How to navigate moving house / job and mat leave?

[hopingforapeainapod]

Hi all. My son is 1 and we are thinking about when / if to have another child - it took us a long time to fall pregnant first time round so I’m not taking anything for granted! However, the big spanner in the works is sometime in the nearish future we want to move house / jobs to a more affordable area so we can upsize and be closer to grandparents.

I’m not sure how to navigate this. I’m a teacher, so the earliest I could get a new job would be September ‘26. I don’t ideally want to get pregnant as soon as starting a new job, and I would need to work there a while anyway to be eligible for enhanced maternity pay, which would be pushing everything back a bit.

Or, do I get pregnant whilst working at my current school, and then move houses whilst on mat leave and hope to start a new job at the end of my mat leave? Is moving during mat leave a mad idea?! And if I did do this, do I start looking at houses whilst I’m pregnant, or once I’ve had the baby?!

I’m also conscious that most teaching jobs start in September, so I wouldn’t want to have a baby say in spring and then only have maybe 4-6 months of mat leave!

So much to consider! Just wondering if anyone has been in a similar boat or can give any advice…

I would look to move sooner rather than later. It means you’re settled into a new area, will have a support system, a bigger house, etc for your next mat leave. It also doesn’t risk pushing the move so far back that you are then worrying about getting in in time for school applications. Your baby is only 1, so unless you’re already 42, you still have time for baby #2.

@mindutopia thank you - I think you’re right that it would definitely be nice to have support systems in place before having another baby! I think I’m just a bit worried as it basically took us a year and a half to conceive our first - so if we delayed trying again until January 2027 let’s say, if it took us ages to fall pregnant again (although hopefully not!) then that’s a much bigger age gap than planned! Ideally we had always envisioned a 2 year age gap but appreciate life does not always go to plan…!

If a second child is important I would focus on that as a priority. Everything else will work around it.

Some teachers do leave/new jobs come up mid-year or you could do supply/tutoring for a while to bridge the gap between jobs.

Moving house is going to be stressful pregnant, it's going to be stressful with a new baby, it's going to be stressful with two kids, it's going to be stressful in the middle of fertility treatment for the pregnancy that didn't happen...it's going to be stressful no matter what and no matter when.

It's impossible to predict exactly when you'll get pregnant or exactly when a house move will happen, you'll save yourself a lot of stress by not trying to predict. Try for a baby and start looking at houses in your desired area/making any changes to your current house to make it ready for sale. See what happens first!

@NuffSaidSam youre probably right - I’m trying to control something that is uncontrollable! The irony is we bought our current place only 2 years ago, and the whole process was honestly one of the most stressful things I’ve been through (I genuinely wonder if it’s one of the reasons it took me so long to fall pregnant!) so I’m really not looking forward to doing it again, and I want to get it right!

Hi all! My daughter is 7 years old and like all kids her interests change frequently, she wanted to rearrange her room and she has several Barbie sets that she has only played with probably a handful of times the past 2 years. She's willing to let me move her Barbie house and most of her sets to our garage but space in there is limited. I've gotten rid of some of her sets to make room for new ones in the past and she has never noticed. I'm just afraid to get rid of everything and her all of a sudden get interested in playing with them again, I do not think she will because now she's into games and skin care and stuff like that, she still does imaginative play but never with dolls or anything related to them. I didn't know if anyone else has had this issue arise and if their kids got back into it after years of not playing.