Advice on having baby 2 with no family support around us

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We have an 18 month old and I really want a second baby but we don’t live near either of our families (no option to move closer). I have friends and family who have 2 children and all they seem to say is how they couldn’t do without family to help. (We are opposite ends of the country)

It’s really bothering me as we really struggled with the first year of our baby because we don’t have any options for help whatsoever.

I wanted some real life advice and I suppose tips from anyone in our situation who has 2 children on how you made it work without losing your mind and struggling too much to cope (my fear)??

Also is there a better age gap (not that we have much control over the magic that is conception) but where possible is there an “easier” age gap?

I'm in the same boat as you. Baby number 2 is coming in a couple of months when number 1 will be just past 3.
I may be proved wrong but I think this will help because she can easily go play at a friend's for a little while and is generally a bit more self sufficient.

I do think it'll be hard, but doable. Even when just one, we have to be ridiculously organised about bag packing, late work and all the other house stuff.

I bet there’s plenty of people with 1 baby who say they couldn’t imagine doing it without family help. You’d cope because you’d have to cope/ you pay for additional help- eg. nursery, babysitter, cleaner.

Hundreds of people have 2 or more dc without family help, some like myself because of the distance (i had 4) and others because family refuse to help. It is doable op, you make friends and help each other out without taking the piss. For me a 2.5 year age gap was perfect.

My kids are 15 & 12 now but I have never had any regular/reliable family support. My husband even worked away from Monday-Friday for five years.
It can be done

It's hard work but I wouldn't change it. We have no family nearby. My DH and I work back to back shifts and have done for nearly 10 yrs. You need to be prepared to sacrifice your sanity sometimes but despite my DH and I not seeing each other alot it's worked for our DC’s

I have a four year old and an eight month old and have no family help. We manage fine, sometimes the house is a tip but that's to be expected. My four year old goes to nursery four afternoons a week which helps (council nursery 16 hours a week so no cost).

Never lived close to family. Three children every other year (23mos apart, then 18mos apart). In fact for dc3, we decided to move closer to family. So we moved from Canada to Glasgow. Family are on south coast.
I think being close to family isn’t super common. There are always ways to meet friends when you have little ones. Life gets immeasurably harder on that front when they are school aged.

For me the change to two made me really, really jealous of families with grandparents/aunts/uncles on hand. Not just for the practicalities but also for the fact their children just had more love going round at a time when I felt we needed it.

I have three now, and my nearest helpful relation is five-six hours drive away.

Tips: become friends with people in similar positions. Create your own “family” with friends nearby.

Get organised, really organise (this is more important still when they’re at school and it’s even more of a juggling act).

Pay for the childcare you need. Don’t feel guilty about the occasional day when they’re in childcare and you’re doing it.

Remember it doesn’t last for ever.

Try and not feel to jealous/seethe openly when you hear people wondering whether to drop off their child’s at their mum’s now or later as they want some time to theirselves...

Don’t tie yourselves in knots visiting family along way away. It is complicated with buggy/pram/cots/other paraphernalia + if you have bad sleepers it is hard work.

Good luck and go for it :)

We had practically no family help. What help is it you need? 2.4 years between our DC. I went back to work pt at four and five months respectively as it was the only break I got, and we paid for nursery, after school club and childminders for the next 14 years, and took opposite annual leave when they were on school holidays. Never had a night away until they were both at scout camp aged about 12 or 13!
You just get on with it.

We don't have any family to help us out except an evening's babysitting a couple of times a year. Our DCs are 5 and 3.

We've managed by paying for childcare (kept eldest going to childminder/preschool whilst off on mat leave with youngest), having a cleaner once a week, me working part time self employed around school/funded hours, and DH sticking in a job which now offers no further progression but it's local and offers some flexibility (he will be able to switch jobs when 3yo starts school in Sept).
Our pre-DC friends live about 1/2hr away and we can call on them in an emergency. We have made huge efforts to get to know other families in the community, by going to village events and volunteering, and there are now a few people locally we feel happy leaving DCs with. We will reciprocate childcare too, although so far it has only been given/received for one-offs that I haven't been able to sort after school and nursery care for. We pay for a babysitter if we want a night out and we've already used the couple of family babysitting credits we get (this is expensive so doesn't happen often!)

Are you able to throw a little bit of money at the problem OP?

I have 2 dc, 3.5 and 1.5y, with no family help. I don't find the day to day of looking after them myself difficult. In fact I think learning to only rely on myself has been good for me maturity-wise.

The only issue I've had is when I went back to work after my second mat leave. When they were sick and couldn't go to nursery - which was every week - there was only me to look after them. It meant taking an enormous amount of time off work, which was ultimately unsustainable and I gave up working. So it has been a big change for us.

It depends on what you envisage family might be able to help with.
If you are both planning on working once your maternity leave is over, and you can afford to pay for all the childcare you need, you will not necessarily struggle without your family nearby.
If affording childcare is a challenge, I can see why having family nearby to pick up some of the childcare might be useful.
We had no family near until DC2 was 2. The childcare costs nearly broke us as I ended up having to put some nursery bills on my VISA card The logistics were always a nightmare.
One DGP now lives nearby and it's great to know there would be a back-up if something went wrong. Both DC are now at school, and DGP does one critical school pick up and drop off each week (easy walking distance). Gamechanging. We don't ask them to do any other babysitting on weekends or evenings, as feel they already do so much by helping out on a Wednesday, and don't want to take advantage.

We never had help.

What worked well was planning ahead as much as possible and seeking out other parents with no support so that we could support each other in emergencies. Being around other parents who got it was helpful.

DC2 was weirdly easier than DC1, because we at least knew what we were doing second time around. I was terrified but it was actually much easier than expected. You don't realise how much you have learned until DC2 comes along and it feels like second nature.

What I would do differently is avoid getting into the habit of visiting family every single holiday. We were late to realise that our own family needed down time together and that visiting family was not the same as having a break.

Remember that there are also a lot of stresses which you will never have to face. MN is awash with interfering inlaws and family tensions. You can get on with parenting in the way that suits you and your kids best.

Having to do everything on our own made our family unit tighter over the years. It also means that our DC have had to be fairly independent and organised as they got older, which isn't a bad thing. They had to learn to be flexible and patient from a young age. If one needed to go to the hairdresser or doctor the other would have to come too, whether they wanted to or not.

There's no doubt that it can be tough. But DH and I were talking about it the other day and agreed that we would do it the same way if we had our time again.

I didn't have any family around. I had a 3year and 3 month age gap which I think was quite good. Took eldest to pre school and had time with baby/ nap if I was lucky. It's hard just getting your first breakfasted and to pre school on time but you do get a bit of a break and a three year old can do some things for themselves.

19 months between mine.
No local family support
Had two days of step mum staying after second
Other than that we just got on with it and no paternity leave in those days ...early 90s
It was fine...you just do it !!! 😊

Lone parent from before DD2 was born (widowed). Family not local. Managed fine.

Will be absolute doddle with two parents OP:)

Hi op I had my second early last year and both mine and DH family don't live close by my family are 2.5 hours away DHs 1.5 hours away so not miles but still a fair bit in terms to be able to help out at a drop of a hat.

It is hard in terms of doctors appointments trips out etc during the early stages of newborn but once they get to about 5-6 months it becomes that much easier then to deal with a toddler and baby I found things picked up for me in that I could go shopping again easily by sitting them both in trolley together, heading out to the park.

You just have to get more organised with the mornings I would lay out clothes for baby and toddler the night before so they were always ready for the following morning. I would also take advantage of knowing that my toddler would sleep in until around 7ish so would make sure baby was fed first and dressed first allowing me to then deal with toddler , your DH also needs to be on board to help out with night time as me and DH have found we've had to take it in turns having sleepless nights it is a lot harder with two than dealing with one as sometimes you can end up both not sleeping if both children are having a bad night .

My saving grace was that my DS was able to start pre school so goes three days a week for mornings and that helped a lot in terms of me getting time with my DD and using that time to my full advantage to get stuff done round the shops house etc or even when DD would/does nap I'll sit down with a coffee and enjoy the peace and quiet it also helped my DS in that he's getting time out and having fun and independence of his own that's a big must if you can look into that for your oldest DC

We have 4 children, both of my parents died when I was pregnant with our youngest baby in 2017, and my DH's parents live 100 miles away, she's bed bound and he is her carer. My DH works away during the week so I am literally on my own with no support mon-fri, and although some help would be great, it's fine!

I have 18 months between my 2. Family are all 200 miles + away. My mum comes for a couple of days every 3 months or so which is nice but day to day I have no help and I’m a stay at home mum so no childcare.

It’s fine, we get on with it. I didn’t find going from 1-2 any more difficult to be honest. I’ve never known any different so I just manage. But I am very envious of people with helpful hands on parents nearby to ease the load.

What I find the most difficult really is having to take them along to everything, like Doctors appointments or the dentist because I have no one that can watch them for half an hour. I was taken ill with appendicitis and my husband had to take a lot of time off work as we had no one to help, that sort of thing is difficult but day to day it isn’t so bad.

My DH and I live 10,000 miles away from our family. The journey back to our family is long and expensive, and none of us can really afford it.

We managed just fine with zero physical contact from any of our family. My advice is to network with other parents as much as possible! Once you start talking to people and paying attention you will be amazed how many of them are immigrants or have lost their parents early on. Make friends with those people. Babysit for them. Support them. If they are decent people they will return the favour. They will understand what you are going through.

No family anywhere close to us. We were very lucky in that my parents came and stayed for a few weeks when DC2 was born and I had an elcs which made booking flights etc easier, so they were able to look after 2 year old DC1 and generally help us out a lot. But after that we were on our own.

Luckily I have lovely friends, many of them in similar boats. So we kept each other sane. And helped each other out. And nursery for my toddler 2 mornings a week. And fortunately my DH has some flexibility with his work hours so he could work from home if I had an appointment and watch one or both kids. Then just make up his hours.

It is hard. And I was often jealous of those with help nearby. But it’s definitely possible, especially with friends

We coped with getting outside help. First two are 20 month gap so we kept eldest in nursery and had two hours help when she came home so I could focus on her before putting baby down. We also had a cleaner once a week. Now we have a third and the older two are in school. We have an au pair to help w the older two and dog. I understand not everyone can do this. Some kids are more difficult or easy then others. So some can cope just fine with out help. I did manage the weekend on my own w all three kids and the dog.’insurvived. You manage to cope when you need to do. Must be very organised!

Thank you so much for the replies, genuinely feeling more positive about it.

My fears are that I won’t cope with having a toddler and baby, specifically trying to be a mum to two with no sleep and nobody to watch the older one on days where I just need some help. I suppose I’m just worried I will ruin/miss out on time with my older child when I’ve got to look after a newborn.

Not sure if these are normal worries but with one I struggle with things like if I’m not well I have nobody to help out, I took my one year old to the dentist for my appointment and he got so worked up I left half way through. Me and my husband currently work childcare between us so have one weekend in 2 off together so no weekdays off together...

nobody to watch the older one on days where I just need some help

So take steps to make sure this doesn't happen. Just because your family aren't around doesn't mean you have to face everything alone. Put the time in now and build up a support network of good friends who help each other out.

And as others said... you will always find a way to cope