Tuesday, 10 November 2009
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Working After Baby: What Did You Do?
My husband and I are expecting our first child, a sweet little girl that will hopefully come sometime in early February. We are absolutely thrilled!
When I was growing up my mom stayed at home with us three kids until my little sister went into kindergarten. She then went back to work part time (substitute teaching) and eventually when we were in middle school went back to work full time (chemist). When my husband was growing up his mom always worked at least part time. After she had his older sister she went back to school to get her RN degree, graduating just a few days before my husband was born (her graduation picture is adorable!). After he was born she went back to work full time.
I feel that we both had wonderful, caring and nurturing mothers, despite being raised differently in this aspect.
Every woman has different goals in life, different beliefs and different financial responsibilities. Currently, our plan is for me to work part time after our little girl is born and hopefully stay at home after we have our second child.
What did you do or what do you plan to do after you had/have your first child? What factors played into that decision for you?
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- From: skittler335@xanga
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Comments (31)
I'm due in March and I really want to stay home and devote all of my time toward our little one. I would feel terrible having to drop off a newborn at a daycare. Not that I have anything against it, I just don't feel like it is necessary for my family at this point. My husband is in the Army and he supports us just fine. I don't have any family or anyone that I could ask to watch the baby while I worked and we're not in a bind for money, so I don't feel the need to work right after the baby is born. Like your mother, I can see myself going back to work once he starts school, but in the meantime I'm all his. :)
I stay at home. I don't like the idea of someone else raising my child (daycare) so we did whatever we could to rearragne our budget so I could stay at home with our son. I love it...I plan on homeschooling so, I don't think I'll end up going back to work full-time till my kids head off to college.
I really really really wish our financial circumstances weren't how they are or I'd definately be a SAHM! I had a c-section and was back at work 5 weeks after our daughter was born because we just couldn't afford it. (You're supposed to take at least 8 weeks off after a c-section)! We just couldn't do it and it makes me sad ever time I think about it because other people get to spend more time with her than we do. I don't get home until 5 at night and she's usually in bed by 9:30, so aside from weekends, I'm barely able to spend time with her. I feel like I'm going to miss all the important "firsts" because of it... It's an unfortunate situation, but we have to do it. :(
@XxFireXboltxX@xanga - and this is why I <3 you :) And because our little beans share their birthday!
I just knew, for sure, there was no way I could stay at home with my daughter and for us to have "enough" money. I was so wrong! I quit my job when I was 4 weeks pregnant and I haven't been back since. It took a LOT of sacrifices on our part, but it is what I wanted more than anything else. Not everyone can do it, but I'm so thankful that we were able to rearrange things so that I could. I can't imagine missing everything my little one does. I can't stand the thought of someone else seeing her do something for the first time. For that, we don't eat out, we don't go to movies, etc, etc. The lifestyle change was hard for us, but it is absolutely the right choice for my family! (And I'm NOT knocking anyone who chooses differently or who has different circumstances! I'm just saying what is right for my family!)
(Incidentally, I was the one making more money in my family so our income went down by more than half when I stopped working.)
im lucky enough to stay home and raise our children. and may i just add that staying home with the kids ia a full time job. one that i love!!!
I struggled with this the first time around, 4 years ago, and ended up going back to work, slightly cutting back on my hours. I am blessed that my mom and mother-in-law take turns watching my son and have for FOUR YEARS while I work. We don't have to do day-care at all. I'm telling you, so blessed! But now I am due in March with our second, and I do NOT want to continue working. I can't imagine handing my newborn and 4-yr-old son over to my mother, that just isn't fair to the kids or the grandparents, or me. My son gets three different sets of rules/values a week (ours, my parents, my in-laws) and it's confusing for him. I don't want it to be that way anymore. I want to raise my kids, not let someone else do it. Unfortunately, my husband has a crummy job and is not able to fully support us alone on his income... so we are definitely praying hard for a new job for him, and/or a work-at-home opportunity for me... if not, I really don't know what what's going to happen come March. But I pray constantly that God grant me the desire of my heart... to be a stay/work-at-home-mom to my children.
I stay at home, but it's certainly not without its sacrifices. I'm thankful that even with drastically scaling down our budget, we're still able to make it financially. We don't have a lot of extra money, and some months we just barely make it, but I'm in awe that every single month, we always have just enough. Sure, I wish there was more money to do "fun" things with, but we have our house, food, and clothing. Living with "just" the essentials is more than enough for me if it means that I'm the one who gets to stay home with my son. :)
First off CONGRATS!!! Both of my girls, were born in february (06 & 09) its exciting with my oldest i lived at home and went to work when she was 6months old....with my Youngest was 4 weeks old when i went back to work. I only worked a few nights a week, and still only work a few nights a week.
I went back to work 4 weeks after my son was born, but I only work between 15-20 hours a week. I don't want to be home with my son as much as possible. It would be nice to have more money, but I'm not willing to sacrifice my time with him for it. Kids grow up too fast!
With my oldest son I went back to work after 6 weeks. My hubby was the stay-at-home dad. When we got married I made more money and I didn't want to give up my job. He ended up getting a night job after I went back to work.
With my baby I went back to work after 5 months. We are still doing the same hours with me working day shift and him with night shift. It works out great and we do not have to worry about money.
I will admit it's hard that way. But atleast we are not wasting money on daycare. And they are being cared for by a parent.
My husband and I were working, as apartment managers, when we had our daughter. Our office was connected to our apartment. So, up until my daughter was 6 months old, I was still working as the office manager. I had my daughter with me, she didn't go to day care or anything, which made everything a lot more complicated. It was a huge juggling act. I took two weeks for myself (even though I was collecting rent only a few days after my daughter was born) and her to just be to ourselves, but after that I was expected to be back in the office, plus caring for a newborn. It was crazy! So, we eventually moved closer to family and now I'm a stay at home mom. I may have to go back to work at any time. We struggle, but we make sacrifices. My husband wants me to homeschool, but he also would like the extra income. Can't have both! I've been trying to find a way to work from home for a while. I think that's what would work best for us. But yeah, I love being a SAHM, even though some days are extremely rough. I wouldn't have wanted to miss any of her firsts. I defintely feel blessed that, so far, I haven't.
Before my husband and I got married, we discussed our conviction about the wife's place being in the home (personal conviction, not trying to judge
). We scraped by on my husband's salary and it turned out to be a blessing that I hadn't sought out a job because we got pregnant a few weeks after we got married and my morning sickness would have preventing me from holding down a job anyway. I haven't worked a day since I got married and I love it!! It's been really tough (there were times when my husband was making barely enough to support the four of us) but God has blessed us so much and I feel so confident in my decision to stay home and care for my family. I also plan on homeschooling my kids, so I definitely won't consider any work outside the home for at least another 18 years. 
Although, if we couldn't afford to live, I'd definitely go back to work before taking government aid...just another personal conviction.
I've done a little bit of everything. After our first was born I stayed at home full time. When he was around a year old I went back to work VERY parttime in the evenings until our dd was a couple of months old and we moved. When they were 18m and 3 y.o. I went back to work full time. I was an Asst. Director at the daycare center they attended. While I enjoyed my work and was blessed to see them all day long I regret that year SO much. I feel like compared to my experience with my son I missed all of my dd's toddlerhood. Plus I don't care what anyone says daycare changes kids and I didn't like the changes I saw in my kids, or myself quite frankly. I was stressed a lot between trying to manage home and work and I was paying other people to do things I should have been doing, like cleaning and cooking (via eating out so often or ordering in).
After that I have only taken jobs on part time at nights and weekends and only sporadically so that I could put my family first. Right now I am considering going to work part time and what's really interesting about it is my kids are really excited about it. I never realized how proud it made them when I was teaching adults at night and they are really fired up for me to do that, or something like that, again and since we homeschool and spend all day together I don't feel like they'll be missing out on any family time. For us that works out perfectly.
I turned my back on programming, and started a child care business.
My mother stayed home to take care of us, despite the fact that my dad was in grad school. so he worked nights, we lived in the one of the worst neighborhoods in new england, and couldn''t afford heat in the winter. she also homeschooled us for years, so never got a job when we were school aged either.
my husband was in daycare at 6 weeks ( and he was a preemie!) and his parents both worked full time up his mom retired a few years ago. she wanted to be able to provide all the best 'stuff' for her kids. Mine didn't want us to miss out on anything either, but she mostly didn't want us to miss out on her.
I feel that I am MUCH closer to my parents than he is, and although neither of us are terribly social, i am actually more social than he is.
I REALLY want to stay home with any kids that i have, but this means that he has to get a much better job before we can have kids. :( I'm not sure he's strongly convicted one way or another.
I went back to work at 9 weeks with my first child. I was single so no choice there really. With my second child I went back to work at 6 weeks. I am a nurse and worked nights so hubby took care of him. I wish I had taken 12 weeks off but it wouldn't have worked anyway. 2 weeks after I went back to work my husband was laid off and was out of a job for 7 months. Thankfully I had a good job to go back to. I have never wanted to be a stay at home mom. My mom did it and God bless the women who can but I can't. I love nursing though because I work 3 shifts a week, I schedule myself and so I am always able to make it to school functions and still spend quite a bit of time with my kids while collecting a nice paycheck.
What did you do or what do you plan to do after you had/have your first child? What factors played into that decision for you?
After I had my first baby I was barely 17. I stayed home and went to school. His daddy worked and went to school. I was able to nurse him for a year, and I went to work shortly after he turned 1 (and I turned 18.)
After my second my husband didn't have a job and was having a hard time getting one. So I went back to work after only a few weeks. :\ I would much rather have stayed home with him his first year, and I know he feels like he missed out too.
My husband now has a job, and we are pregnant with our third. When she comes I will take off 6 weeks of work, and then go back. If I could, I'd stay home with the kids. I miss them, and I know it's going to be hard to leave my new little girl.
my daughter will be about 8 or 9 months before i start working again, she's 6 months right now
Stay home if you can and in most cases it can be done. We planned on not having children because I figured that we would never be able for me to afford staying home and I would not want to give birth and see nothing of my child for 8 hours of the day other than a nice 5 x 7 photo on my desk. Low and behold, I ended up getting pregnant 8 years into our marraige and strangely, although I knew it would be tough going I was never stressed out and I knew that it would work out somehow. We lived off of my husband's income and what little savings we had gathered over the last few years. Just as we were getting ready to work out a plan to sell our house and move to a less expensive location my husband got a call that his aunt had passed away and she left him a little money. This was completely unexpected as far as the fact that his aunt even had any money stashed away and he had not even seen her in 15 years. It was not strange though in the sense that God was faithful just as we had been faithful in trusting him to provide all our needs, (not wants) and he allowed me to be the mom that I had always wanted to be.
I stayed at home. Even if I had gone back to work, my husband and I couldn't have afforded daycare, and we have no close family to watch our son. Daycares around here run about $100-$150 a week, plus cost of food, diapers, and whatever else is necessary. It would've taken 3/4 of my paycheck. So we decided it would be better for me to just stay at home and not worry about the hassle for only 1/4 of a paycheck.
In the meantime, we've been trying to save money so I can start my own photography studio. We're hoping to have it going before our son starts school, that way I can schedule things around my son and still make some money.
@P1AutismMom@autisable - That's a great testimony! Thanks for sharing that! Do you have just the one child?
I'm staying at home. When I was working, my salary would have done little more than cover the cost of daycare each week...then you have to add to that we'd HAVE to have a second car; insurance, gas, a car payment or costly repairs no matter whether you go new or used...we would have been negative several hundred dollars each month to have someone else watching our baby and...there are some great daycares and sitters out there...but nobody is going to put as much time and effort into her as I do. It hasn't been a cake walk, but we're figuring out a way to make it work.
@skittler335@xanga - Thank you! We have 2 boys. Brian the oldes is 15 now and Daniel is 13. Daniel was a planned pregnancy and we were so overjoyed finding out we were having another boy because of course the two of them would become fast friends and bond for life. Well, it did not exactly work out the way because Daniel has autism. This has been a longer and more challenging struggle which, unlike financial strife, is something we have no remedy or clear vision of what lays ahead in the future.
I will say that God is still faithful and I trust that the challenges we have faced so far and those we will conquer in the future will provide us with even more reason to proclaim that God is good, will never leave you alone and has a plan for your life.
www.autismmom.net if you'd like to see a short summary of our journey so far. Well, as you can see I'm not that good with keeping things brief, ha ha