Full time working mum moan

[myusernameisnotmyusername]

Just a moan really- feeling a bit down at the moment. I started a 8.30-5 full time job in November as dd was literally begging me to be able to go to after school club. It's worked out fine except there's only 20 days holiday a year with 3-4 days out of that for xmas. The school holidays are killing me. DP gets more holiday than me and is doing the bulk of the holidays. I have had one day this Easter and a couple of days in march and Feb. I have a week booked in August and a couple of days for when dd starts school and that is it until end of September. It is really rubbish hardly spending any holiday with her and DP is going on about how he's using all his allowance. Does anyone else feel like this? How do you cope with it?

Do you get bank holidays as well as those 20 days as otherwise you are getting under the statutory entitlement?

holiday camp...
the two weeks at easter my daughter went to a daily holiday camp, summer i am taking 2 weeks off and she will go to camp the rest of the time... basically a whole day playing, singing, doing archery, crafts, and so on... she was fine...

Luckily dh is a teacher so he deals with the holidays but if he wasn't it would have to be holiday camp. I get 30, can buy 5 extra but it would still be nowhere near enough.

I do get bank holidays too. She's only four so I think I'm just feeling bad too.

I feel for you OP i am in a new job and am on less holiday as well and its really hard to stretch it out. I am lucky in that my mum lives locally to me and so she can always have them for school holidays but i do feel bad when I see other mums doing fun stuff with their kids and I'm off to work. The things i do are;

Book days off around back holidays - so for example i took three days last week but with the bank holiday i was off for over a week.

Use half days - so i take a half day to pick them up from school on a Friday and have an early start to the weekend. Using half days also makes me feel my holidays are stretched a bit longer.

Don't automatically book a day off for things like school plays etc, always ask if you can leave early or make time up later. I have done this and allow people who work in my team to do this as well. Means you are not using up holiday.

See if you can buy more days off or take unpaid leave for any extra days (if you can afford it ) a last resort but can be useful

Its always tough but you are definitely not alone. Mine are 2 and 5 so I suffer a lot from guilt about not spending enough time with them,