so I can't count on it turning around as a guarantee. He brings home roughly £1200 after tax now, normally he brings home over £1500 after tax, but this year everything has slowed up and I have challenged him, I have cried at him and asked how on earth we are supposed to survive if things don't improve and I ended my mat leave early to go back to work to make sure we were okay. But up until yesterday when we found out I am pregnant we were surviving. We made the decision before we knew I was pregnant that it was worth pushing forward with his business because in theory it should improve and it wasn't worth him giving it up. Yes he is currently earning less than minimum wage and yes that's not good enough if we're going to have a second baby. But we weren't going to. This wasn't supposed to happen now and we were making it work whilst we weathered the storm and my income was enough to give us the space to do that but with two it won't be so yes, I'm worried about it, yes, I'm looking at our options and yes, I am currently very mad that DH is happy today because he's getting the family of 4 he always wanted and isn't really thinking that much right now about how tight that will be for us if things don't improve and although he is sympathetic, obviously me having HG is not going to have quite the same impact on him as it will be so again, he's just not that worried about it. But I'm not just going to immediately announce to him that he needs to stop working putting himself out of business and his partner (who is a dear friend so whilst not important in the grand scheme of things, still worth a moment's pause) and forgoing any hope that the business gets any better so that he can spend the next 5 years sat at home with 2 small children. And I know that a position that a lot of women find themselves in but it's also a position that a lot of women resent finding themselves in so if there's any way I can preserve that for him I will try.
And even if DH was earning his usual pre-covid income we still wouldn't be able to afford double childcare so I'd have still come on here asking for advice.

I've dipped into about half the full thread so apologies if this duplicates anything.

Without knowing much about how employing apprentices works, I wonder if there could be scope for your DH and his partner to take on an apprentice. After a period of time this would then be a third pair of hands to allow business to continue when one of them needs to take leave. Could be someone to make deliveries of wood. It seems just about plausible that expanding a bit in this way could make it better for both of them?

Good luck finding the right way forward for you and your family.

I actually don’t agree with everyone saying the OP’s DH should give up his job. Yes women do it all the time- doesn’t mean they should have to either.

If it was the other way around and the OP had her own business- would we be saying you need to give up work to be a SAHP? Absolutely not.

So yes there needs to be compromise there but completely understand where the OP is coming from.

Hope you get it sorted.

To be blunt even £1500 usual take home pay is rubbish. 400 a week fir full time hours

£80 a day

Childcare is that with 2

Woman take a career break. Why can’t he if you are the highest earner

OP go for some decent pregnancy counselling, you don’t sound at all ready for this. There is no shame whatsoever if you decide this isn’t the right time.

In regards to your husband, he may be a great tree surgeon but he’s not a good businessman. My DF was very like this and it made life hard for my DM. He needs to accept that running a business is for the purpose of making a decent income and he has to search for ways of making his work profitable. There’s a reason people make their livings by offering business advice.

It’s unlikely he will make any changes significant enough to resolve your financial situation in the short term but looking ahead he HAS to adapt.

I wish you luck, whatever you decide you will make it work somehow.

Ooh sorry you will have lost a lot of sympathy at ‘sat at home’ with two small children! But only you know him and if he’s the type to make a go of being a SAHD and if there would be genuine added value for them (as well as financial benefit for you all) in him being at home for them. Good luck, I hope you find a way through.

How do you think he’ll react if you told him you wanted a termination?

@DarkMatterA2Z

Secondary infertility is shit. I got pregnant with DC1 the first month we tried. Two and a half years of ttc this time around and nothing. I feel our family life has been on hold as we've been trying and planning for another baby who hasn't appeared.

There is no indication that this will happen to the OP but it feels only right to flag it as a risk so she can make an informed decision. Sometimes, life doesn't turn out the way we expect. But this doesn't mean that abortion is the wrong decision for her and her family, just that she should be prepared for the (hopefully small) risk that things may not turn out as she would have hoped down the line.

I was 4 years trying for my second I know exactly how you feel. I felt I was stuck, may age gap got bigger, we got older. 4 long years. But nobody talks about secondary infertility. Your expected to be grateful to have one child shut up and put up with it.

I don't mean that begrudgingly to the children at all. I adore my DD more than anything and so does DH. But he would have nothing to go back to. He can't work alone legally and we can't expect his business partner to wait for him. And I'm not looking for sympathy, I was looking for advice and a place to soundboard as there's no one else I can talk to and but the advice just became people attacking me for having a useless DH who doesn't earn enough and there's only so much I can actually do about that.