Anyone else bringing their children up with little help from family and feeling all the better for it?

[Gateau]

My family live 200 mls away and inlaws aren't that brilliant so DH and I have had little help with our DSes (3.6 and nearly 1) in the early years. It's been tough at times, partic as DH works long hours and most weeke ds, but I do feel proud that we've (me, a lot of the time!) pretty much done it alone. It's a good to not have to depend on anyone.
And I guess it's because I spend so much time with the boys- and am used to it- that I don't crave time away from either.
I don't mean for this to sound smug, but I just feel very proud to have come through some very tough times and come out stronger and extremely close to my boys.
I often read posts about people having no family nearby and therefore no help.just to let them know, it can have it's advantages.

Yes, I agree Gateau. We were in the same situation for the first 6 years of dd's life. As a result, we are a very tight unit now & very self-sufficient.

We do it as both sets of parents are 2hrs drive away and DH works away a lot. I just feel sad though that the DD's don't get to see their GP's very much .

However, i was pleased the other day when i needed to sort some daytime childcare and an evening babysitter and found people straight away as i have managed to get myself sorted with a fantastic support network when i need it. I don't rely on the fact that a family member would just come and cover me, as my DSIs did last week, getting my 73yr old Mum to drive over to her house (1/2hr round trip) to drive her to the post office

It is tough, but makes you more capable to deal with stuff IMO

Same here. My parents are 400 miles away and DH's mum is elderly and 600 miles away. My DB and DSIL are in between, so there is absolutely zero help available from family the majority of the time.

We're geographically fairly isolated, we run only one car and I'm frankly amazed we cope as well as we do. We have some close friends about 30 miles away that I know we could call on if needed, but we've not needed it so far.

DH and I recently had our first evening out without children in 4 years when we were staying down at my parents. One whole hour to ourselves!!

In some ways I like having useless grandparents, because it does mean we feel less obliged. So when we wanted to move 250 miles with small children, it was a plus that the local grandparents had been utterly uninterested in our children - it made it easier to move.

And, without grandparent care options, we have probably been freer to share childcare with friends, and this has been nice, friends are important to me (more than family), and I like sharing childcare reciprocally with friends.