First baby - so worried about my career

[cheesefritters]

DH and I are both self-employed - him as a graphic designer and me as a freelance writer. We both work from home.

We’re due to have our first baby this summer, which we’re both very excited about. We’ve tried to plan our work loads and finances so he can take one month off after the birth and I can take two, but I’m starting to really freak out about our future.

What if the baby is so time-consuming (and I know they are!) that it jeopardizes our businesses so we can’t work and can no longer afford the mortgage? What if it means that I can no longer attend meetings (which I have to do fairly regularly) because I’m tied to the baby? What if my absence from work means I lose clients? How are we going to cope working from home with a newborn? We do have savings but not enough to cover a nanny or childminder or anything like that. Both our families live hours away.

All these questions are swirling around in my head and I’m wondering if we’ve done the right thing getting pregnant. We both really wanted to start a family and are so excited about it, but perhaps our work situation means we’re not in a position to do so and that a baby should only ever have been a pipe dream.

Does anyone have any advice?

Dh and I are also both self-employed. Baby due end April/ beginning of May. We will both have to work from June 1st onwards as our income is primarily seasonal and June-September are our busiest months. Without this we will struggle to get through the winter.

However, we can tag team and not both have to work at once if needed. And have hired in additional help with day to day running of business to reduce our load this year.

There are plenty of nurseries here that accept the 30 hours but obviously if you wait until your child turns 3 to start nursery you might struggle to find a place as other people are doing the same, waiting for the 30 hours then suddenly there's an influx of kids needing a space.

It’s probably wise to get your foot in the door and start nursery at 2, even if just for a couple of days a week, so that you know you’ve got a nursery place already for the September after your DC turns 3.

You need to be very realistic about your prospects of working with a small person around:

Newborn - some newborns feed at very regular intervals and tend to feed a lot at night so you might not be at full capacity to work during the day as you’ll be tired as well as juggling feeding etc.

Older babies - if you can get a good routine going you might be able to get a good chunk of work done in the evening as well as half hour snatches here and there during the day.

Toddlers - May well object to you working. My DD is extremely good at playing independently and I can go off and do house jobs, but if she sees me sit down at my desk she doesn’t want to leave me alone. Again a good routine can mean you can get them having a 2 hour nap after lunch which is a great work opportunity. When they're a bit older you can say 'I need to work for half an hour, then I'll build a train track with you' which now works with DD.

But remember that as well as work, you also have washing, cleaning, shopping for bits baby needs, writing thank you cards for gifts, filling in forms for tax credits etc. I know this sounds patronising but actually I’ve found it impossible to do a good job of everything as well as being a good parent to DD, Obviously, engaging with my child and keeping her well looked after and stimulated is my priority and it will most likely become yours too. After that I’m afraid I’m not working at the same capacity as I was pre-DD and my house isn’t as well kept and I struggle to keep on top of paperwork and niceties like sending birthday cards on time.

Then there’s illness. DD started off with a childminder but for various reasons I moved her to a nursery. She started in October at the age of 18m and I am not exaggerating when I say that between October and February she had 10 illnesses, ranging from common colds to two different sickness bugs, a chest infection, mystery viral rashes, proper flu and then bronchiolitis requiring an A&E trip. Apparently we were particularly unlucky but I know at least one other child (out of my DD’s 10 friends) who was ill this often at the start. As a self-employed single parent paying for nursery that DD wasn't attending much due to illness and passed half her illnesses onto me, this was a disaster. More than a year on and I haven't recovered financially from those 4 months where I was paying for nursery but at least 50% of the time was looking after an unwell child or too ill myself to work. I basically put all living expenses on credit cards and am struggling to pay them off. My finances had actually been ticking along quite nicely before all this happened but it just took this blip to change our financial circumstances to the point where we then qualified for 2 year funded hours.

Sorry, I realise my post above is mostly negative.

More positively, I did my tax return when DD was 10 days old and managed to successfully complete an intense 3-week project when DD was 8-10 weeks old and EBF. It's an annual project I would usually complete in 2 weeks working full time but I spread it over 3 weeks and worked 6 hours a day. My mum looked after DD and brought her to me for feeds and on a couple of occasions when she was just very unsettled and seemed to need me (we are far more than just a milk machine for the baby and they need our presence and cuddles in the early weeks).

So it can work to BF and be working. It helped that DD was on a 3-hourly feeding regime (as prescribed by the pediatric doctor) so was accustomed to gaps between feeds.

You’ll probably be better off if you take three months off and claim maternity allowance rather than your DH taking the month off? I worked freelance from when my first was 12 months, but only very part time and working while he was asleep. Realistically if you want to manage without any childcare you will have to cut hours and be prepared to work every day during naps. How easy that will be with a young baby entirely depends on the baby. It would have been exhausting but doable with my second, impossible with my first.

The first few months are likely to be toughest. Typically that’s when sleep is worst, feeding more frequent, baby less didtractable by floor time etc.

I think if it were me I’d do two things - consider reducing workload for one or both of you to get under that child tax credits threshold.

Consult an accountant to make sure you are as tax efficient as possible - whether that’s forming a limited company (most likely to be more beneficial if your earnings are currently uneven), or just making sure that you’re deducting everything you’re entitled to.

As others have said, a lot of this will depend on your baby. I EBF and was lucky that it didn't take long and was easy... BUT DD woke ever 90 mins-2 hours for the first 2 years. Also she was walking at 8 months, which changed what I was able to do during her waking hours.

@INeedNewShoes that's great advice about the nursery places, thank you!

I’m a freelance journalist and I earn more than my partner, so he’ll only be taking the two weeks paternity and I’ll be continuing a bit of work from home when he is born. What sort of writing do you do? I work for newspapers and magazines, which tend to pay well?