Hi everyone, looking for some advice/experience of how much space you need with a baby/up to one year old.
I am 38 + 6 today. My boyfriend and I live in his small one bed flat that he owns (in London). Very affordable mortgage, the rent and bills I pay for are currently only about 10% of my take home pay. Same situation for my boyfriend - until recently.
He was recently made redundant and given a payout of about four months salary (so will see us through until about January). My maternity pay also sees me receiving full pay until January. After that I move onto statutory and we’ll need my boyfriend to have a new job by then. We do not know if this new job would require him to work from home a lot or if he will have an office to escape to.
An opportunity has recently arose where his brother has said we could move into his 2 bed flat down the road. The main pros of doing this would be: a second bedroom for baby, in a nicer area, a balcony for outdoor space and we wouldn’t be tied into a contract. We also have a cocker spaniel so trying to find a different rental in London would be difficult!
The cons are: our expenses would more than double at a time when I’m not being paid and there is no guarantee over what will happen with my boyfriend’s job! We do have savings but I would prefer us to not haemorrhage these as we would like to use them for a new house purchase in the future. Also even just thinking about moving right now when I’m this pregnant is quite stressful!
If we stay, I can fast forward in my mind to a time in 6 months where my boyfriend is on a work call in the living room, baby is asleep in the bedroom and I would have no where to go in our small flat.
I guess my question is: how much space do you need with a baby? Would having bf trying to work + me trying to look after baby in such a small space be manageable or are we going to get completely on top of each other? Or would it be better to have more space and take a hit to our savings?
Conscious that we are lucky to have both these options.