City lawyer with toddlers can't cope

[RosieIrene]

I work FT at a city firm and have two dd 1 and 3. Have a full time daily nanny but still can't cope. Work all day, come home and put kids to bed and work all evening to make billable target or have to go to client functions. So stressed out that on weekend just want to sit in garden with kids and do nothing. Can't sleep, can't talk to anyone. How do people manage?

Would like to add that I know quite a lot of women when faced with the dilemma of choosing which of the three main components of their existence outside themselves - husband, children, career - they need to "sacrifice" in order to survive are quite clear that the career goes first and don't have any regrets. Or spend the rest of their lives doing housework.

Some people don't get to choose, not every baby is planned.

hatrick - I hate "sacrifice" too, which is why I put it in inverted commas, quoting Xenia.

I agree, it's a choice rational adults make when they realise that they can't be superhumans and have everything and enjoy it all simultaneously.

Not every pregnancy is planned, most are though. Even when a pregnancy is unplanned, one would hope that the eventual birth of a baby or its alternative are scrutinised seriously and sensibly, so there is still an exercise of choice. If you take some religious stance at being anti that particular choice then you are still exercising choice in that you choose to be a Catholic (or whatever). It's about taking responsibility for your choices in life. I agree with Xenia, in that if you want a lot of life (or want it all) there has to be some element of compromise. If there are areas on which are not prepared to compromise then you need to at least prioritise.

I don't think I had a proper idea of how much my life would change hatrick but I do agree that all my changes have been willingly made and I wouldn't call them sacrifices either
I do wish the OP would come back and tell us she is OK health-wise and if some of the discussion on here has helped her weigh up her options

Marina - She hasn't got time!

There's not having time because you are busy within a copeable, healthy capacity and not having time because you have succumbed to damaging stress levels though caroline and the OP sounded as though she was verging on the latter. I honestly hope she is OK

Marina - I hope she is OK too. Two of my sisters work (hard) conbined with the demands of family life. They both have a habit of saying "You have more time than me". I really resent this as we all have the same number of hours in a day and choose what we do with them.

I hope she's okay too. I think the stress comes from having a 1 and 3 year old whether you work or not and that that then dissipates as they get older. SOme people are stressed per se even in deciding whether the morning's task will be walking to the library, the park or staying in the chair.

I certainly don't think parents at home have more time. In some ways they have less. At work depening on your job you can usually take 5 minutes to go on line and book a holiday or the food shopping or go out to buy a coffee. At home with a screaming baby you hardly have time to dress and go to the toilet.

Depends on the job. At work I used to have a real problem having time to sleep, eat, go to the loo. I'd lose several kilos in a month sometimes from lack of food.

At home with a baby I have always had masses of time for myself. Even when all three children are around I have oceans of free time.

Xenia - I thought you thought she'd be on mumsnet more. Being at home can't be both full on and idle.

NKF - PMSL

Surely we all know by now that Xenia is superwoman - full-time job and full-time on MN - and that no other woman in the world can match her multi-tasking skills - though she berates everyone verbally for not matching her incredible standards of productivity

It would be a bit like me going out for a meal with my high earning sisters and saying "you pay, because you earn more". I can not see that going down too well but I might try it on Saturday lunchtime!

Between this current pregnancy and my daughter (now 19 months) I started working one day a week back in the City (commuting). My partner reduced his days at work to look after our daughter at home. On that one day I worked, often I had a haircut at lunchtime and often met a friend for lunch or for a bite to eat and a glass of wine before returning home. I did not miss my daughter of feel in the least bit guilty. We decided to have another baby and at the same time I was under pressure from my company to increase my days at work, they could not work out why I was not very enthusiastic. Eventually I had to tell them I was pregnant and that I would be leaving. I don't regret the decision (am delighted to be expecting another baby) but I do some days miss that feeling of separateness and freedom. No doubt when the new baby is weaned off the breast and in a sensible routine I can go back a day or two a week if I feel inclined. It is really drossy being at home all day every day with young children but I dislike day care and the idea of my child being raised by a nanny (or a succession of nannies) more than I dislike the dross.

C, my sister does that. She always leaves her handbag behind. It's difficult in families. I paid for our Christmas lunch out last year for 10 of us as my father didn't offer.

I have never berated anyone about productivity or suggested I am any kind of ideal. Who is to say that putting your child with a full time nanny and going into your garden praying and watching the flowers isn't a good use of time? These are very difficult moral issues as to what you're on the planet for.

I just don't think these comments about "being raised by a nanny" is really how it ever works out if you have a daily nanny. There are still loads of hours and holidays when you're with your children and the father and mother raise the chidlren and the nanny helps. Then when the child is 3 or something it's likely to be nursery school in the mornings anyway and at 5 at school and it's the parents raising it. It's presumablyonly objectionable to have a nanny if you think you're God's gift to parenthood and no one on the planet except perhaps your husband can do it better. In a sense stay at home mothers are bit too proud, aren't they, of their own abilities. May be the nanny would do it better. May be the variety of the nanny, father and mother does the child good.

Caroline - interesting. I completely understand how you feel about everything - except the dross. I don't find life at home drossy. But it would be nice to get out on my own.

I would never be able to leave my daughter with my partner for one day a week. He doesn't have that kind of job. Had I lived near my mother, I might well have left her with her and returned to work one day a week.

So I am not contemplating returning to any kind of work until this September, when my daughter starts school, and then only for a few hours a week.

Xenia - if you look at all the evidence, it is critical for children to be spoken to by an intelligent human being who loves them for many hours a day, from birth, in order to develop their linguistic and cognitive abilities. Which is why a nanny is not good enough for me.

Quite apart from me truly enjoying my daughter's company.

nnaAnna...what an insult to nannies ! My nanny has been with us since birth of DC1,( 6+years ), and she is a very intelligent/sensitive/highly experienced person.....and she is very fond of DCs. You are in for a ' crash and burn' moment somewhere down the line Anna ! YOU cannot be perfection to your child.....

Not a question of perfection mozhe, just realism. I don't know your nanny so I cannot comment, but I know many, many nannies around here, I know the market, and I see what happens to the children's linguistic and cognitive development. Not pretty.

anna888 that is so hilarious. If you want to stay at home with your child and breastfeed a dolly then do so and stop trying to convince yourself somehow you dd is better off for it. you are really setting yourself up for a fall.

i work 4 days and home for 3, its enough for me, by monday morning i cannot wait to send dd packing. my CM speaks cockney and i speak with a general middle class accent. dd is becoming quite cockney too!. however, DD she is safe loved by CM and developing normally. i grew up with a single mother who worked three jobs and i hardly saw her but i loved the fact that my 8 brothers and sisters dragged me round the streets till she got home and my childminder (an old jamaican woamn down the street) spoke patois that i didn't understand.
i am a leading scientist (PhD)who has lectured all over the world and now am married to a blue collar worked who never finished school.

my dd is bright, happy in love with her family and relatives, has a well rounded upbringing, loads of confidence, loves that i read her books all day if she wanted and DH watches match of day with her all week if she wanted. loves that when i am knackered from working, DH will push round the garden on her bike for hours on end and never be knackered (that'll be the muscles from a manual job).

my point is, children will have a variety of upbringings, some will let you down, some will make you proud, at the end of day life is short and you need to be happy with your decisions.

yentil - I've said it before elsewhere - the childcare here (Paris) is really awful. There's no need to be rude.

oh yes RE: nanny's adverse effects on linguistics and cognitive development thats a cracker!

i would not pay too much attention to research unless you have an eye for statistical analyses, its amazing how biased research results can be