Work Life Balance

[LEWorcs]

This grey miserable afternoon has got me wondering how many of us mummies are sat at home trying to juggle children and work. As well as working for the lovely Mumsnet people I am also self employed trying to find a way to work in between school hours - is that even possible?
I decided to go self employed after spending hours trawling the internet for that elusive work from home job that would allow me to the school runs either end of the day. All I came up with was pyramid and MLM schemes like Forever Living etc.
How do you lovely ladies cope?

:-)

Well I work 32 hours per week in a job in the same town that I live in. That's over 5 days so no Fridays off unlike some. The DC go to before and after school club but not every day. DP does 4 pick-up /drop-offs out of 10 by working from home twice a week.

Wow worccyclist thats a lot of hours. Definitely useful for someone in the house to have flexibility to work from home and do the drop offs a bit.
I find it so frustrating to have to pay so much for wrap round care - can totally understand how some people cant afford it and find it hard to justify going back to work.

I only work 2 days per week. My husband works from home so is usually able to do the school run on those days. We're very lucky and it works for us at the moment, but as his hourly rate is about 20 times mine I can't help thinking it's not particularly financially efficient for us to do it like this! However, I enjoy working. It keeps me relatively sane and he gets to spend time with the boys.
When I went back to work after my first baby, it was costing me money with childcare and petrol, but I took the long view and thought about the ultimate cost if I couldn't get back into work after taking a break. Ultimately, they made me redundant anyway, but I still think it's sometimes necessary to take a hit to stay in the game.

It doesn't feel like a lot of hours, I've worked more and less since having DC. They are only in wraparound 2 x 1.5 hrs after school and 30-45 mins 3 or 4 days per week before school (less if we are running late). Before costs £3 / session. After school costs £6 for 2 hours. Yes it all adds up to about £200 per 1/2 term but is not an unreasonable compared to our household income and nothing compared to nursery fees of £1k per month!