No family support nearby, anyone else in this situation?

[mrskitty15]

Hello,

I am just posting on here on the off chance that other people may be in the same situation as me. We are parents to the most wonderful little girl and are very happily married but are finding it a struggle being so far away from family. We very rarely get to spend anytime on our own as a couple due to having no family local to help with babysitting which definitely has an impact on our relationship. I just wondered if anyone else on here is in a similar situation and if so how do you manage? I have considering relocating to be closer to family but I am not sure if that is a bit extreme?

Thank you :)

I think it might help if you get a young person of 17 or 18 to babysit for a couple of hours once a week while you go out for a drink nearby. We have never had family locally and this used to help us a lot.

We live in a different country to both of our families. Have a great babysitter but very expensive as is the norm here so very rare we get to go out together without dcs. The things I miss that my friends here with local family take for granted is the niece who looks after them while we go to the cinema ( making the expense reasonable) or the just popping home for a cuppa and an extra pair of eyes on dc for an hour. Little things....hard being away and sometimes so sad our families are missing my kids milestones

Had in laws nearby but they didn't want to help/babysit etc. you just pay for babysitters

Us too, both our sets of parents live abroad. We never have a babsitter and I guess it's just become the norm for us. My husband works away the vast majority of the time too, so it's just me and the kids. Don't really know any coping strategies except I cope because I have no other choice

Yep it's shit. Have two kids, both shit sleepers/early risers, we get maybe an hour in the evening to eat dinner and tidy and that's it. We've been out a handful of times for a couple of hours by getting friends to babysit. I find it hard not to feel jealous of friends whose parents have their dcs overnight every week when we've never had a proper night off in 4 years.

We have no family help and have 3dc. I think it's just a case of developing a strong friendship network of people you can rely on (and offer to help them out too) and paid help. I've always used older teenagers to babysit in the evening when the dc are asleep and as the dc get older and more predictable I have babysitters during the day when I need them too!
With my youngest I paid for her to go to nursery one day a week from age 9 months so I could get things done, primarily with and for my older children but also things like hairdresser, dentist, Dr for me.

we have had 1 evening on our own in 9 years....

Yeah I'm a LP and nobody near by. It is tough but very common, I think.

I can occasionally get a friend to take one of my DC for a bit but never rarely both together. It does get easier as they get a little older and can be in after school care or clubs so I sometimes can leave work half an hour early to at least do a quick food shop or go to the bank or whatever without them.

It won't be too bad, they'll be in school before you know it. Hard to believe, but true.

Ex Forces family here and never a relative nearer than 120 miles away!
Oh and 4 children under 5....
We didn't have a night away to ourselves until the eldest was 15!!!
But we survived...and we appreciate our downtime these days (youngest is disabled and will always be with us but at least he goes to his bedroom these days!)
I used to grab breathing space when they were at nursery. Made a couple of good friends who looked after the kids when I was in labour. I find it hard to imagine having grandparents on tap tbh!

That sounds very very hard StillMedusa

We have a child of 8 and another of 4. I have been away a couple of nights (work and a college reunion) and DH was in hospital for a week or so, but we haven't left the kids with a babysitter to go out for an evening yet.

Some very kind neighbours took our son for a few hours while I had an elective section.

We have had some lovely anniversary/ birthday/ Valentine lunches out though, with a small child in a high chair happily snaffling tidbits!

My parents are 150 miles away, ILs 200 miles away. DC are 7 and 10 now and DH and I still don't often go out together in the evenings.

I'm in an informal babysitting circle with local parents in similar position, and we also have a paid babysitter we sometimes use.

My mum was amazing when my oldest was a baby and used to come to stay about once a month to help out, she was still working part time too. I really appreciated it.

My parents are in a different country. Mil and Fil were in their late 60's early 70s when dh and I had children. Due to this even though they were 1 hours drive away when we first had children (now MIL is half hour) they have babysat 4 times. My oldest is 18

Once when dd1 was 14 months old and I went down with proper flu. MIL came and looked after DD1 for 2 days in a row simply feeding her and playing. Mil was exhausted literally grey in the face (and dd1 was a easy baby - MIL said this herself she was delightful)

2nd was when DD1 was about 2 MIl and FIL came and spend the afternoon with dd1 whilst dh and I (with baby dd2) went to a wedding for 5 hours.

3rd was when dd3 was sick one day and I had 1 thing I had to get done that day (I can't recall what it was but I can remember it was a time limited time so needed to be done that day) I drove dd3 down to MIl and she slept on MILS sofa for 5 hours

Final time was for dd2 one day where her primary school called to get me to collect her as she was very unwell with a cough. For some reason they could not get through on my phone. (no idea why as it was on and I had spoken to someone else about 2 mins prior to them phoning) So they phoned dh who phoned his mum and she collected dd2 and took her home.

DS has never been baby sat by in laws.

My parents are to far away to do any babysitting. So any level of babysitting we need has been done with close friends (love my then closest friend who took dd1 when dd2 was born and dd1 and 2 when ds was born and then agreed to take all 3 for when dd3 was due - however this didnt happen as dd3 arrived a bit quicker)

Reality is it has meant that dh and I rarely have gone out together, it is something we are now slowly working on bringing back. It has been interesting as the children grew to be teens (they all are this year) how this was a posibility again.

My worst experience of this was my having a V&D bug and dh was in America with business. I can remember throwing up into a bucket whilst standing in the kitchen cooking pasta and sauce for the children. (who somehow didn't catch the bug - I did clean my hands A LOT )

Another time of my being sick with a stomach bug I can remember phoning for pizza and dd1 who was likely about 8 took it in when it arrived. the lounge looked like a bomb filled with pizza had exploded, however the children had got fed and I had managed a bit of rest.

I hired babysitters if I needed time. Or sometimes asked friends.

I was on my own with them quite a lot too (DH would be working away for 6 months at a stretch)

You just get in with it. It never actually occurred to me that I was hard done by.

My parents were dead when I had dcs and the pil wouldn't have recognised them in a line-up and

It was particularly hard when I had dd and had no one with whom to leave ds. At the last minute a woman from the toddler group offered to look after ds, but when she had to go off to work and pil were asked to come over... Fil rang the delivery room repeatedly to ask when dh was coming back home (the staff were furious) and when dh finally came back they had a massive row because mil had been "bored" , I'd left the house in a mess , and to top it all I'd taken a long time to give birth.

At playschool I bravely suggested a babysitting circle. One of the mothers looked at me as if I were quite barmy and said, "Why don't you ask your parents?" To which I replied that that would require a seance.

Another one here. 3 kids, closest family about an hour and a half away. Coped ok when we only had the one child, but our baby sitter then left to go to Uni and never managed to get things sorted again.

The hardest thing was my parents relocating last year to be very close to my child free DB and his GF. That hurt.

No nights out here for at leat the past seven years.

I've mostly got over the fact that me and DH will not have much of a social life at night that does not require taking the DC with us, and being home before 9pm. The thing about not have freebabysitters parents to help out is the impact on working. Can't get a job in regular 9-5 hours, all evening/ night shifts so DH can look after the DC while I work. No emergency care if a child is sick. etc etc. Lots of my peers seem to be cruising through life because of this one factor.

Agree there, blindassassin1. A woman up the road (a hospital consultant no less) sneered at me for not working and actually said, "I could never let my brain rot." Every day this woman's mother arrives at 7am or thereabouts to look after the woman's dcs and stays all day. Some people just don't get it.

Yep; LP here. My parents & siblings (& their families) are in another country. Am seriously thinking about moving to be nearer them... Love it when any of them come to visit & I have just a little bit of time to myself. DD's twunt of a father would probably make moving very difficult.

Social life centres around friends' houses - with herds kids running generally amok. We like amok. Night out? Can hardly remember what that's like...

It is tough having to develop your own support network isn't it?
We didn't know anyone when we moved here when DD was a baby.
We did find a great baby-sitter though - a young woman who came to help out here when DS was a baby as part of her childcare course - so we've been out together a few times over the years!
We should have made the effort to do so more often I think.
Now they are teenagers perhaps we could try to get out more again, but I think we're out of practice

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if this has already been suggested. We set up a babysitting circle as a group of local mums - mums we'd met through toddler groups / nursery etc - all in the same boat of having no family living locally. We all started with a number of points, and then you spent points if someone babysat for you, and earned points if you babysat for someone else. Had a Whatsapp group where you'd put a message on "can anyone sit for me on Saturday night?". We all lived close by - in the early days with little ones, we put them to bed and then went out from say 8pm-10pm every few weeks. Was great to have people we knew and trusted sitting, and not having to pay.

Also, we used nursery staff - its more expensive but quite often nursery workers love to sit and earn extra money.

I think it's a pretty common situation these days. We have a 10 month old and pay a small fortune to nursery so that we can both work full time. Instigated evening routine very early so always have couple time from 7pm onwards. Have paid for babysitters via sitters.com since he was about 4 months old so that we can go out for dinner/see friends/attend a wedding etc. We are lucky to be able to afford to do this (just about) but, for me, it's essential for our relationship and my sanity!

We're in a similar situation, my mum lives over 2 hours away, and even if we were closer, she works full time including evenings so wouldn't really be able to babysit anyway. ILs have both died now sadly, though they lived closer. MIL would have helped I know, but she passed away before the children were born. We left children with FIL once but he 'doesn't do nappies' and we came back to a very sore DS2 one evening when we left them with him. Plus he had a tendency to just wander off and sit on the computer rather than actually watch them. Plus, his idea of giving them dinner was homemade doughnuts and candy floss, bless him.

Eventually we've found friends who have older teens who are great with kids and happy to babysit for a bit of extra cash, so occasionally we go out together and a friend's daughter looks after our 3. She's always really enthusiastic about doing so, and whilst we can't afford it that often, it's good to have someone who loves playing with kids. She doesn't mind if they're awake or asleep!

Our parents are both over 300 miles away but I have built up a network of teenage babysitters which works just fine. Does mean we have to factor an extra £5 an hour into the cost of any night out but it has to happen. My DH is often away with work so I get babysitters if I have stuff on during the week (sports, social etc) as well. I'd go mad if I didn't!