Childcare during labour

[MKWarrier]

Morning all,

Would anyone who doesn’t have obvious childcare available to them locally mind sharing what they did for childcare for older children when they went into labour with younger ones? We are a bit stuck for ideas!

All my family are abroad so they’re not an option. MIL lives 4 hours away, works, and doesn’t drive, so not really an option either. Nearest relative is SIL, who lives 1.5 hours away but she also works full time and has two kids of her own, so won’t necessarily be able to drop everything to help.

DD1 will be just over 2.5 when DD2 arrives (assuming all happens as we expect) and is happy to be left with family she knows and to go to nursery but I don’t think she’d be happy to be left with random friends of ours, and we can’t really think of any we’d feel comfortable calling to come over in the middle of the night who live
lose enough to us anyway. We don’t want DD to have a negative experience of being left with people that, to her, would be strangers as that’s going to give her a negative experience of DD2 before they’ve even met. She is term-time only at nursery, and baby is due mid-August so whilst we might be able to ring up on the morning, it depends on if they have a space and also whether the timing works out to even make that an option.

Obviously worst case scenario, DH could stay at home with her while I go in to have the baby but we would both strongly prefer that not to be the case. Last time I was in labour at home for 24 hours before going into hospital so if that happened again we would have time to sort it, but I’m aware second births are usually quicker and the last part of my labour last time was quite quick anyway (5cm to birth in 3 hours) so we can’t rely on that.

Any ideas or advice much appreciated! TIA.

Do any of the nursery staff offer babysitting? A lot of nursery workers do this, and if you've got a good relationship with any of them and ask, it might be a possibility? Even if it's just temporary until you can sort something else out like SIL coming to get her. I realise it totally depends on your relationship with the nursery staff but if they're earning extra money, and as a one off in special (and exciting!) circumstances, they might be up for helping out. Especially as they could do drop off and pick up without a problem!

Editing post as I see she's term-time only! Can you reserve a full time place through August now, in anticipation? If they know far enough ahead they might be able to guarantee more days so at least you'd have peace of mind knowing day time is taken care of.

This sounds like the best option to me, major benefit being that DC would already know them

This is our situation too. Here's what we're doing:

• increasing nursery hours to full time before DC2 due date
• booked a c section so we can have a date (obviously baby could come early but have to hope he hangs on). I have multiple reasons for the c section but none are medical, all my choice.
• booked relatives to look after DS1 over c section date. Hopefully that will just mean taking him to nursery and doing bedtime in the evening.
• speaking to neighbours about being emergency back up in case I go into labour early and spending time with them with DS1 so he knows them better

The staff at nursery are lovely and I’m sure would be happy to help if we were able to be a bit more precise about timings, but I’m just not sure I could call them in the early hours of the morning if that’s how it panned out. That would be ideal if we could make it work though. Good idea to speak to them about how likely they are to have availability in August if we need it at the last minute.

I did think about a c-section but I will need to be able to drive DD to nursery once DH goes back to work, and just manage her generally, which will be harder if recovering from a c-section. I could take her on the bus in theory, but it takes a lot longer so would add quite a lot onto her day.

We are in this position and essentially I'm resigned to going alone.

DC2 is breech so although a c section is booked, if i go into spontaneous labour, i have to make a mad dash to the hospital as baby isnt in a position to go through a vaginal delivery.

Our nearest family is about an hour away - if its the middle of the night, it's likely to be 1.5hr-2hrs to get to us by the time they've got dressed, got a taxi etc. Our plan is i will go to hospital on my own, DH will call our family and wait with DD1 for family to come ASAP, then join me at the hospital.

DD1 is in nursery FT, so if it happens during the day, we have family on standby to come and collect her from nursery and nursery are aware we'll do our best to collect her before 6pm but that family might be late.

We have some babysitting contacts through nursery (staff who DD1 knows but have since moved to a different setting) but thats not really a "middle of the night" scenario so only really an option if section definitely going ahead on booked date.

I'm sure you've thought of all this but IF you would be happy with a c section, could a family member come to stay during to look after DD?

Could DH take some annual leave after paternity so he's off for 4 - 6 weeks and can take DD to nursery? Or alternatively, is he in a job where he could wfh for a couple of weeks as special circumstances to take DD to nursery and back?

My friend had a home birth so that eldest could just stay home. Slept through everything and woke to a baby in the morning.

Does you pregnancy and previous labour allow for you to be considered for a home birth.

Sorry, failing spectacularly at multitasking today.

So you laboured at home didn't have a home birth?

I've had two sections, and whilst I think very positively about them, the aftermath is challenging. I would really make it a last resort if possible,

The lack of knowing when is the sticking point for being able to book a babysitter, so could you build up a pool of e.g. 3-4 willing to effectively be 'on call'? Sounds weird, but I would have thought there's a way.

We had a range of different options up our sleeves and called the ones who seemed to make the most sense at the time (DD1's nursery best friend's parents, called at 7am on a day they were both already due to be at nursery at 9am). To be honest, I don't think anyone (neighbours, friends, distant family members, school mums) minds being called on in this kind of scenario as long as it's not at 2am.

ELCS and keeping my fingers legs crossed that I didn’t go into spontaneous labour.

My mum was willing but just not close enough to guarantee making it in time plus won’t drive the route to our house and we had just moved from abroad so didn’t know anyone locally well enough and DD had been at her new nursery only a few weeks, plus covid meant we had virtually no relationship with the staff there.

DH added holiday onto his paternity leave, then worked from home so I had plenty of help with recovery.

I had a c section. Absolutely fine. Would still prefer to try VBAC if had another. I recovered well, only paracetamol and ibuprofen but it does hurt. Was 2 weeks before I was walking normal pace, no pulling or anything. I could have driven at 4 weeks. 100% you won't be able to pick up your daughter for at least 2 weeks, likely 4 and will probably still cause you pain. It's major surgery. I'd rather go it alone than have a c section unnecessarily if you were able to have an uncomplicated vaginal birth last time, but that's personal choice.

We took DD1 [2.5 yrs] to the hospital with us and MIL came, picked her up and took her back to ours. She drives and was about 2 hrs away. Labour was much faster second time around though so I was v glad when she arrived as I was getting to the point I really needed to have a bit of a moan. DH would have had to take DD out of the room. At that age she was oblivious and pottering around.

I think its Sitters.com have registered nannies who will do overnight care so one option is to talk to the nursery staff to see if anyone would be prepared to be "on call" but you'd have to pay for it as restrictive for the individual. They'd need to be ready to drop everything and go, so no booze and social events tricky.

We had a childcare fail. I'm going to share because although it was a fail, it wasn't a disaster!

The night I went into labour, my friend who was my childcare option texted to say she was A&E with her own child! I said not to worry, I wasn't expecting anything to happen that night - famous last words. We have no family nearby - all 250 miles away!

Went to bed late, then woke up at 12:30am with a bang - huge contraction. They continued coming like that - stayed consistently strong and every 2 mins. At 4am we tried knocking on our neighbours door, they had offered help and we knew our DD would be happy with them... BUT they didn't wake up - apparently they'd been up half the night with their poorly DD and despite hammering on the door we didn't wake them!

So we had to take bundle DD into the car and take her to the hospital with us. We arrived at the maternity ward at 04:45. I was immediately taken into a birthing room. DH was told that he had to stay outside with DD - outside the whole ward, not just the room! There wasn't even a chair to sit on, he had to ask for one! He was calculating that he could wait until 6:30 then drive DD home, drop her at nursery and drive back to me... when he was informed at 5:15 that I'd had the baby (born 05:02!).

The midwife then "smuggled" them both into the birthing room at about 6am and we had tea and toast together whilst DH cuddled newborn DS and DD pressed all the buttons on the bed making me go up, down, fold etc 😄 she wasn't particularly interested in her new baby brother!

DH and DD left to go home for a few hours sleep, I had a bath, then a nap, then the consultant arrived for morning rounds and checked DS and discharged us. DH arrived back with DD and a change of clothes for me and we were home as a new family of four for lunchtime, about 8 hours after birth. DH made me an amazing lunch and we put Finding Nemo film on and collectively snoozed on the sofa for a few hours. My parents arrived from Scotland that evening about 6pm and stayed in a nearby hotel for a few days to help out.

It wasn't a disaster. I had a fast birth, alone with just a fabulous midwife. No regrets at all just lovely memories.

Thank you so much for all of your suggestions. Definitely some good ideas there to follow up. @SingingSands I’m so glad the situation worked out well! Maybe bringing her to the hospital, at least until SIL could come collect her, might be an option, and then DH would at least be on site even if he couldn’t be in the room.

DH is a teacher so working from home won’t be an option. He’ll be off for the summer holiday the first couple of weeks after she’s born (unless she’s
late) and then my MIL is coming to stay in September to help out, but as she doesn’t drive she couldn’t do the nursery run if I do have a c-section (though I suppose we could keep DD at home until I’m able to drive, as I will have an extra pair of hands to help). DH will then take his paternity leave in October once MIL goes home.

I’m wondering if planned induction rather than c-section might be an option, but not something I know much about. The hospital tried to persuade me to have a home birth this time - the only reason we would have gone for it was because of the childcare situation, but we decided not to go for it in the end, especially as I could end up having to be transferred and we would be having to sort out childcare in an emergency.

I was planning a home birth with my 2nd, so intended to be at home anyway, but we wanted childcare in place both for being actually at home (so that dh could be with me as needed and not with a 5 year old) and in case I needed to go into hospital. We had absolutely no family help - were NC with dh's side of the family at the time for safeguarding reasons (so dd wasn't allowed to be in MIL's care anyway) and my family is abroad. Close friends are all teachers, doctors, etc. where they couldn't just not turn up to work because a friend was in labour.

We hired a trainee doula. She didn't do any actual doula-ing during the birth as I didn't want a doula, but the advantage was that she had experience being present at births so wasn't freaked out by any of it. And she should explain to dd what was happening and bring her in at the right times. It worked great. I believe at the time she was £250, which no doubt is a lot of money to spend, but it could have ended up being something like 12 hours of care, so actually was reasonable. Mostly she hung out with dd, got her snacks, watched a film with her, brought her up to see me a couple times when I was in labour and then after ds was born. And then she tidied up and went home. It worked really well and was money well spent.