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.

We chose childcare that offered 7-7 and both went down to part time so DC was only there 2-3 days a week.

One day a week in nursery is not recommended by many places, as children find it hard to settle. So if I were you I’d get DH to change back to FT hours non-compressed, and then you can both share the drop-offs/pick-ups for nursery 2 days a week.

How did you cope on just 1 salary? Many couldn't. Mortgages etc based on both.

We had zero family help, DH worked 10-11 hour days. It was hard.

This is wrong.

The commute is part of OP’s issue. Same as for all parents needing childcare.

The post I replied to implied, since mums in a supermarket can work 5 days a week, what was OP’s problem? My point was that those are probably much shorter commutes, unless that poster lives somewhere very rural.

And OP quite possibly doesn’t have “a choice” - some jobs are primarily in London or other major cities, but don’t necessarily pay enough for parents to live 20 mins from their work.

Did a nanny share but cover was still 8-6pm. One week in two, DD was at home when I got home which did help.
DH and I alternated with some flex on who did what as his job was more subject to emergency work shit.

What worked for me. Then and later with a childminder.

Be as senior as you can be before you have kids. It gives you more flexibility. I regularly logged in again at home and did late meetings with overseas offices. It gave a lot of visibility and flex as a consequence.
My commute was 60 mins at the time, faster without the kid drop offs as it was all a bit car+walk-+train+tube. My commute is longer now but a solid single mode door to door. So I am online early. Post pandemic it's weirdly easier as people flex in lots of ways if they have an office day?
Be transparent. Don't ask for forgiveness, tell your mgmt team what you need to do to make it work and be explicit as to what they are getting back from you. Doesn't work for every job I grant you but better to be above board than to skulk around. It doesn't get easier - school brings all kinds of other shite you are expected to attend, may as well be on the front foot.
Don't be a martyr. It takes two and you are not the only parent. If you have to work in the evenings then log

How did we do it? One of us did the morning handover at 7:15am and the other the evening at 7pm. And one of us did a 4 day week.
Both of us had two hours total commuting each day. Oh and spent -40k a year on a nanny, out of our taxed income. No chance to save any money.
Have since left London and now only one of us works, family life much much better. But I’m still glad we did what we did as it meant we both had decent interesting jobs.

Posted too soon

If you have to log in later then despite the compressed hours your husband will have to do other stuff when he does get in.

Consider 5 days of childcare and be less precious. Good childcare is better than time with a parent trying to "get other shit done at the same time". Outsource as much as you can or get it done during the week so your child(ren) get the best of you at the weekend. I realise childcare is insanely expensive, it does, eventually, get better.

Keep expectations low. Life will be a relentless hamster wheel until they are around 7. Sorry.

Nearly all of my salary was being spent on childcare, a cleaner, commuting, personal grooming/maintaining a wardrobe and buying expensive ready meals instead of cooking from scratch. Of course, we did have less money, but we just really spent a couple of years buying only the essentials.

When DS was 6 months old I had to go back to work FT with a 90 minute commute. ExDh in the army so couldn't rely on him for any pick up/drop off, and we had to live closer to his base than my job, even though I was mostly alone at the time.

Used to be put of the house for around 6am, drive 60 minutes into London. Park the car and drop off DS at nursery in Greater London which started at 7am, then a 30 minute tube ride into Central London to the office. Leave at 5pm on the dot for pick up at 5.30pm and then home for around 6.45 pm with traffic. Feed him, bathe him and bed before housework and prep for the next day.

It just felt like survival really, with little room for error. Sitting in a tunnel in silence with no phone signal in tube delays, then having to pay late nursery fines for two staff for every 15 minutes over 5.30pm, running from tube station to nursery in a panic, traffic on the way out of Greater London...

Then the extra factor of not realising that when a baby goes to nursery they catch every bug known to man. So dreading the phone call to tell me I had to leave work immediately, as his temp was high, he'd had diarrhoea, vomited etc yet again.

These were the days when you weren't set up to work from home either, so if my son was sick I had to just stop work, and I remember my director asking why I didn't just employ a nanny to deal with everything, like he did (on three times my salary, living in a mortgage free, inherited house in Central London 🤣).

I was on the way to pick up my son yet again for a mid morning diarrhoea incident, in floods of tears on the tube, that I took a call from an old manager asking me to come work for her in a company on the coast for four days a week. The commute was 70 miles, but all by car on clear roads with free parking at the office. She was a mum of two so made sure I was strictly 9-5, found a nursery locally that was 7-7, and though it was still challenging it felt like a breeze compared to my previous situation.

I nearly bit her hand off for it. Still love that woman to this very day for saving my sanity during those years.

It's shit, and grim for you young 'uns. I see my own DD struggling, in another country, to keep all the balls in the air. I think it's terrible that so many obstacles are in your path. Thing is, when mine were small, there were no nurseries, no childcare other than trying to sort a friend or a relative.and my parents were far too busy playing golf and jetting around the world. It's always been grim, but it seems to be an exhausting nightmare these days.

I was a single parent and chose a nursery across the road from my office, I’d never have made pick up/office hours etc otherwise.

My gosh.
Reading this gave me such a reframe on my situation.
I wish I could give you a massive, no, giant hug.
So glad you’re on the other side of this.

With ds1 & 2 Dh worked day shift and I worked night shift so no childcare required. I went back when they were each 14 weeks and first few years were hard. Very hard. We did that for 10 years until ds3 came along and I couldn’t face any more night shifts so I worked 32 hours over 4 days and got a childminder. Once he started at the school nursery they offered breakfast and after school club. I was the first one at the door waiting for it to be open and he was always the last child collected at night but we got there.

luckily I didn’t have a long commute. Can you find anything closer?

I gave up my job until DD was old enough for full-time nursery in a primary (so free) at almost 4, and we opted to only have one child. (Could only afford that because my bastard employer fired me for being pregnant and I sued him. Settled out of court after a hideous legal battle and it was just about enough to make it financially viable for us to survive while I tried to find a new job in a different sector).

When we moved out of London a year later we had massive issues with train strikes so opted to keep DD in her London primary and all commute together. Booked her into breakfast club and after-school club to make it work.

School holidays were a nightmare, so did a combination of DH or I taking annual leave separately, holiday clubs and a lot of me doing extra hours to compensate all the times I had to leave early.

When I look back I honestly don't know how it all got juggled.

The worse was holiday clubs that only ran from 10am to 3pm which meant I didn't get to work till nearly 11am and had to leave to pick up at 2pm.

As a single mum, while ds was small I worked close to home and used a childminder 3 minutes from work. I dropped ds at the childminder at 8.50, and collected at 5.45.

I worked close to the primary school, dropped ds at 8.40, and then used after school club, collecting ds at 5.45. Life was stressful, I was constantly in a rush.

Summer & Easter holidays were covered by a council-run holiday club, 8.30-6. The rest using my annual leave.

Then covid came along, furlough, redundancy and wfh. Now I go to the office once a week. There is no benefit to me in going to an office more than that. It is a waste of time and money, reduces the number of hours I spend actually working, and generates a load of pollution.

If they insist on two days a week, I will look for a job elsewhere. I am close to retirement and have no intention of being office-based, ever again.

This is one of the reasons I didn’t go back to work. It’s sad I’ve given up on a career I worked so hard for.

In my country day care opens at about 6.30am and closes at 6.30pm.

This leaves plenty of time to get to work and get home. But it means you don’t get to spend much time during the week with your baby - which is sad.

Lots of mums don't work full time- 3 or 4 days a week ( or less) can be more common. Lots of mums don't have a big commute.

You have both so it is extra hard for you than it is for other people you might meet with dc similar age.

I went part-time, put career on hold, we juggled - at one point I started at 7am so I could be home in time - often after no sleep - and made it work, It's hell at the time.

DCs are primary age now and I have never really got back into my career full swing because you still need to be there for drop off and pick up etc but I couldn't care less. I wouldn't swap what I decided to do for the world. I have had precious time with my DCs.

I really feel for you OP.

I was (still am) a single parent and worked Mon - Thursday in the office . Dropped off at a childminders (10 minute drive from my house at 8. Drove the 5 minutes with my heart in my mouth to find a parking space at the staton closest to hers. Worked until 5.15 and some days ran along Fleet Street to get the 5.25 train so I could pick up my car and get to the childminders by 6. It was very stressful indeed but you just have to find a way to make it work. Overall I would say that I only went to a childminder because all of the nurseries were full. On reflection it's the best thing I ever did (and my DS that followed went there too). My childminder is still a good friend of mine and my DCs are now 17 and 14.

It was extremely stressful but bear in mind it's not forever

This is why I left work when my kids were young.

But One thing I will say - a 70 minute+ commute is far from ideal. It eats a huge amount out of the day.

My parents did it by staggering their hours (which also is what DH and I do, even though we WFH) so my dad was gone out of the house before we were up at 6:30 but he was home by 4 in the evenings. My mum left the house later, after we left for school and then got home closer to 6.

DH and I also stagger, I start work at 6:30 and leave to pick up DC at 3:30, DH starts later and finishes later even though we WFH. I've done it because it lets me spend more time with DC. We also moved to my home country when we had DC and for me, it was in part because I looked at the life of London parents, always commuting, always stressed or else dropping days and then being stressed about money and thought, why would I do that? My country has a reputation for having longer hours and more of a workaholic culture but that has not been my experience, and the UK seems extremely rigid with office hours being 9-6 or 9-5 - where I grew up, as far back as when I was a child, staggering start/end times in white collar office jobs was common.

@321user123 I thought about this when I lived in London, but the thought of commuting with a baby on the tube put me off. It’s often hot, sweaty and packed. If your baby needs a feed, how do you do it? Bearing in mind that no you won’t necessarily get a seat.

My sister was a single mum.
Her daughter was with a babysitter at 3 months, and in daycare until she was old enough to stay at home alone - I think about 15 or 16. Maybe 14.
Now she’s a remarkable married woman herself with two boys.
You play the hand you’re dealt.

I used to have a slightly longer commute than yours when I lived in London. I requested flexible working to work mostly from home. On the days I was in the office one of us would start work early so we could leave earlier for pick ups. It is exhausting, but no jobs closer and couldn’t afford to live more centrally

Had a similar commute. Used a childminder who was fab and flexible and had longer hours than 8 until 6.

Initially used the childminder because nursery didn't have space available. When space became available realised having started back it wouldn't work and that childminder suited is better.

As he got older she would take him to toddler groups, then to state pre school and then before and after school care too which gave him complete continuity of care. DH changed jobs which meant he was able to collect at 5pm from when he was about 4.