To think it’ll be fine to work full time with a baby

[firstlittlebub]

I think I will likely take around 10 or 11 months off for maternity leave.

Pretty much everyone I know has either gone very part time or decided to be a SAHM after maternity leave. I don’t know how I’ll feel until the time, of course, and can’t pretend to know what it’s like to have to leave your baby in childcare. I am currently on slightly over 30k so if I dropped part time that would obviously be a lot less money. We also would like to move to a bigger house when interest rates have stabilised so it’s perhaps better to be a two income household.

We have offers of family help plus DH is a shift worker so we are hoping we will only need to use a childminder two days a week, maybe three.

However, please be honest - is it insanely difficult and miserable if both you and DH work full time and have to navigate that around a little one? I have heard other people say time over money any day of the week. That is true, you want to be there and spend time with your child as much as possible I guess. I just don’t know if that’s smart long term, given pensions & holidays and just life really!

It's doable.

The issue I have is that there is very limited time for housework. We had to lower our standards.

Apart from a couple of hours in the evenings, my weekends are the only quality time I have with my kids and I don't want to spend it cleaning.

We have to be pretty rigid about keeping on top of tidying and everyone putting their shit away or it very quickly descends into chaos.

We have a long living-room that's divided in 2 by the sofa. The section in front of the sofa (facing the TV) has to be tidied every day before the kids go to bed as that's where we sit to relax in the evening. The half behind the sofa is where all the toys are and I don't care if that's messy as I don't have to look at it 😂😂

Plenty of people do it - not everyone can go part time. If you're taking a long mat leave that helps as well. I was made redundant at end of 2nd mat leave and ended up going back to work full time when DS was 18 months old and we managed.

I didn't find it miserable at all, although I was lucky that both my kids were quite 'easy', not given to tantrums, both liked their sleep so both of them would go to bed and stay asleep. I can imagine it's much more of a schlep if you can't just relax in the evening because you have to keep putting a little one back in bed every 20 minutes until it's your bedtime for example. But most people manage fine.

Same here. My career wouldn’t have survived if I’d taken longer off. We didn’t have any family in the uk but used an excellent nursery and two of the staff became our babysitters.

I went back full time after six months. Put baby in nursery and all was fine. Maternity leave was boring and frustrating. There is so much guilt put on women for working full time at the moment.

@TravellingT is right. DH would and will help but he works a mix of day and night shifts.

Hi OP,

I think it might be a lot to do with the temperament of the child and Mum.

I always knew that I could never leave a baby to go back to work and was very focussed on finding a Dad who could support me to not take paying work after my son was born. I literally knew I couldn't have left my son before primary school.

However, after he got to primary school both DS and I were diagnosed as ASD, and found to be effectively a little bit delayed in social development, so then it all made sense.

I think maybe it just is different for different people, and we can't always put our finger on what the difference is at the time.

I suppose the hardest part is , if you put them in nursery, how often you’ll have to pick up/ take time off for the first few ml the due to variety of viruses they pick up in the beginning; and when they’re sick, nights are rough and is overall miserable on top of a full time job

I went back full time after 4 months (3 month maternity and 4 weeks annual leave). I earned double my DH so we needed the income. You’ll make it work if you need to.

We were really fortunate. We had an excellent childminder who provided a home environment and all home cooked meals. My DD was there until high school as wraparound care. DD went on holidays with childminder and her family and they are still in touch. DD is outgoing, kind and brilliant with younger children. We had no family around and could never have provided this wider family environment for her.

Children are resilient and adaptable

I went back full time when ds was 11mths, so just back a few weeks. I am finding it tough if I'm honest but more because of some workplace changes than anything else. Ds has settled well at nursery and is really enjoying it and we really like and trust the staff and are satisfied he's well looked after there. In an ideal world I'd have gone part time because time wise I see ds for 40 minutes in the morning and then about an hour at night before bedtime so it does feel a bit of a rush, but makes the weekends much sweeter! We'd also like to move and ideally have another at some point so it makes so much financial sense for me to be full time for right now at least.

Me and my husband work full time and our son is 2. I went back part time 3 days a week when he was 10 months old and tbh I loved being with him those couple of extra days, he was at a childminder for 2 days and with my mum for 1 day, but I also felt like a passing ship at work and didn’t think I was able to contribute much only doing 3 days. Also missed the money 😂 So I went back to 4 days as we could afford an extra day at the childminder. I then got a promotion and went back full time, extremely lucky my mum offered to have my son the extra day! We do seriously miss him through the week but I do work from home some days, so on days my mum has him I could work from her house and I’d see him all day if I want to! My husband starts a new job next year and will only be working 4 days so he’ll also see him a little bit more! It will all work out quite nicely for us x

Sorry, I voted YABU because I thought you meant WFH full time with a baby which would be incredibly hard. But no YANBU, lots of people do this and make it work. It's hard work but doable!

You'll just have to see how you feel (and what sort of baby you have!). My husband and I both ended up working part time because our LO had some medical needs in his first 18 months and needed us around. That's not what we planned. Some people find babies fairly boring and would prefer to be back at work, others love being at home all the time. You won't know until you meet them . You'll make whatever you choose work but at times (up in the night, endless colds when they start nursery, needing to choose between nursery pick up and finishing a task at work) it's going to be a slog.

I went back to work ft after each child around 10 months (they are nearly 5 and nearly 2) I used holidays to reduce my working week to 4 days for the first couple of months to ease into routine. Accepting that things are a bit chaotic is important and I definitely don't live in a show home but it's clean and we do 1 room each evening after the kids are in bed.
For us it works we have quite flexible employers so was able to work from home when the nursery bugs hit which helped. We have no support and use nursery which is expensive but we have plenty of time in the mornings together (I have early risers) and the evenings.

Weekends are very much family time although DH and I give each other breaks it's a few hours no going off all day for golf or football!

I don't have mum guilt at all about it both DS's are flourishing they both enjoy nursery and do so much in a day I could never replicate at home. I enjoy working and I'm good at my job which would be a difficult one to do part time.

Hacks make things easier and so does online food delivery shop. I use a slow cooker a lot for dinner (prepped the night before in the pot put in the fridge then hot stock or sauce added and put on whilst doing breakfast). But we all eat dinner together most nights and DH and I both do bath and bedtime.

I planned to go back full time but it’s been harder than I expected and I’ve now settled on doing 4 days a week. Three days would be ideal for me but we can’t manage it financially. We’ve had a terrible few months for sleep with endless teething and illnesses and I’m really struggling with work due to the sleep deprivation. I can only hope it will get better soon as it’s pretty miserable at the moment. With sleep it would be much easier to manage everything!

Got it.

Hopefully by 10-11 months, baby will be sleeping through.

I went back full time when both mine were 9 months. It was hard work and we've spent probably 70k on childcare but it was worth it to keep my career progression and I enjoy my work. I would struggle to be a SAHM, I find that harder and my job is long hours and high pressure. If you have a good support system and a partner who truly shares the load then it's doable. For me that was key, I couldn't have done it if I was taking on everything at home too, DH was and is, all in.

I got lulled into a false sense of security by this. My baby was sleeping through the night for the last few months of maternity leave and I was feeling on top of things. Sleep has been so much worse since she started nursery between getting 12 teeth (the canines and first molars have been particularly bad) and the endless illnesses.

I found it was better financially to go back four days a week rather than five because of the cost of childcare.

It’s fine as long as you divide the chores 50/50 and - IMO - you parent with routines. I think it’s hard to free-range parent, work FT and keep your head

I was starting to worry I would be the only one having taken short maternity leaves!

With DC1 I went back at 6 weeks, DC2 I went back at 3 months, DC3 I went back at 4 weeks.

Hard but necessary as I am majority breadwinner. When DC3 was born DH was made redundant so he became SAHP.

Both DC1 & 2 went to a childminder to start with. DC1 started at nursery at age 3. DC1's childminder was close to my work so I did pick ups and drop offs. When DC2 arrived I did drop offs and DH did pick ups. DH's hours were consistent so this made sense for us.

We had to be organised especially when dealing with babies. With DC1 I would freeze sometimes and think I couldnt remember doing the morning drop off!

Do what works for you and your family. My DCs are all now adults. Me working FT is all they have ever known.

Well you’d have gone back to work if you literally had to. You could, you just didn’t want to.

Both parents in my household work more than full time and we have two kids.

By more than I mean not just 9-5 typically.

It was far more difficult when we were both going to offices every day, but so long as we're both WFH a reasonable amount and we both have flexibility with our jobs it's ok.

Having said that, the older kid is now in Yr 4 and one of us may go part time because we'd like to take them to interesting stuff after school not just after school club every day.

What I would say is that the life admin type stuff just does not get done at all!

Other things:
We could afford to work less but are both quite career focuses.

We have a cleaner twice a week.

Grandparents around to assist sometimes.

50/50 split between us on both kids and housework.

Are compressed hours an option? I went back in July when DS was 12 months but I work 5 days over 4. It does mean a long day. I drop at nursery at 7:30 when they open and start work at 7:45 - 5:45. DP picks DS up at 4:45 and manages him till I finish.

I hope her sleep improves for you again soon. We've found sleep tough occasionally due to teething too, more so than illnesses, we've been lucky with that so far.