can we afford to have a child?

[simpls]

how do people in Scotland do childcare?

I am TTC and just starting to understand the things I need to get ready. I am 30.

I am about to buy a two bed home and upgrade. It's talking all our savings but there's just so little space in a one bed and we're unhappy.

My mortgage will be £900 a month.

Childcare will be £1500 a month for my local nursery (if we get a place)

Twins run in my family and tend to skip a generation (my mum was a twin!) What do parents of multiples do?

DP earns £32k with two weeks of paternity and no opportunity for flexibility. He works solid 9-5 but is expected to overtime.

Second last financial year I earned £45k as a contractor and spent it all on rennovations! Last financial year I earned £22k as a contractor sole trader (used to be more and can pick up quickly) but no maternity leave. So no income if I stop for 6-9 months and will need a run way of no income while I apply for contracts again.

My work is in a niche type of events so there is no flexibility. Alot of the work falls on weekends, evenings, but can also be any day of the week, so I can't take an extra day off for childcare as I would lose contracts with that lack of availability.

When I lost contracts over the last year I panicked and started trying to get a job and got to final stage 4 times, but wasn't chosen. So I need to keep plugging away with my work.

No willing and supportive family in the area.

Can we make this work?

we have been aggressively saving and living on a tight budget so we can purchase a larger home. so we will be back down to little savings once we have this but we have a chunk now.

I think if you knew DP story you would be more understanding of the health stuff. it's not a self indulgent gym bro situation but somethign we have had to see alot of specialists for and something he has struggled with. His MH is good as long as this is managed well. When gyms shut in covid the situation was awful. So I support all his health stuff as I know it's very important.

You're considering alot of luxuries as essentials.
You cannot afford your current lifestyle plus a baby.
Either, you give up your luxuries, gym, protein powders, 400 quid weddings, nights/meals out. Or you'll keep putting it on the overdraft and credit cards and get yourselves in a mess.

In terms of the absolutely essential gym providing physiotherapy, people do that at home by themselves. And for protein, whatever meat has a yellow sticker on it.

You have to decide if you're willing to give up your lifestyle for a baby.

If giving up the gym is going to absolutely destroy him. Then no. You can't afford a baby. Financially or practically. WHEN is he going to the gym? When he's working or when he's looking after the baby while you work? How many financially strained couples with a baby also have someone going to the gym on the regular and still like eachother.

Haven't rtft but shared parental leave is a statutory right in Scotland.
Would make sense for DP to take more leave and you less, since you are the higher earner.
www.gov.uk/shared-parental-leave-and-pay

I was working freelance when I got pregnant. I received Maternity Allowance which really helped. Apart from that, you’re going to have to say no to invitations to dinners and weddings. Or just do things a bit differently. For example, stay in and have a takeaway with friends. If they’re true friends they’ll understand.

You really won’t need anything like the clothes you think you do either. Maternity leave was all about being comfortable, so no workwear, new clothes or dry cleaning was needed. I did invest in NCT classes so I could meet other pregnant mums in the area. The women I met were my lifeline and a route to free get togethers. We met up in each others houses or walks in the park. We did go to group sessions too but made sure they were free or very low cost.

You have a good income between you. Everyone has to review what they spend their money on when they have a baby. You have plenty to make it work but you have to be realistic and accept that life won’t be the same. There will be things you can’t afford to do when you’re paying nursery bills. But believe me, there are a lot of things you won’t want to do when you’ve had a baby, so it all works out.

I can guarantee that you’ll look back at this thread when you’ve had a baby and realise that your money concerns weren’t really concerns at all.

The adults don't need to buy clothes and could learn to mend. Lightly used baby clothes are also easily available...build up your neighbourhood friendships.

You just have to stop going out to expensive weddings and dinners with friends for a couple of years, and concentrate on your child. Maybe one of you goes out every other month. But plan date nights in. And perhaps pot luck dinners with friends.

Scottish GPs can help you access free community gym memberships for real health reasons.

ETA I am worried that your husband is coercive or exploitative and you are a handmaiden to his lifestyle. He should be stepping up as a dad and making sacrifices.

I was made redundant when I was 8 weeks pregnant and haven't worked since Feb 2025 - baby is now 8 months and I'm looking at going back to work around. September. The costs of the baby have been very minimal we just live a slightly quieter life

Comparing not having the gym during the pandemic as being the same as not having the gym now is probably unhelpful as it was a very specific set of circumstances.

What is it about the gym that is beneficial for your partner? How can that be replicated outside of the gym environment? Aside from the cost of the gym, the time cost of the gym is something to consider once you have a baby. There are only really 3 scenarios - he continues going as much as before and you find yourself being solo with the baby on most of your free time, he stops going as much but keeps up the membership so the cost to benefit goes up massively or he finds ways of exercising that he can fit in around the baby. We all dream that the 4th scenario where we get to continue living our life alongside baby as this is what my day is going to look like and I'll fit the gym in here, make dinner then whilst baby is doing this but it's a tiny percent of people that manage this especially in the first 12-24 months.

I was running 3-4 times a week, pilates twice a week and cross stitch 4-5 evenings a week to manage my mental health when I had my daughter. I had grand ideas of this continuing through pregnancy and afterwards. By the time I was 5 weeks pregnant I had to stop running and pilates as I had hyperemesis. I managed to restart the pilates mid pregnancy but only did 3 runs in the pregnancy. I kept up the cross stitch until baby arrived. Exercise went out of the window with a high needs baby who screamed and had to be held all day everyday. I started going on really long midday walks with her which helped my mental health. I have friends who got running buggies so they could go out on runs with the baby quite early.

From a financial and time perspective I think he needs to start exploring other exercise based options to maintain his mental health.

I would also look at the one off cost of having an in depth conversation with a dietician to determine the cost benefit of all the supplements and how much can be incorporated in his diet through whole foods rather than supplements. Check out the sliced bread podcast on BBC sounds. They look at lots of scientific claims on these types of products and so many of them don't give the gains they say. My daughter has a very restricted diet due to allergies but with dietician involvement most of her needs can be managed by diet alone (as long as she will eat it!) Things we struggle most with for her are iron, iodine and omega 3s so these are supplemented. I would also have a watch of Joe Wick's documentary on protein bars!

I know it wasn’t your question but I would also add to the concern that if eating well and going to the gym is absolutely vital (so much so that you spend a lot of money on it and consider that more important than potentially being able to afford a baby) you both might struggle with the reality of a newborn, I don’t mean that patronisingly but I really had no idea, I knew they didn’t sleep much and obviously birth hurt but the reality of that for me was more than I had anticipated.
I had a difficult birth and very long and difficult recovery, my dd didn’t sleep and had some health concerns and I struggled a lot with breastfeeding in the early days as well. For around 6-8 months Dh had to give up the gym and his hobby and his regular sports classes because I needed help, he couldn’t go out at all other than to work. we struggled to eat healthy too because we were so exhausted and spread so thin.
If after a day at work dh had insisted on leaving me alone and in pain with a crying baby, to go have a lovely time at the gym, or to spend a lot time in the kitchen cooking healthy meals instead of chucking a pizza in the oven, I think I’d have divorced him. Not everyone has such a difficult time for so long, but lots of people do and many people have it worse, you should both prepare for that as a possibility and how he might manage those early days. Perhaps he can find a different way to exercise, like parent and baby classes, or walking with baby in the pram or sling (though dd would not have tolerated this so you must be prepared for that too). Perhaps you could also speak to a professional about his diet needs and see if there is a cheaper way to meet his goals, or if indeed they’re actually needed. Very few people need to have huge amounts of the most expensive protein for example. Maybe you can get a chest freezer second hand and start filling it with healthy meals that just need defrosting and heating up in those early weeks. Batch cooking is cheaper too. Either way a discussion about your actual goals (eg seeing family, exercising etc) and if there are other ways to meet them than what you’re doing now may be a good idea.

It does sound like at the moment you have lots of (imo) luxuries, that for you are non negotiable
and I think if you aren’t willing to compromise in order to have a baby then you probably don’t really want one enough to have one, and thats absolutely fine if that’s the decision you make.