To think it’s impossible for me to work?

[VanillaBerthaCake]

I currently work in a call centre, the pay is decent for that sector but still not high earning by any means. Full time I bring home about £1900 after tax. I WFH 2 days a week, the rest is office 10am-6:30pm. It’s a full on job, constant calls, 2 x 15 min breaks and one 30 min lunch break. I often stay up to 40 minutes late if I get a complex call last minute with a customer who is complaining or has a complex query. The hours are usually Monday to Friday and 1 in 3 Saturdays.

I’m 5 months pregnant and had originally planned to go back after maternity leave but I’m now beginning to dread it and don’t even think it’s possible. We’ve had quotes from childcare centres near us and I’d only have a few hundred left each month even with the funded childcare hours. Plus it wouldn’t even work with my hours, if the nursery shuts at 6pm, I work until 6:30pm, wouldn’t get there until at least 7pm, potentially later if I get stuck on a call. I’d need nursery and wraparound childcare, and that would fully kill my income. Baby would still need to be in nursery even on the WFH days as the job has no down-time at all. My call-centre is big in every worker being treated the same therefore there are no part timers as apparently it would make resource planning too complicated.

DH works on a rotating shift pattern and barely ever has weekends off. He usually works 4 x 12 hour days and the days he works are different each week. He also has the opportunity to do at least one overtime shift a week for double pay where he can make £380 in one day, and he tends to do this when he can. He probably gets 2 full weekends off every 12 weeks. Including the overtime he makes about £40,000 a year. He works 7am-7pm usually. We won’t have any family support, my parents live an hour away and had me in their 40s so they are elderly. DP isn’t British and his family all live abroad. There is quite literally nobody.

He doesn’t want to change jobs as the overtime opportunities at his current job help us have a decent lifestyle, 2 holidays a year, nice car etc. If he had a Monday-Friday 9-5 it would be different as I could get a weekend or evening job but it’s just not doable for us. He also has dyslexia and couldn’t do an office job, he needs to be out grafting. Also what is brilliant about DP’s job is sometimes there is no work on site and he’ll work 2 hours and then get sent home the rest of the day, on full pay. But you never know if he’s going to be kept the full day or not so you can’t plan childcare around this.

Even if I could find a 9am-3pm job for example (the holy grail for parents), I would still feel like we were wasting money. On DP’s 3 days off in the week, ideally I’d like him to be with our child whilst I work (he wants this too) but to retain the nursery place I’d still have to pay for the hours each week even if the child didn’t go during DP’s days off! It would be a complete and utter waste of money and I would feel resentful as child would be at home with DH 3 days in the week but I’d still end up paying the 5 full nursery days to retain the place, as the following week the it’d be different days I’d need baby to go in to nursery.

Also I have a health condition and DH has lactose intolerance so we need to watch our diet and eat freshly cooked home-made meals. Any “throw in the oven” processed food makes us both so ill. I have to meal-plan and cook extensively. Being at home with baby I could manage this so much better.

Working currently seems insane to me. Our mortgage is only £600 per month. Even if I stopped working and factoring in baby costs, DP would still have about £500 left at the end of each month. I’ve explained these concerns to DP and he understands.

I feel like it’s going to just be impossible to work unless DP changes jobs but he doesn’t want to which I completely understand as he’d never find another job where he can do a £380 overtime every week and where he sometimes gets sent home but is still paid for the full day (this happens at least once a week).

AIBU?

Really helpful.

This is a question for your husband and a family decision… What does your husband think?

Would you become a full time stay at home mum / wife or look for something else?

I agree that your job as you’ve described it doesn’t align with your situation but it’s always good to remain in the workforce in case anything changes in your lives, so I think you should actively look for something else that does work.

I agree that the logistics don’t stack up. But you also need to think about what you want. Are you confident you would enjoy being at home with the baby full time? If so, brilliant, but you don’t want to get stuck doing that and hating it.

Think about what you will do when the baby is older. Would you like a career or are you happy in just a job? If you want to progress and earn more you could think about how to up skill yourself while you’re off. Sometimes the higher you climb in a career, the more flexibility you get.

If I were you I would quit the job, have as many babies as you are planning to have as close together as possible, then go back into something more flexible when the youngest is about 3. This means you never have to pay a nursery bill. But only if:

• you are married and your marriage is solid.
• you have negotiated in advance about who does the domestic labour
• You are confident you won’t be bored stiff at home
• you have a plan for the future that you’ve agreed with your DP. Is this forever? If not, what will you do in 5 years?

This can be a great choice for you and your kids, but it needs careful thought.

You need to get married either way. You need to if you quit. You need to if you keep working, as all your wages will be going on childcare. You're in an incredibly vulnerable position no matter what you do.

Well, either get married, or leave now and claim Universal Credit to help towards childcare.

I think it's better for you to not work, assuming you had the security to. Which you don't.

She works in a call centre. There is no way in hell they will keep her employed if she goes off sick for 12 months. She would probably be fired within the first 6 weeks. Not to mention planning sick leave and claiming sick pay when not sick is fraud.

@Noshadowsinthedark but OP is not unwell?

£40k isn’t a sufficient household income.

You need to work, that said, your current job isn’t the only job out there. Keep looking whilst on mat leave.

In the meantime put a flexible working request in to change your house to 9-5.30.

It’s totally doable. Being a SAHM is bloody hard work and I guarantee you’ll miss the money and independence your job gives you.

I think you need to look at the new legislation around flexible working requests. It’s not as easy for a business to outright reject flexible working requests.
In any case, another job will work it doesn’t need to be 9-3. You could use mat leave to retrain or start to think about a new career. I would always be cautious of leaving the work force entirely.

Sorry to be the jaded old bag here but for god's sake, get married before giving up your job. There are so many cautionary tales on MN.

A man is not a plan and trying to get back into the workforce at short notice as a SAHM, after he has skipped out, is a horrible prospect. Keep your hand in the workforce and pay into your pension and secure your own future.

They don’t have to accept it though.

@warmapplepies I think single Mums get universal credit. So I can’t see what extra protection being married has. Married & unmarried men can be unsupportive. What does being married add nowadays?

OP I think a lot of women on this site are against stay at home mums, full stop so the advice you get is not always that balanced.

In your shoes I would live this particular job and spend a couple of years focusing on your child then I would get back to a more flexible job.

You can always find a new job but you will never get back the early years spent with your baby.

Also to be blunt working in a call centre is not going to lead a great career long term so you could use your time at home to also do some courses to improve your career opportunities.

@SunnySideDeepDown '£40k isn’t a sufficient household income.''

That's daft. Many families have to live on less than that and make it work.

Just quit. Spend time with your baby. I am so in support of this in a world designed to make you feel guilty for doing so. Just go. No regrets. Get a part time job in a few years. Enjoy your baby!

I'd get married, quit, and work on a new qualification in something I really wanted to do. I'd volunteer while pregnant and aim for a WFH job in the field I was interested in when baby was born then work up as baby got older so that I could get a well paid job with prospects to make childcare worth it.

To be totally honest if I was still working hours like that I'd never have had kids. I don't see any joy in an hour in the morning rushing them into breakfast club so you can toil all day at a dead end job, be knackered by 5pm when you go and get your overstimulated kids from after school club to spend another hour coaxing them into bed so you can do the same thing over again for another 4 days.

It sounds like hell.

I would NOT go back based on your posts. Figure it out somehow...things will work out x

No you don’t. Do not do this.

Take the package. During mat leave put every penny from your job in a savings account. Don’t spend your income at all. Then when it is time to go back to work if you decide to quit, you can easily pay it back. It also gives you as a family chance to experience living on one income. A few hundred left might not sound like much now but it could mean a lot down the line.

You have no idea how you will feel about being a SAHM until your baby is here, and is mobile/communicating. Most parents have strong feelings about the sort of parent they want to be, before the baby comes. Then they become a parent, meet the child they’re given (and not an imaginary baby), face changes in their relationship and self and often make quite different choices to those they had envisaged.

Yep this

So you guys have a nice lifestyle with you bringing in £2k a month ish, £23k a year, that’s your nice lifestyle money however it is split.

You could be a SAHM (do get married small registry now before baby) but that would be the nice lifestyle. Having an unearning parent at home is the lifestyle. It’s a luxury. But you need to cut £23k of spending, plus spending more for baby, it’s not a lot now but it increases they don’t stay babies for long.

Your other option is to find nursery friendly hours work or a childminder who you could pay for hours looked after. As you say dad gets days off.

Have you looked for another job? You have telephone customer services experience. That could be invaluable for a next step. There are job shares, or temp work (riding out the lean times) - regardless having a baby is going to reduce your lifestyle one way or another, if you need childcare deduct the cost from the £23k or you work fewer hours and it won’t be £23k to begin with. You might end up with both if you off at home on certain days and whilst nice unless you can afford it would be a bit of a waste.

But to cover your back as you haven’t got anything else lined up I would take the enhanced maternity leave now but not spend it. What’s the difference to not taking it?

If you don’t go back to work you will need to get used to a smaller household income either way.

Do you want to work? If you don’t and would rather be at home with your baby while they’re little go for it, it does sound like life would be easier all round if you were a SAHM for a few years. Plenty of time for going back to work in the future when the baby is school age.
Have you calculated whether you would be eligible for tax credits or anything like that if you didn’t work?

I think you'd be mad to stop working of you will be reliant on a partner who is currently getting sent home some days because there isn't enough work.

I think you need to plan for a new job in the future. A job where one of you works til 7pm and one of you is on a changing rota was never going to work. There are plenty of roles out there that allow women to work in satisfying positions that work around family life, as evidenced by all of us out here working and sharing the load with partners.

Realistically, a call centre is not a career for life. It’s usually quite a temporary job. You have great customer service experience. You absolutely will be able to find a 9-5 job. When I went back to work after mat leave, I earned £100 more than nursery cost (nursery £1100 and I earned £1200). I stuck with it though. And years later, I earn several times that, all because I put in the time in those years when I didn’t make much but I gained a lot of experience.

If you want to be a SAHM then do it.

One of the positives of modern life is women now have the ability to have much more choice in the matter - want to carry on working? That’s great .

Want to be a SAHM then? Also great. Go for it.

You will get a wide range of views on here, my own experience is positive, I was a SAHM for about 8 years and loved it. I then returned to work , and it suits me perfectly now , I have a 9-3 WFH role.

It stilll affects the bottomline of the family finances. As a couple they won't suddenly have more money because he pays half the bill.

This is a good point. It's not sustainable for a company to keep sending home staff on full pay, sooner or later there will be job cuts.

What does you partner actually do? If it's a on the tools job I'd be encouraging him to be really open to the idea of finding the best company to work for and side stepping into roles with more flexibility- they do exist. The rotating shifts and overtime are killer to family life. Usually a male dominated environment where if you don't have firm boundaries it will be expected that you work all hours under the sun at a moments notice. The only job I've ever been able to do around that was self employed.

I've found most minimum/lower wage jobs are completely un family friendly and inflexible. In your situation I'd get married then look to retrain in something. I'd be having lots of conversations with your partner about how things are going to look the share in child/home duties/working /money etc sit down and think about what you want the future to look like in 5 years. You both will have to be on the same team and page. You're potentially about to make yourself vunerable and he needs to understand that.

The nursery years are actually the easiest to work around it's the school years that can get difficult if there isn't wraparound or suitable holiday clubs.

It is really hard going when you have no support so nursery or a childminder can make the world of difference. I'd suggest perhaps finding a understanding childminder even if you're are studying/training and not working so you can get that relationship and dynamic underway.