How the fuck did people do this before the pandemic

[BluPeony]

Last year I had my first DC. I took my full year of maternity leave and added on a month of annual leave and I have enough left that I'm working 4 days/week until basically the end of the year.

There was a requirement for us to be in the office 1 day per week, now up to 2 days. It'll likely go up to 3 days by the end of the year. I don't know if they'll build up to full time because they're being very cagey and vague and actually we've recruited so many people that there aren't enough desks for everyone and before the pandemic the company was trialling loosening the office/WFH balance so that it didn't have to move into a larger office and pay more rent.

But anyway. My commute is 70-90 mins door to door. I go in on Mondays because it's a bit quieter on public transport and it's my partner's day off to look after the baby so I feel okay about being so far away.

I've been trying to decide which other day to go in and it's just shit no matter which way you look at it. I would have to drop my baby off at nursery when they open at 8am on the dot and I'll still be in the office after 9am - so I'm screwed if anyone puts in a 9am or early meeting. I'd have to leave work early to make sure I can pick him up when they close at 6 and I'd still be in deficit with my hours and would need to make the time up somewhere. My partner can't do the nursery runs because he has compressed his hours to allow him to be at home on Mondays and he doesn't have an option to WFH.

We're discussing one of us going part time, etc etc to try and make this work but it got me wondering how on earth people did this before/do this now if they can't work from home - do you just only see your baby at the weekend?? Do you work part time? Give up work? What about maternity pay if you want another baby?

I'm exhausted. I hate going in to sit at my desk on a Teams call with other people at their desks. I hate that I'm missing out on so much with my baby. I feel like I'm becoming a shittier mum with a short temper because of the stress and tiredness. I was just getting into the swing of things before I went back. I'm feeling very sorry for myself tonight and not looking forward to my commute tomorrow at all.

Many of us have no choice t work from home. Have to be at work in person ready to start at 8:30. Childcare providers can make things tricky but my old nursery day care setting opened at 7. It got harder when we needed school wrap around as they open at 7:30 and I need to be on the road before that to avoid the traffic but for a number of years I had to just deal with the longer commute and worry that I’d be late. My commute can be 20-25 minutes on a good day but well over an hour on a busy day of traffic. The same issue with collecting times as I would have to collect by 5:30. I work part time and can’t work the day that staff are in til 5 as this would not be enough time to get back to the wrap around for 5:30 in leak traffic. God help anyone who works til 5 or 6 and relies on wrap around traffic with a commute. I guess those are the people who work part time, condensed hours, have a child minder instead.

when I had my first I dropped to working 4 days of hours in 3 days but it was a flexible job where I didn’t have to be in the office and where I travelled around a bit and where I had co for over the hours I worked. My partner at the time worked 12 hour shifts of various rota patterns so his job was no good for childcare as nowhere was flexible to work with his shifts. I was made redundant and ended up in a school teaching (had left teaching to do previous job but couldn’t find anything else). The job o was offered was part time and this worked for me to be able to see my kids more but the lack of flexibility in teaching is tricky. Especially in an independent academy type school where they prescribe your hours more.

Can you either swap jobs to work closer to home OR enrol your baby in a nursery close to your work… that way you can drop your baby off 10 minutes before you are due to start and also collect her straight after you finish. She’s also only just round the corner from you that way should you ever be needed.

I was a single parent. It was exhausting and expensive.
I had no option of wfh, and even if I had, I would have been expected to put my children into nursery and wraparound care (7yrs between my two) because you can't put everything into doing your job if you're constantly breaking away from your work to tend to your child(ren).
I find all these people who wfh and trying to tend to kids at the same time, should be paid a reduced rate as they're not concentrating on the job.
You should either give up work and do your own childcare or if you want to work, you then have to pay someone else to look after the kids.
I can guarantee that I would never employ someone if they thought they could look after kids at the same time as doing the job I'm paying them to do.

After I had children but before I WFH I used to compress a .6 contract into 2 days I had a long commute (1.40 little traffic, 2.30 with traffic), we used to pay for a Nanny to look after both children one day, eldests school run, and youngest all day plus the dog for one of the days. DH would compress his full time work into 4 days and would have youngest on the other day. It worked for a long time. Then DH won a contract which meant he either had to have a long commute or stay at work for part of the week and our situation no longer worked so we made the decision based on earning potential (I was public sector) to give up my career and get a different job one that was more family friendly for my family.

When you work from home are you looking after your baby at the same time, if so, it’s probably the reason they want you in the office more. I think a lot of employers have found this and think they are paying people to be at home with their children and not actually wfh!

OP isn’t talking about WFH with the baby there!

But with a commute of 70-90 minutes each way and nursery hours of (say) 8-6, her office hours look like 0930-1630, while if she WFH she can work eg 0830-1730.

Both my partner and I work full-time, and we have a 10-month-old and a 3-year-old. Our routine involves me dropping them off at childcare at 8 a.m., with my workday starting at 9 a.m. My partner, who works from 8 am to 4 pm handles the 4:30 pm pick-up.

On the days when my partner needs to go into the office, I take care of both the drop-off and pick-up. To make this work I finish a bit earlier and catch up on tasks after the kids are in bed.

It's a busy life, but we manage it to pay the bills and enjoy the things that make us happy, both for ourselves and our kids.

Before covid people don’t expect to be able to work from home, they were expected to be in the office or wherever work was based. How childcare would be managed was part of the decision process in deciding whether to have kids or not - at least it was for us! Before covid I commuted 4 hours a day. When we decided to have kids I transferred closer to home as i knew commuting wouldn’t be possible and unfortunately my husband’s job didn’t offer much in the way of flexibility.

Both me and DH worked FT we did a flexible working arrangement where we had every other Wednesday off him one week me the other.
He did nursery drop at 730am as I was already in the office then, and he would just have enough time to get on the road 8am as the minute he is on the road he is working. I would leave at 5pm to get them at 545pm which is when our nursery closed (sometimes the traffic would mean I would be cutting it fine even though the office was only 6miles away)
1 day a week my in laws who lived 90min away would come over and collect the kids at lunch time from nursery so we could fit more hours in that day. But the kids were always 1st ones at nursery and last ones to be collected. We're there 3.5 days a week at cost of £18,500 per year. And then they hit primary breakfast club 730am, after school club until 6pm

Routine is the key and maybe a shared 9 day fortnight arrangement. It's hectic leaves little time to rest and enjoy family time unfortunately but then weekends and holiday are key to doing that. My suggestion as well when they start school know the term dates and plan your leave I plan mine on my team 18mths in advance I have 13 weeks school holiday to contend with most don't as they don't have children. Those of us that do plan it meticulously if their company allows

My friend was a single parent and the only way it worked for her was to commute with her child into the City of London. The child was dropped off at a nursery next to the main line station and then picked up after work. The commute however was approximately 40 minutes though. 70-90 minutes is long. Good luck it was so tough for me that I gave up work for a few years.

We just had to!

Mine is a lot older now but both of us worked 5 days a week in the office, at the time I felt like I was missing out on a lot but I made up for that during the time we did spend together, reason most likely we only had one child. Maternity leave was only 6 months and he was born 2 months early so spent a month in hospital which came out of my maternity leave. Going back to the office was really hard but no choice we needed the money and neither of us could afford to go part-time. My husbands job was a little easier so he would work from home on the days he needed to. A lot of school mums on hand to help if I needed it and my mum would visit during the holidays or he would go to her. I do think back as I generally WFH to how much easier it would be for me if I had a child now. We struggled but I suppose as we both worked we would make sure the time spent with him was quality time. I missed out on nativity plays etc. Now he is more of a friend than a son so I assume it has made no difference to him but it enabled him to go to a fee paying school and have things we would not be able to afford if one or both went part-time? It is hard at the start but you will fall into a rhythm and it will all work itself out. Good luck

Worked part time and had a few years off / did some evening work. Scraped through. Was stressful with 3 dc. No Gp childcare. We managed but now I’m mid fifties with no real pension and not having really fulfilled my career potential/ goals.