Looking for advice on a potential big move please. I would be really grateful for your thoughts.
So DH, DC1 and I currently live in a town we really like and feel very settled having lived here 5+ years. I have a small network of friends who I see (pre lockdown) weekly, we both have good jobs, love the area, central location (not far from big cities) and the town has everything we need.
The issue is for me is we are 2 hours away from my parents, my siblings, and 2.5 hrs from in laws (who also live in the same county). We have no family nearby.
We bought a house a year ago here and umm-ed and ah-ed at the time whether we should infact move back to my hometown, to be closer to both our families, so it has been on the cards before. We decided on staying in our current town as friends/jobs here were important to us and we felt settled.
Fast forward a year and things have changed a bit. Covid has made me realise what’s really important (family!), DH is now able to work remotely so could keep his job if we moved, and I recently found out that I am pregnant with no.2. I am feeling more and more like I miss our families and want my DC(s) to grow up with them nearby, and I would also benefit from the family support. Personally, I feel 2 hours away is too far to maintain the kind of closeness that I had with my own grandparents growing up, who lived in the same town.
Our parents are not getting any younger. I’m worried about what will happen to them we they get older and that they will need looking after in the not too distant future, and we will be too far away to help.
I started to feel this pull to move a lot harder when recently one of my siblings announced she is moving back to our hometown. She has a little one of her own and I would love for DC to grow up close to their cousin. I should also add we both love my hometown and the area, so overall location wise we would not be losing out by moving.
I think,however, that if we did leave, I would massively miss my friends and support network of Mums with kids the same age here, would miss a place that we made our own (we built a life for ourselves from nothing here), I think job opportunities are a little bit worse for me in my hometown, and DC is very settled in his childcare etc. Finally, we are mid renovating our house so to have to move before we’ve made much progress with that is a right pain tbh. We need to leave by November this year due to needing to do DCs school application shortly after next Xmas.
I feel writing this down, that there are numerous reasons to stay, and only one real reason to actually move back home, however that one reason is so much more meaningful, because it’s about family.
I would really grateful to hear any thoughts on this, and to hear from anyone who has been in a similar position would be really helpful! Thank you in advance.