How to broach the subject of childcare with MIL?

[ElleDubloo]

I have a brilliant MIL who I get on with swimmingly. She's delighted I'm pregnant and really excited about having her first grandchild. We live 25 mins away from her (we're actually currently living at her house, because we're having work done to our bathroom). We might move in with her more permanently when I'm due, to have her help with the baby in the early days.

I'd like to broach the subject of childcare, but I'm not sure how to do it sensitively, and without looking like I'm taking advantage of her. TBH, I'd like to take 6 months maternity leave and then return to work full-time, and it would be amazing if she would volunteer to take on all the childcare after that. It's a big ask. She has a part-time job as a teacher, which she has hinted that she doesn't enjoy very much.

Is it reasonable for me to ask her whether she'd like to quit her job so that I can go back to work?
How should we recompense her for the loss of earnings? Could we offer to pay her (because we'd rather pay her than pay a childminder we don't know) but would she take offense?

Would be great to get everyone's thoughts on this :)

Penguins - I graduated med school 1.5 years ago, so salary is still low despite all the on-calls. DH is 3 or 4 years PQE (I think) and TBH I don't know where all his salary went previously. He spent over £400 on a suit the other day :( But to his credit he's managed to put down a deposit on our flat, which is in a lovely part of London, but isn't worth enough for us to swap it for a house in zone 6 or even further out.

I'll ask him about arriving late and working late. He does say that, sometimes, he doesn't have much to do during the day, but he ends up staying late as he's expecting emails he needs to respond to before the next day.

Could he deal with those late emails from home?

Only sometimes.

I think we need to have a chat.

DH is bar so slightly different, but when I was unwell he started to do a lot of work 'remotely' by email, conference call etc'. Just had to get a home computer with the correct security settings.
Actually as Penguin said he made some tough choices about which set he went to. Essentially from the sharks to being a big fish in a slightly smaller pond- more trust, more flexible, more local (we are zone 2) but with extremely good connections (so his workload and grading were unaffected).
This would be hard in the 1st stages of his career though- practically and CV wise.

Don't get me started on suits. Was it from a legal outfitters? They save fabric on the arm and a leg you have to give them for a bog standard 3 piece with the right label. E&R and Stanley Ley ... I look at them and think "new sofa", "new boiler" etc'. It's a law thing.

Ok, so he's earning at least, what £85k plus bonus? I'm a bit out of touch with earnings at that level, but that's what Roll on Friday gives me as a guess for the lower end of the big firms at 3 years PQE. I'm still not quite getting why that, plus whatever you earn, isn't enough to rent somewhere a bit further out that could accommodate a live in nanny if that's what it would take to keep your career on track.

And remember that that's what we're talking about here. We're not talking ideal world. We are saying 'what sacrifices will he make to support your career'. For a start, the £400 suits will have to go (don't let him bullshit you about needing it for his career. He doesn't. It's just nice to keep up with the designer suits and Tag watches you see your peers buying with their disposable income!)

He can probably deal with a lot more from home than he thinks. I know, because I've been there and done it. It does require being properly networked though, not tapping away on his Blackberry. He might, to be fair, find it harder on his PQE so that might get easier in time. But if you set the expectation now that he doesn't have to change, he never will.

Do you have shared finances?

75K, but you're right, it's a lot. We should be able to manage.

And I think it's very unusual for a two career couple to have children and not compromise somewhere.

For DH and me, that means slower career paths; for others it might mean live in nanny, for some it means one person keeps the high pressure job and one "drops down".

I think your DH would like everything to stay the same and your MIL to just solve everything. Not sure that's possible or reasonable.

I wouldn't count on GP being family friendly. In order to do all clinical work and keep on top of practice admin, my dh is rarely home before 8-9pm and as he works in a rural area, does an average of 3-4 nights a fortnight on call plus 1/5 weekends.

Once his associate starts in the summer he goes down to 4 days and I flipping can't wait!!

Honestly, the more I think about this, the more I think you need paid childcare for the core hours and your MIL doing the anti-social/short notice stuff if she volunteers.

So you work nights. I don't know much about medicine, so just assume you need to leave at 6/7pm for your night shift. Your husband often doesn't get home until midnight. Who is going to cover that? Certainly not your MIL if she is already doing full time care. And even if she did, how? Is she going to travel 25 minutes home at midnight and come back the next day? There isn't anywhere for her to stay in a one bed flat. There are a lot of practicalities that I think your husband needs to get his head around, rather than just thinking "we'll ask my mum, she'd love to do it".

What Penguin said. I think you need to have a frank chat about where his money is going (he may not even realise himself).

After the sacrifices DH made, 'downsizing' if you will (let's not lie, downsizing in a London profession you still earn very well compared to most people), we still comfortably pay for a house in zone 2 between our salaries. By cutting back on luxuries and making 'boring' choices such as a small 2nd hand car, fewer holidays/breaks, low key Xmas etc' (actually I'm fecking tight with money) we've also saved a considerable amount to supplement my maternity pay.

And that's with me on a mere public sector wage (albeit up at the top end for someone actually doing something not pushing paper in Whitehall).

Weegie is your DH a partner?

OP you might be surprised how far your money would go in a different part of London. We're in zone 3 in the South East, perfectly pleasant area - parks, good pubs, cafés. 10 minutes to London Bridge / 20 to Charing Cross on the train. Our house is a big 3 bed, 21ft kitchen, huge bathroom, cellar. It's worth £450. We earn a bit more than you now but we were on far less when we bought it.

Congratulations on your pregnancy, and I personally think you're doing well to be thinking about childcare at this stage. But I do agree with the suggestions about seeing if MIL can help with the antisocial hours rather than full time

Btw my cousin is training to do paediatric oncology and has had her children while studying for her PhD, might that be an option? She's a bit ahead of you career wise though.

We live ridiculously comfortably on £35K between us, in a huge city centre flat, everything we need… I always feel so sorry for people who live in London!

When we were both full time, we saved around 10K a year…

Sorry that's not a massively helpful comment but it always blows my mind...

I would tell mil that you are looking into childcare options and if she is interested to let you know. Keep it quite vague and leave it up to her to come back to you.

Before we had children my mil always said that she wanted to look after our future children and be our childminder. Once I was pregnant she never mentioned it again and now I will occasionally ask her to babysit and she agrees about 50% of the time. Your mil may be very excited at the prospect of becoming a Grandma but the reality of taking on full time childcare is a different matter altogether.

You can pay relatives without them having to register as childminders.

All the posters who are up in arms about how 'presumptuous' the OP is being.....I think it's quite presumptuous of you all to think you know the OP's MIL's personality/work habits/financial situation/what she wants for her retirement/what role she wants in her grandchild's life etc. My MIL wants nothing for her retirement but to see her grandchildren as much as possible and for as long as possible - due to bringing up 3 boys as a single mum and her personality type she doesn't put a high price on 'me-time' and hobbies, coffee mornings, getting her hair done etc - she's not remotely interested in any of that - spending time with her grandchildren, family and friends is the only way she wants to pass her time and is naturally a very selfless family-orientated person and gets great joy from children and childcare still even though she is 60+ - she's still got lots of energy and imagination to play wonderfully with her grandson. Maybe the OP's MIL is like this too - who knows? We certainly don't, but the OP and her husband do which is why they're even thinking of this as a possibility - why would they even entertain the idea if they thought the MIL wouldn't be of the personality type to want to help with her grandchild?

Of course there's the chance that OP will feel differently when the baby comes and of course there's the opportunity for falling out with MIL once the baby comes so that's the reason to hold off on discussing it. There's nothing wrong with testing the water to see if it's something MIL would consider in a part-time or full-time capacity- paid or unpaid. It's a lot to look after your grand child full time but a lot of people do it and are happy - even thrilled - to do it - plus as OP mentioned - hopefully the MIL will be looked after by her family in the same way when she is very elderly/infirm, and she'll have the immense joy of a close relationship with her grandchild to treasure in the later part of her life, which not everyone is able to enjoy sadly.

It does seem to make sense (if your MIL wants to!) to have the child be looked after by her rather than a stranger if she's semi-retired anyway. Whether she wants to do it full-time or not is up to her to offer I suppose.

There's been a few comments hinting at how you should have waited till you were older/more established at work to have babies which I think is a bit unfair.

So in the interests of counterbalance:

younger women often conceive, carry and deliver babies more easily
(very relevant to this thread) your own parents are younger and may be healthier and have more energy to help
I can't speak for lawyers, but most doctors I know wait till they're registrars if not consultants before having kids. The flip side to this is when YOU are a reg/consultant, your kids will be in school and your sleep deprived days will be behind you, so you can concentrate better on these more senior posts

I am convinced 6/7 year olds must be easier than toddlers, please don't correct me haha

Squizita - I don't know where his suit is from. He mentioned a shop that I'd never heard of. I also bought him a watch for Christmas for £450 which he thought was entirely necessary and reasonable, as his colleagues are apparently all wearing £1000+ Rolexes. I just don't know how to deal with this. I didn't think we were that sort of people. (But this is off-topic)

Where do you live? (only if you're comfortable letting me know) because I've been checking Rightmove on an almost daily basis and can't find anything of that description under 500K within an hour of Waterloo.

GarthsUncle - You're right. We're both trying to "have it all" but we need to figure out exactly what we can have and what we need to compromise on.

Weebairn - Nope, not helpful :p LOL. I know, I'd personally love to leave London, but DH is tied to the City. And yeah, if we want kids early, we want kids early. Other women get criticised for prioritising their careers and having kids too late. There's no right answer.

Eepie - THANK YOU! :)

Maybe you should see what it's like to have a baby all day everyday first then see if you're going to subject your MIL to that.

I live in North-West London. Not a trendy bit though, boring old suburbia but a short tube/bus ride from lovely places. Waterloo would be about an hour on the tube. Central London about 45min. We looked out for houses that were live-able but also faded (with a view to DIY over several years) and haggled. Got a small terrace house for about £300K 2 years ago. Kept an eye out to be in the cachement for good state schools/hospitals but not 'just next door' to them and it worked well - but it took us a while to find the idea property. :)

OH... and DH was the same in his 20s, all this "but I have to image is everything. If I wear the wrong suits the clerks won't instruct me on high profile cases..." I think it's a macho 20-something-law thing. Because it faded of its own accord as his mates had kids, bought houses... basically grew up. Now he is more flexible e.g. vintage (he's still too law to call it plain old second hand) re-shaped by a tailor (works out 1/3rd price, looks the same) or plain old going to the sale and getting his suit half price.

OP if you go onto MN Local for Surrey, Berkshire, Hampshire and ask then you will get ideas for places in your budget on the lines into Waterloo.

We're in Hither Green. You have to be the Lewisham side though, the Blackheath side is a bit more expensive. I organise the local meet up so I'm not anonymous anyway!