if you have shedloads of help with your kids are you missing out?

[thewomanwhothoughtshewasahat]

met someone at the weekend with a 2 year old and a baby. I said something about it being hard work. And she said that she has someone one come and help her everyday for 6 hours a day. The helper comes at 1 - having picked the 2 year old up from nursery! So basically it looks like this woman is never on her own with 2 kids. I later overheard her husband go on about how amazing she was and how you wouldn't realise she had a 9 week old. [don;t know why I cared about that but it did niggle me, I felt like knocking on his head and asking if he would like to join the real world ]. On one level I do think, well if you can afford to make life easier why not, but on the other hand is tehre a smidgeon of benefit - a sense of achievement if nothing else - from the hard work? when dd2 was born I had about 12 hours a week when dd1 went to a childminder, reduced to 6 when dd2 was about 3 months. I do think it made an enormous difference. But if you take it to a certain level are you missing out on something? or am I an arse?

I know I started it. I was kind of glad it had died. then they blumen well put it on the home page. And if anyone thinks I'm in the jealous brigade (if indeed there is a jealous brigade)they can bog off. truth is I could afford a f-t nanny and not work at all. natch.

cat64 - very good point taht I totally agree with and have often thought too.

EXCELLENT point Cat 64.

I am about to contact the jobcentre re this type of help, hopefully to start a couple of months before the due date.

I see it as a pre-emptive strike against exhaustion and any other post-natal wobbles.
I relaise that I am fortunate in that that I will be able to pay for it, I only hope there are ladies out there willing to provide this type of service for a couple of hours a day.

If you have at least one other child already I think it may be of more use to a family than health professional referrals and AD's.

have a dreamt it or did you once get mother's helps at the govt's expense? I have a vague feeling that many many years ago you might have done.

you could get a means tested mother's help for a couple of hours or so don't know if you still can..I had one because of special need when dd2 was born

she was useless

actually she was a home help to be strictly accurate..but she wasn't actually allowed to do anything useful

I had to look after my 3 on my own the other day - nearly killed me! I don't see what the fuss is about - my kids are actually better off having someone else around - I am also at home. If I had total responsibilty for them 24 hours a day 7 days a week, I would actually have to tie them up!

I found my mother's help by advertising in the local Post Office - for those interested in tracking someone down.

I do pay quite well though (£8 per hour, usually only around £5 per hour is offered), so that could be why I found someone in less than a fortnight.

Am I missing something here? Is there something in the unwritten mothers guide which says you should make things as hard for yourself as possible? If you want/need/can afford help, then take it! If i didn't have nursery a few days a week I would go a) mad and b) broke as I wouldn't be able to work - so what's the problem? Don't mums have enough to do without insisting we all deny ourselves any help and become martyrs to 'the cause', whatever it is?

Kama,

What you call "smothering", other cultures call natural. I can quite see how you might not want your mother in law staying for six months, but in other cultures it is very common and I would say, very beneficial for both parents and children.

I've just looked back over this thread and wanted to answer the various points made by people wondering whether by not having help they are too tired/ grumpy/ brain dead to give their kids enough attention/ non grumpy interaction.

I have always consoled myself on my most tired/ grumpy days with the thought that its a good thing for children to realise that mum can have miserable moments but still love them at the end of the day. They might not appreciate it now but when they have their own kids maybe they won't feel guilty about not being super mums.

Or possibly they will hate me for it forever and turn into psycho killers .....

When ds2 was born, ds1 was still in a creche fulltime. We had to keep him in the creche, otherwise we would lose our place. I left him over there day after day because I could, we had paid for it and it made life easier for me but I regret it to this day. I feel that it could have been a time for us all to bond as a family, not that we didn't bond at all but it did contribute to ds1's jealousy over ds2.

that is very interesting, the point about different cultures and grandparents' involvement. My in laws are macedonian, and my dh arranged for them to come over when ds was born. They were to arrive just before the birth, and i started to get nervous that having them both in our tiny flat for a month whilst having a new baby was going to be too much for me. I wanted to learn how to have a relationship with my baby and not be told how to do it. So i asked if they could come later and caused a huge upset with my dh and his parents. They saw it a rejection. They did come later, but only stayed 10 days, and i felt they still thought i didn't want them there. Actually, once i had got into the routine and felt comfortable with knowing what my baby wanted, i was glad to have them there, especially my MIL. Now i would love to have her around, and hope that if we have another baby she will come over and stay a while, because she could help entertain ds whilst i sort out baby. I do hope she will come. I don't know why i was nervous about it the first time, i guess it is a culture difference.

Interesting point Cat64 and has just reminded me of about 20 years ago when I was in Germany and used to babysit for a 2 year old, her mother was pregnant and she told me that she was having an argument with Social Services about how many days her mother's help (funded by SS) was going to come in and help her when her new baby was born. I don't know the exact reason she needed help, I think she was ill during the pregnancy, but it struck me as pretty marvellous that the state was so forward thinking as to provide her with help - much cheaper than PND

I agree 100%, poppadum. My family has stayed here for months after the births of each of my girls and I'm SO happy that was able to happen.

I don't see the whole 'it's character building to do it the hardest way possible' thing. That just seems unnatural to me - after all, nature always takes the path of least resistance.

Haven't read it all, but I do feel that this person will have a very different understanding of what it's like to be a parent. And possibly will miss out on the character-building effects of being chronically sleep-deprived, isolated, desperate and having to muster up your last ounce of weary strength to sing a stupid song, play a stupid game, do something mindless, repetitive, disgusting or boring because there is simply no way out. She probably won't be a stronger, wiser person at the end of it IYSWIM.

But if we're going by that criterion, then all the mothers who have babies who easily breastfed or who fell into a routine by themselves, or who happily slept in prams while they did the shopping, or who didn't hate the sound of traffic etc etc... in other words everyone who did it easier than me would be 'missing out'... And I certainly wouldn't recommend my experience to anyone.

And if we start playing that game, then anyone here with an NT child is missing out because it has all been too easy. And anyone with a healthy spouse, or any spouse at all, or no serious financial worries etc etc has been missing out.

I don't think you can play this game and win.

Actually, I think I would win it, because when I were young, we lived in a cardboard box in the middle of the motorway, left for work half an hour before we got home at night, and our father beat us with a broken bottle every night... if we were lucky....

is it reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally that hard if you only have 2 kids...?

bloss, lol

Depends on the standards you set and the ages of the children Enid