To think we can avoid the need for full time paid childcare for a while?

[hopingforbabyy]

We’re trying at the moment but just pondering our options, as I will need to return to work after 9-12 months maternity leave and people are having to put their name on waiting lists as soon as they get a BFP around here. I have worked in nurseries before and would not want to leave a young baby there, in my personal opinion.

DM is available and willing to help us out on Mondays and Tuesdays, I am hoping I can condense 5 days into 4 and have Wednesdays off, and DH can hopefully put in a flexible working request to not be rota to work Thursday or Friday.

It would leave one day not covered. We do have other family who might be willing to help such as MIL but they haven’t explicitly offered and live a bit further away for it to be practical.

DH shifts are on a rolling pattern and I’d say he would maybe do two Fridays in any normal month anyway, one of which would be a night. If he put in flexible working request to have Thurs off then even if he was working Friday night, he’d be fine to have DC until I finished work at 4pm as his work is really close by

On the one or two times a month that it is a day shift, I could book annual leave or ask another family member. I usually work from home Fridays anyway and my job is flexible so I could just book half a day of annual leave if it needed to be

As I say, I have worked with young children - I understand they need your full undivided attention and would never give them anything less than this.

AIBU to think we could get away with not having to use nurseries or a childminder until they’re a bit older in these circumstances?

As an older Mum I didn't have the option for family to help so I went part time and paid for DC to go to nursery for those days. Having family help is a huge bonus but can't be expected to work out as planned, they have their own lives etc. Going back to full time (not wfh) was fine for a while with wraparound care but didn't work with realisation of SEN.

1 day a week is really shit for the little ones. They won't settle in as easily.

People are understanding what you mean but just highlighting how precarious this set up is and that you have no flex at all. You have no back up option for when life happens.

Imagine baby gets ill on the Sunday, you have a sleepless night with baby. You and DH have to go to work but your mum doesn’t want baby that day because she doesn’t want to be ill or she’s got a friend going through chemo who she is seeing on Wednesday. Or baby gave her the big and she’s feeling sick. So now you have to look after baby and either make up work in the evening or you or DH has to take annual leave or unpaid leave. If you’re working compressed hours, you are now working late into the night. But baby is still grizzly and doesn’t sleep well that night. Tuesday and baby still isn’t well, your mum still can’t look after baby. DH takes annual leave or unpaid leave because you need to make up some hours. Tuesday night baby still doesn’t sleep well. Wednesday is your non working day, baby is starting to feel better and is starting to be back to normal and need entertaining. Except you’re knackered and still need to make up hours at work. The housework you would usually catch up with on Wednesday isn’t done because you need to catch up on work. Thursday you start feeling sick, you work because you’re already behind on work. Friday you either work from home and try to manage baby who is now feeling better and getting into everything. You’re feeling rough and you might just catch up on work if baby doesn’t need too much attention or has a long nap. Or DH looks after baby and then works all night, you at least get on top of work but DH sleeps all day Saturday, leaving you with baby. Except now you are feeling really rough and you’re resentful of DH, who genuinely needs sleep. You’re back to Sunday again, your DH has now caught the bug.

This isn’t just when there’s a bug though. It’s if your mum doesn’t want to commit as much as you think or she wants to go on holiday. We know someone who didn’t use childcare until 3 and they had to have a spreadsheet detailing every day, who was caring for their child that day, how much annual leave they both had and who was taking it on that day. They’ve also had to take some unpaid parental leave because parents went on holiday and they didn’t have a back up. It costs us a fortune in childcare but all we need to work out is who is doing drop off/pick up, who is covering if they are sent home from nursery.

I asked for compressed hours and it was rejected. We had banked on it and only enrolled them for 4 days a week. We have to juggle Fridays and it’s tough. Especially the first few months when they pick up every illness and send them home. Luckily we have an amazing nursery and ours went 4 full days from 11m. They absolutely love it. They run in every morning, have to remind them to say goodbye as they are so excited! They do so much at nursery, every day they do crafts, baking, outdoor play, and the social interaction with their peers has been brilliant. It’s always ‘so and so did this, then I played with Bob, and Cate let me use her truck’. Our child is 2 now and it’s been brilliant. I would highly recommend putting them in nursery for a few longer days. They eat well, (better than at home), nap better (they don’t nap at home), yes, it’s expensive, but less expensive than one of us losing our jobs due to not meeting childcare issues.

I could not do my job whilst looking after a child. I could not properly look after my child whilst doing my job.

I'd be exploring child minder or nursery even if only 2 days a week, or a couple of morning sessions. My friend relies on grandparent and extended family childcare and it is a hell of a juggle for her - especially when illnesses/ teething for fussiness/ holiday/ nice events start cropping up.

Many grandparents offer to help but don't realise the level of committment and become flakey. That for many it is a 7.30 start until 6/7pm at night when commutes are factored in. This happened to my friend. MIL was well up for a couple of days a week until she realised it was every week of the year bar friends annual leave, set days, starting at 7.30 - 6 as friend has to commute. She did 6 weeks and backpedaled as it was too long for her. Her own DM has also cut back her offer of 3 days a week. Again the long days (especially when her DS dropped his nap and he was just full of rage from 3- bedtime) and the set pattern. Friends DM has a vibrant social life, whilst as a baby and young toddler DS was happy to sit in the pram whilst her DM socialised, he suddenly wanted to be off and out and got fussy after 30 mins in the coffee shop. All of a sudden her DM wanted to change her days to fit her social life. Her DM has changed last week as it was WI Christmas party so friend had to swap her day off last minute and cancel our meeting plans. Her SIL won't have him if he is ill or fussy and her sister only gets 1 day off a week and is very much going out with friends on that day. We had a long catch up on the phone as we couldn't meet and she's got him in at a school nursery next month. It's been a long wait and as he is nearly 3 and never been to a setting lots of child minders and day nurseries were reluctant to take him. Day nurseries because he was getting too old (i.e. he starts getting funded hours and they haven't had or will get a full 2 years out of him at full price) and childminders as they were taking on babies and didn't have time to also settle an older child.

Your plan sounds very stressful to me, it seems like there’s absolutely no wiggle room if anything goes wrong. If you don’t want to put your child in nursery can’t you and/or your husband go part time? I work compressed hours and the longer days are quite tiring, I can’t see that it would be practical with a young baby. It also seems contradictory, I get not wanting to give your baby to strangers to look after but if you’re working all those extra hours you won’t be available to him/her anyway.

One option for one or two day or half day care is to find a nanny who has just had their own child and isn’t working as a full time nanny - I know a couple of people who have reached a mutually happy arrangement for a couple of days or half days care with nanny who brings their own child along with them. My friend loved it when she went pack part time after nine months maternity leave. She couldn’t afford - or want - a full time nanny, but needed limited cover and knew the nanny was great from her former employer before she left to have her own baby. The nanny was happy because she got to stay with her own baby. As time went on the babies were happy to have each other’s company .

I would definitely recommend using family over nursery. Especially if they're willing. I dropped 3 days after having my first. It was the best thing I did. We worked childcare between us, and grandparents. Be great if you can work from home too on those odd couple of days a month....?

This sounds very disruptive to the child tbh, being passed from pillar to post. Not to mention that some of those plans with definitely fall through, almost certainly last minute

What PPs have said.

Compressed hours are a LOT more difficult than they sound.

In your shoes I dropped a day completely, family kindly did two days, we used two days of nursery (which was fine).

It was a struggle financially, but manageable practically, with various flexibilities built in.

This sounds like a good plan. The norm now seems to be nursery but that doesn't mean that your plan is unreasonable - far from it.

For me that way too many moving parts.

I’ve had some arrangements similar over time and they were unbelievably stressful.

Just remember that condensing your hours into 4 days means the 2x days your Dm Has the baby will be longer.

It could be fine but I was planning on condensing 5 days into 4 as well as my job fits it perfectly, but my work said no, so my plans were scuppered.

I was so upset as I really wanted that day with my baby, so just came to say don't set your heart on anything until it's actually signed off.

Your husband can’t look after child in the day and then do a night shift even if it is occasional. Complete unreasonable when there are nurseries / childminders available. What your plan hasn’t included is if anyone is sick, you don’t get that issue at nursery as more people to cover. What are you going to do on the min/ Tues if your family are sick?

OP isn't even pregnant yet.

he wakes up at a normal time the day of, has a normal day off then goes to work in the evening

A day off at your own leisure is vastly different to a day off running round after a 1 year old.

I saw in one of your previous posts that nurseries you felt they were better after 2, with this in mind could you drop your hours so you only work 3 days (Mon, Tues and Thurs) and then up them when DC is 2 and go for a nursery then for 3 days (Mon, Tues and Fri)? This way there’s an end in sight for your mum, as whilst she may be willing now she might not be indefinitely, knowing it’s only for a year is much less of a commitment than indefinite childcare. The 30 hours funding will be in place by then also which would help with finances.

If you could financially make that work, that’d be my solution.

Your plan sounds too precarious to me and like the baby won't know whether they're coming or going.

You've also got very little wiggle room and need to consider that if you compress your hours you're asking family to have a very long day providing childcare.

Attempted something very similar, but grandparents were useless and not reliable enough often cancelling at last minute for various things, dentist appointments, seeing an old friend. As is their prerogative! But make sure your expectations of grandparents are crystal clear and you have something in place for when they book holidays, are unwell etc. I ended up reducing hours and getting a childminder, not ideal and a real squeeze financially, and then sacked it all off to be a SAHM!

We had the same issue. Grandparents were well meaning but it ended up that we were using all of our annual leave to cover hospital appointments, holidays, funerals etc etc. It ended up causing a row and bad feeling for a while. Fortunately we were already using a nursery 2 days a week so upped our hours there. There's no way I'd go back to a situation where we had to heavily rely on family. What happens when they or you are ill for example?
Personally I think that having so many changes through the week will also be unsettling. In your shoes I'd look at lining up a nursery for a day or two.

Here's the issues (that I can see)

your mum
In 2 years time (a year or so of ttc and pregnancy and a year of mat leave) she may feel very different about her ability or willingness to help two days a week

She may try it, remeber how exhausting small dc are and pull out. She may be less reliable than you would want.

Your mum may want to take holidays or go on days out with friends on those days.

compressing your hours
4x 10 hour days are hard enough anyways, plus commuting, without then doing all the hands on baby wrangling every morning and night too. Especially if your dh is off on night shift so you are doing all of it.

Your employer may say no.

dh shiftwork
He would be mad to try and do a full day with a 1 year old then a full shift at work overnight.

Covering his every other Friday dayshift with your own annual leave would take up a large chunk.

His employer may not be able to guarantee any set days off

There are so many moving parts, plus you haven't even fallen pregnant yet, so whilst it's handy to ponder the logistics of childcare, I think your plan is far too choppy and reliant on a wide range of people agreeing to a load of stuff. It's so unlikely to all slot into place, regardless of how much you've thought it through.

Also.. Lots of my friends have spent countless days off work because their child has been sent home for being poorly.... (sometimes they weren't) from nursery and they still had to pay the fees. So nursery does have that disadvantage too.

These are the days you call in the Mother favours- handy for emergency ad hoc childcare of a poorly little one without the solid commitment of 2x long childcare days a week.

I also worked in a nursery briefly and would never use one. I did the best I could, but I was 18 and had no qualifications or experience working with children. I wasn't first aid trained or DBS checked (or CRB as it was then). I hated being cooped up for 50 hours a week in one room plus small garden. The ratios were within legal bounds but always felt too high for any child to get really good care (fine, but not great). This is basically the case in all nurseries..

Specific to the nursery I worked in; the standard of care was terrible.

I know not all nurseries are like that BUT you don't know as someone on the outside which is which. The nursery I worked in was full, parents were generally happy, the Ofsted report was good, but I wouldn't have left my goldfish with those people. What really turned me off was seeing how little the parents really knew about what went on there.