Calling all MNers with large families....who work.

[mozhe]

We are expecting our 6th baby in october....all of them will be under 8. We are pretty well organised now, and have a marvellous nanny,( whose been with us since day 1 with our first ), and we will be having a maternity nanny too for the first 6-8 weeks. I usually go back to work at the 8-12 week stage part time and build it up to fulltime from there, but this time am thinking of doing it a bit differently. One MNer who posts regularly,( and speaks a lot of sense imo ), recommends going back much earlier at the 2 week point...I 'm seriously wondering about doing this as I think it would really help me establish a routine quicker. I live in France and work as an academic at the moment.I still breasfeed my twin daughters aged nearly one. Has anyone else tried this ? I'm genuinely interested in other peoples' experiences.

I'm not sure how much chance you have to get your body back in order at home with a baby compared with sitting still in an office all day being pandered to to be honest. I think having to get back into work suits can make you feel better too.

Anyway certainly people do it and in the UK it is after all only 6 weeks you get at 90% pay and after that huge numbers of people just cannot afford the massive pay cut down to £112 a week so we don't exactly have generous financial provision unless your normal wage is a pittance anyway.

More thoughts - if you're having a French maternity nurse, she'll be very keen on routine in any case, and you won't have to impose it as she will. You could probably manage not to have any time with the baby at all except for breastfeeding - I know quite a lot of women, again here in France, who handed the baby over to the démarreuse straight out of hospital and barely saw it as they were so busy working and getting back into shape with the help of their kinésithérapeute. If you are thinking of basically opting out of maternity leave, France is a great place to do this as no-one will be shocked (though they probably will be a bit surprised that you insist on breastfeeding in the circumstances).

Ok Anna thanks for that....actually my mat nurse is english, we have had her for all the births and she knows us so well.
I have decided to get an aupair girl to live in and assist nanny after the nurse goes home. I am keen to try and cut down on all the 8-12 weeks of complete disruption that always happens here post birth, and feel getting into our routine as early as poss will help enormously, also feel that the uni here don't ' deserve' a mat leave as they only have me for such a short while. My DH and I have been discussing and have decided that i will go back asap when I feel physically ready and he will take a month of A/L then to be around. I will also try to work at least some of the time at home in the first month or two.We will see how it goes though. I am not worried about the breastfeeding because it has always worked so well for me.

Only doctors seem to be allowed to take such short maternity breaks, it took a lot of persuasion to be allowed to work within the six weeks either side of the "date" yet all my friends who were doctors were working right up to last minute (maybe things have changed recently)

Probably just as well though as having ageing and sick parents (and one attentions seeking parent) I was doing equivalent of a full time job keeping them under control from about day 3.

Under English law if you are an employee (many mothers are self employed so what they do is up to them) you have to take 2 weeks off. I think it's 4 or 6 weeks for factory work. So vast swathes of women who are secretaries in offices, management consultants, accountants, lawyers etc all those employees can take 2 weeks off and then go back and no one is legally allowed to stop them.

Perhaps we need more of a campaign for this in the UK - that we can as English women make a legitimate choice we should not be criticised for in 2007 that if we want to we can actually return to work as soon as US and from the thread below some French women do and not be criticsed for that choice by other mothers or employers or anyone.

hmm - not sure the US really like being 'allowed' to return to work so early

Dare i say -i think it would be a tiny tiny minority actually want to leave a two week old baby?

Anna - did you see the recent press coverage on french women?

I wanted to and probably 99% of UK fathers want to if they're honest. Many of us find very small babies hard work and sometimes dull. What I did prefer was with the twins being here so the nanny could bring them in to feed and I found expressing for the older children a hassle. So I certainly think it's easier but it's not always possible, to have the breastfeeding baby brought to you for feeding. I loved that but I didn't want to be looking after it all day.

how awful

i would love to see if your five parent theirs in the same rather brusque manner

NotAnOtter - no, where was it and what did it say?

Xenia - the French women I am referring to are self-employed (as is the case for large numbers of French doctors, lawyers etc)

It said that french women were as a 'population' very unhappy with their lot.

Too bothered about appearances etc and actually envious of british women and our open and honest relationships with one another.

the element of competativeness and for want of a better word 'bitching' means they fail to bond with their friends in the way bristish women do and are ender up lonely and sad.

What about bonding with the new baby? Will that not be compromised by such an early return to work?

NotAnOtter - yes, undoubtedly true. French women's lives are a lot harder than British women's lives, not least because they encounter a great deal of injustice through the tax system and a lot more discrimination.

Connie, that's an interesitng issue, isn't it? I didn't feel unbonded with mine. I'd be holding them before work, breastfeeding at 8am; then when I got home at 6.30 or whenever feeding again, babies didn't sleep much so with them in a fairly bonding sense, if you count holding screaming baby for 2 hours as bonding..... and then we'd hand her to the nanny at 8am next day with some relief for a bit of time off but it's not like packing them off abroad for 5 years and not seeing them again. I didn't feel unbonded at all. And she's still bonding now as that one 22 years later is still living at home.

But did your baby feel bonded with you?

Dh went back to work after a week (popped into work during the week too) when I had our babies. They seem to have bonded well together.

Fair point but what about the maternal bond?

You'd have to ask the 5 children. We bond to the people we are with, elderly relatives, neighbours, friends, lovers, husbands, babies. If you spend no time with someone you tend to "unbond" so I don't disagree with your basic issue that bonding exists and is desirable for babies. They need to know people love them who will be there and won't abandon them but how many hours a day is the issue. I am sure they felt bonded to me but also to their father and presumably also to their nanny just as many chidlren also bond with grandparents who care for them.

In a sense yo udo them a favour by returning to work early because they aren't suddenly wrenched from you when they go to school or nuersery or when you return to work at 1 year after they have had a year of knowing mummy is always there 24/.7 and will never leave me and then suddenly she's gone. If they have a lovely loving routine of lots of time with mummy and daddy and breastfeeding etc except that their parents then each day go to work but they see them again I don't feel those separations whilst the parents work cause damage to the baby at all. Instead the stability of it benefits the child.

I have heard there's something to be said for the view that 12/13 months is not the best/easiest time to leave a child ie to leave them early fine to separate to go to pre-school fine most will adapt relatively well and quickly but 9-14 months (what will become the usual time with new mat regs) is one of the worst times to try and separate from the lo pov

It only becoimes the normal time for those lucky people who can live on the £112 a week maternity pay. Lots of people struggle once the 6 weeks at 90% pay is up.

Oh xenia please
You make me cring with some of your sweeping statements
Do you not think being 'wrenched' from its mother is a very different entity in a newborn than in a school age child.

Of course you do.

'doing them a favour' hmmmm

If the baby is looked after by a nanny at home when it is two weeks old it is less traumatic than if it is only ever used to a mother and then things are changed at 1 year. With the twins as by then I was mostly working at home I don't see how it can be wrenching at all. They would be in the living room with their nanny and I'd be a few yards away in my home office and if they wanted a breastfeed I'd happily to do it. I don't see why I have to be seeing them and holding them 24 hours a day to form some kind of proper bonding process.

Plenty of mothers traditionally of large families would put the baby out in the garden in the pram or have younger children mind it etc whilst she got on with all the physical housework people used to have to do and I don't think those children were traumatised and unbonded.

Baby in the pram in the garden ?? Hmm was asking my grandma and the women in her 'home' about this and they said they never did it

Xenia - I am not talking 24 hours close contact - just being there for a newborn baby

As I said before and not wanting to get personal but....I would love to see what childcare decisions your children ake as parents

Yes, but you haven't really said why my being in another room or in many cases the mother and father being away at work for 8 or 9 hours a day and there the rest is damaging the baby. I just don't agree that it does in any way. We'll know in the next 10 years or so probably if my older 3 children of whatever gender choose to work or not. 4 in 5 UK mothers of under 5s work so I'm hardly in some special category except in that I chose go back to work early and think it worked really well for me and the babies.