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.

Not, is that supposed to suggest that I am not a mother even though I breastfed and nurtured lots of children.....

I think some people just polarise it too much and talk about abandonment, not mothering, 12 hour working days, never seeing the baby because it's asleep every moment you're home from work and actually family life when two parents work full time is rarely like that. Babies are up feeding in evenings, nights, before work and then as they get older children are getting back from after school activities etc often by about 5 ish which is not that long before their parents are home and most two person working parent households one or other does try and want to be home reasonably soon on most days to play with the children who are fun. Just because I work doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed and bonded and had a good time with the children. About an hour ago I just left the 22 year old lying in the bed of one of hte 8 year olds and she had a huge 8 year old twin boy on either side of her cuddling and got on top to cuddle the three of them but they said I was squashing them... I just think you can have a nice family life and work and it's not an all or nothing choice.

Long maternity leaves when you employ a nanny for older children which is mozhe's position bring their own issues too and are not always helpful for the children and the nanny who have their own routine.

no but you seem to hold a lot of store by the fact that you fed them

Only because people were talking about bonding and I did feel it was a bonding thing and made me very close to the children and I loved breastfeeding them.

hmm

is it a phrase from Hamlet that I am searching for?

happiness is a cigar.......

oooohhhwwww who are you fff???

You are right 1dilemma I have made up my mind to try an early return...and I was looking for advice/ideas/tips from those that had done it,( like xenia..), or those that were interested in such an idea...I do not agree with juuule etc., and i am not interested in living a life of idleness like Anna..good tip about talking to french/american mums though, i have found several who think what I am contemplating is perfectly reasonable. Many think english women very lazy with their long maternity leave....

lazy?
Surely it is the nanny who is lazy - all she does is bring up the kids

mozhe - no, I am not idle. I bring up my children (two stepsons, one daughter of my own). What is more, it is very interesting to see how the boys have developed positively in recent times, now that they have a proper family structure, after early years largely wasted while their mother worked and they were babysat by nannies, grandmothers etc.

Nannies help care for children but it is their parents who bring them up....your stepsons had the excellent example in their mother of someone who is being economically active, which is a good thing in the human adult.

I like doing housework.

I like cleaning things, pegging out washing, sweeping, and all things domestic.

I like these all much better than any other sort of 'work' I've ever done.

I can't afford to stay home and do it, though.

Horses for courses.

So what if some people want to be cleaners at Heathrow?

What the hell kind of person slags people who do jobs like that off? What do you know or care about why they're there?

Honestly, that just right pisses me off.

Donald Trump's mother was a penniless Scottish immigrant who worked as a cleaner in a hotel and he's a billionnaire.

What's it to you?

FGS, it's people like you who give this country a bad name.

If women who take long maternity leave are lazy (I took 7 months leave with my DTS so I'm a real slacker), what does that make those who work in childcare? Malingerers.

This is what I don't understand when certain posters denigrate those who chose to spend more of their time raising their children and running their households. If it is not work, why do you need to employ somebody to do it?

mozhe - my stepsons have a mother who ignores them. Not a good role model. This is quite a big problem in Paris - only on Monday was my partner talking about this issue with a prospective shrink for his second son.

I was (extremely) economically active for many years, so can afford to take a break to ensure that the family structure functions.

Well put Expat. It is immigrants like my parents doing the menial jobs like cleaning in this country.

I like ironing. I contemplate the technical feasibility of the next research proposal that I'm planning to submit on the design of a new rocket motor whilst I'm ironing my DTS clothes and DH's work shirts.

Ironing is great thinking time.

My dad's mother was also a maid in a hotel and later a house cleaner, speedy. Dad started working at the age of 7, running off a milk truck to put the milk on peoples' porches for a few pennies, which helped the family get along. He's been a valet parking attendant, a busboy, a paper boy, picked fruit and veg, etc.

He's done very well for himself, I must say.

But if there's one lesson he absolutely drilled into us, it's to show a little respect to EVERYONE doing a job.

As he said, 'You have no idea why they're there, it's none of your damn business. And you have no idea what they or their children will become. And believe you me, people like me have a long memory.'

i am bloody bright and relatively articulate woman
educated to a high standard
the only thing i am actually good at is cleaning

i have two so you are far more experienced than me however - with my first, i had a job where i could bring her everywhere with me and that is what i did (breastfed until 9.5 months). when dd2 was born, i did not even miss a single day of work. (although the first two weeks i worked from home), then i brought her to the office everyday until she was 2.5 months, and then went back to work and she stayed home with our nanny (also has been with us since day 1). nobody's routine was disrupted, everything ran smoothly, at work everything went smoothly, it was great.

And if that's what makes someone happy, what's it to the rest of the world?

I mean, really. We have only one life to live, and it's short and full of enough miseries without feeling compelled to turn it into some kind of warped political statement.

if you look around, you will find plenty of workign mothers who are hardcore at their job and at home, and you will find plenty of insipiration that it can work for you if you want it to. its all about what you think you can do and putting yourself to it. and it doens't matter what type of work it is.

My 'mother' was like Xenia in many ways a kind of warped sense of feminism
She had 10,000 degrees and was always trying to better herself - politically active - loads of voluntary work etc etc -JP....
She was a crap mother

too bad you had that experience. i've heard of success stories either way. did your siblings also suffer? sometimes it has much to do with the child's temprament.
either way most likely its a happy mother that produces happy children, whatever it is that makes her happy.

she was unfailingly miserable and still is
yes they did
albeit one was excused the batterings

Looking after someone's children as a nanny is a completely different role to that of a parent. Nannies are paid, take holidays, are not usually related to the child(ren), do not necessarily think about their charges when the are off duty, don't worry about providing money/housing/education for them, don't provide breastmiilk etc etc I could go on....It's as similar as being a paediatrician and a parent.One ia a job the other is not. I respect my children's nanny enormously and she is doing a first class professional job BUT I am the children's parent not her.There is no comparison.
Thanks for input 'Idon'twanttogetoutofbed '.
Anna, perhaps you should consider going back to work since I think you are in danger of confusing two aspects of yourself...worker and parent.

I also feel my nanny is super at her job and extremely professional. she is also my help who i pay to help me, which is her job.
whoever confused nanny and parent obviously doesnt employ a person to help.