Help me decide what sort of childcare to go for in September .... longish post

[VirginBoffinMum]

I'm having dc4 in April, and by then my other kids will be dd 21 (i.e. not needing childcare any more and away at uni), ds 11 and ds 8. I work full time about 1 hour 20 minutes away from where I live. I try to work from home every Friday, so I am out the house from 8-6.30 or so from Monday to Thursday. I've also got a minor disability that affects my mobility at the moment so I get quite tired, plus obviously I'll have a five month old probably waking me up in the night as well. DH works even longer hours than me, and part-time working won't be an option for either of us for a while.

Currently I have an au pair to do the school run and various bits and pieces to help me. However I am trying to decide what to do about childcare come September when I go back to work after maternity leave, and if anyone has advice or help I would be very interested to hear it.

There is a really good nursery at work but it costs £180 a week (probably less a bit more because you can do salary sacrifice), plus I wonder if the drive would be too much for the baby. It would be nice to have the baby near me though. I would probably still need an au pair on top of this for the older boys (£80 a week plus board and associated au pair management hassle).

Another option would be a nanny for all three, but I reckon this would probably cost me about £350 a week gross. Realistically this is a little bit beyond our means, but may keep me more sane. However I am a bit worried because I have heard a nanny wouldn't give domestic help and we would need someone to be doing washing and ironing and a few errands as well (I have a cleaner once a week for the main cleaning jobs). I am also a bit worried about whether a nanny would be hard to manage and fussy. I have been wondering about trying to get a Norland trainee to avoid this, but I am not sure if this means they will be any better. That would be £158 gross a week plus an one-off agency fee of £2000.

We don't have any childminders in our area and the local after school club closes at 6 and isn't brilliant, plus they usually ration it so you only end up with 2 or 3 days a week, but only find out which days at the last minute, i.e. days before term starts, which is why we stopped trying to use it.

As I say, any thoughts or advice on all this would be very helpful indeed.

The nursery we used when ds 2 was little is lovely, but it is three miles in the opposite direction to work through urban traffic, and opens at 8.30, whereas I have already left for work at 7.45. I come back between 6.30 and 7 and the nursery closes at 5.30. Anyway even if it was open that long, I think it would be a bit soviet putting poor ds3 in there for that long each day.

I worked very locally until recently but was made redundant 2 years ago, hence the long commute now, which I bitterly resent. It feels very unfair.

The other thing about the nursery, actually, is that even though it was a good one, and I am still in touch with some of the staff and we text each other in a friendly way, I hated the bit at the end of the day at pickup time when they said "Can we have a little word?" and went on to tell me all about ds2's infractions of nursery protocol, little fights, or whatever. Also being told off for bringing the wrong number of spare pants and so on.

I used to feel I was being told off personally and on edge the whole time as to what would have gone wrong during the day.

I had forgotten that. It's probably a by product of institutionalising the children. Ds2 actually tried to escape once, and I wonder if he felt like I did actually. I put it down to him being 2 and a bit naughty, but maybe there was more to it ...

I haven't read the thread, just the OP, but I would say that if you can afford it, get a nanny - it will be so much nicer for your little baby to be safely at home with a nanny with his/her brothers coming and going from school.

Can you be very upfront when recruiting your nanny about exactly what household chores and errands you will be expecting? Can you redefine your cleaner's job spec such that the nanny does everything child-related (ie all the children's laundry, ironing, bedroom and bathroom cleaning, meal prepping etc) and the cleaner does adult related laundry and general cleaning)?

err am i being really thick here but you are asking a nanny to work 4 12 hr days plus babysitting and paying less than th eminimum wage - i am sure you are alovely boss but that doesn't seem right to me, 12 hr days would be bloody hard work plus the babysitting ... i htink you need ot offer more money

unfort live in's dont include min wage, as guess the perks of not paying rent/food outweight the salary iykwim

Um, beg to differ there, it's live in and has six weeks' leave instead of 4.8 weeks, so it's well above the minimum wage. She'd be in the house anyway during the babysitting, as she would live here with us, and the kids would be asleep, so it's not the most challenging task in the world.

As a guideline, rent in our area for a shared house would be £400-£600 a month (probably with a smaller room in a less nice house for that actually - that's what my daughter was spending for a crappy student house last year around here), and food is probably £25 week minimum, so if you do the arithmetic properly, she would be on the equivalent of about £23,000-£25,000 gross before tax, which is more than a teacher with a degree and PGCE would start on, for very similar hours of 'directed time' as they call it.

Per hour it works out at the equivalent of £10.41. Bear in mind there is no commuting time or related costs here as well.

I'm not saying you are being thick, but I think you're confusing gross and net income and also the real life benefit in kind of board and keep and so on. It's actually one reason why I think nannies should start being encouraged to negotiate gross salaries rather than net ones as if it was the 1920s, because I think they look at other people's salaries and think they're very hard done by, whereas it's actually not badly paid when you add it all up.

sorry didn't realise it was a live in position, hadn't read whole thread , oops, but still disagree about babysitting it is part of a working week because she may have chosen to go out that night , i don't think you can say it is ok as she would bein the house anyway - she might not iyswim

£20,627 Starting salary for a qualified teacher
£24,908 National average wage

live in nanny gen do bs 1/2 nights as part of their weekly salary - quite normal

Babysitting is normal for live in, but I think you should recognise that it is work time for the nanny, she may not have wanted to stay in especially as she could go away for the weekend otherwise - and you just can't relax on babysitting nights the same way you would if truly off (no big glasses of wine for one thing!)

True indeed tankie but by the time she has realised I am letting her slope off at 10am every Friday instead of 12, and bunging her extra leave days here and there out of the blue, I think she will feel it's not too bad a deal.