Hellobee Boards

Well, I don’t know if this is what you want to hear.

I worked 30-35 hours/week (not including commute) - but got paid for 24 hours/week part time. I just quit and am now SAHM as of Labor Day.
My kids are now 2,4,6.

When we had our baby, we hired an au pair (rather than the nanny we had been using). Trump has now blocked au pair visas (and honestly who would want to come to the dumpster fire that is the US right now). Our au pairs were wonderful - would do kid laundry on top of childcare.
After the au pair program was halted, I decided to quit my job bc I’d return to paying my whole salary to a nanny. That didn’t feel worth it given covid exposure at my job (oncology nurse practitioner at a big hospital) and uncertain school environment for the big kids.

It may be a honeymoon period, but I’m loving SAHM so far. I was literally always behind and stressed about home stuff, work, etc.

I’m personally of the opinion now that I couldn’t have it all. I recognize now that I was drowning. My job was super fulfilling and I was so good at it - but it’s not like talking about death and dying all day was a real break from the kids. I’d be happy if I peed or at any food by 3p

Anyway, I think the decision to have more kids depends on what your job is and how much you have family to help (either DH or your extended family). And if they will actually take the mental load off of you...

Mine are 6, 3, and 5 months. I work 35 hrs/wk, which is what my company considers full time. For me, I think what makes it work is that my husband and I both work for the same family-friendly company. We have on-site subsidized child care, flexible work schedules and unlimited sick leave. We even have 20hrs per year that we can use to volunteer at our kids schools! I haven’t actually worked out of the home with 3 yet because of covid, but my guess is it has to be easier than trying to work with all 3 at home with me...

We have three, from 1.5 to 7. I work 40 hours a week (somewhat flexible hours) but was on a long maternity leave with the youngest.

When I was home I was with just the baby till 2 pm, then all three once school let out. I liked it, except for one thing. If I got really sick, who would watch them? It was the one reason I was looking forward to going back to work and no longer being "on" 24-7. I was planning to finally figure out some health stuff that had been bothering me, but that wasn't meant to be. I was only in the office two months, and then coronavirus happened. Now I'm putting off going to the doctor again, because if it's something serious, I can't drop all the home stuff on DH while I deal with it.

Now, work logistics. The plan was to have the older kids in school and afterschool, and baby in day care. What happened instead was remote learning in the spring, while baby (who had just learned to walk) ran wild and tore up the apartment. We managed to keep her from falling off furniture and running with knives, but all the walls are still covered in her graffiti. Thankfully my husband was on leave for part of the spring, and my office put everyone on a reduced schedule, but I still burned through a lot of vacation time just to make 32 hours a week.

Now I'm back to 40 hours. Public school has reopened a month late and in very reduced capacity (1-2 days a week live, the rest remote). Between this and the kids' mental health suffering from isolation, we ended up sending the older two to private school. We can't really afford it long-term, but it's the price of me keeping my job. We can't afford to also send the youngest to day care, so she's home with us. The irony... of all my kids, she's the most social. The others would have loved to stay home at that age, but she's not a happy camper. But what can you do. Working is easier with only one LO to entertain, but planning days when I need to do field visits is a whole thing, because DH has to find a window of several hours in his schedule when he's not running any meetings.

But at least I'm not losing 2.5 hours every day on commuting, or frantically evaluating what to do if one of the kids looks "off" but I can't reschedule a walk-through with five other people. I don't miss that part at all.

My 4 are 2x 3.5, 5.5 and 7.5 years old. For us we always wanted 2 or 3 and we’ll when no. 2 was 1 we were like we can handle another one. Well and no. 3 turned out to be LO3 & LO4. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I work 32h on 5 days a week. I work from a homeoffice that isn’t in our home if that makes sense. I got the opportunity to move the office out of the house and I really enjoy not being stuck in the house all the time.

Is it always easy: No, but I think I would go crazy if I didn’t work. We have to fit some doctors and speech and Physio appointments in there which sometimes lets it get crazy but we make it work.

I am not sure I could work as much if my DH didn’t handle his part of chores and childcare. So usually I do mornings and get everyone ready in the morning and then take them to Preschool, Kindergarten and School. Also I handle most of the therapy and doctors appointments in the mornings. DH then picks up in the afternoon and we meet for dinner at home then.

@codeitall: you make this sound so easy!!!!

I have three that are each not quite 2.5 years apart in ages. They are currently newly 6, 3.5, and 15 months.

I work full time salary without having to put in a specific number of hours. On average, since having the kids it's been 40ish hours a week. I don't officially take a lunch break and do occasionally work longer hours or weekends. I have a work phone now and do take calls on the weekends. As long as my work is done by deadline, I'm fine with hours.

We have full time daycare/school for all three kids. Luckily, all is in person.

DH was a SAHP for a few years, but prefers to work. It works because we split most of the chores and do a number of them on the weekend, often with the kids. My weekends are usually laundry, meal planning, and grocery shopping. His is often the yard. He cooks, I clean after dinner. I try to do more of the deep cleaning, but it just isn't my priority. Mostly, our house is dirty with cleaning done monthly.

My biggest challenge is that I want more time to be able to play with the kids. I also want to be able to put them in other activities, but with our schedule, it hasn't been possible. They are in swimming, but I haven't been able to try anything else. They don't miss it though. It should be easier soon as my youngest will be much more flexible with nap.

I have 3 - ages 8, 3 (will be 4 in 3 weeks), and 6 months. I work full time as an attorney (used to be 40+ hours; during Covid, my hours have been a little lower). I feel like we haven't really kicked in the tires with this having three kids thing because neither my husband and I have returned to our offices yet with the Covid situation and thus don't have a commute, don't have to look "office-ready", and are home to pick our elementary aged child from school and get him going on homework. In lots of ways, this Covid lifestyle has made a lot of things easier for us to transition to a family of 5 (also, all of our kids are at daycare or in-person school) but obviously this isn't a forever thing. I am a believer that we would have figured it out one way or another. I will say that baby #3 has been our chillest baby and best sleeper. With small children, the hard parts are just phases. I will say that I have been frustrated as of late that our weekends are just a marathon of laundry, dishes, bath times, nap times, etc. to prep for the week to come that I didn't experience on maternity leave. We do outsource whatever we can (grocery deliveries through Amazon Fresh, meal delivery through Hungry Root, cleaning service every two weeks, dry cleaning pick up and delivery, lawnmowing service, local gardening shop plants flowers in my planters, etc.).

I have 3, they are 10 months, 2, and 4.5. I work as an attorney well more than full-time, about 45-55 hours a week. Basically we only make it work because we have an amazing full time nanny, plus additional help with school pickup and other stuff (grandparents used to help a lot but not since COVID ). We also treat parenting in shifts, so my husband's job starts and ends early while mine starts and ends late, so I do breakfast, school drop-off, etc., and he handles dinner.

Working from home has actually helped a lot. Having no commute is fantastic, and I feel like I get a lot of random nice time with the kids that I never used to. I think I will go back to the office at some point, but will try to do 2-3 days a week working from home.

But, I do like a solid third of my workday after the kids go to bed, sometimes a larger percentage. That also means that I basically have no time to myself except Friday and Saturday nights after bedtime, so I wind up staying up too late those nights too in an effort to get a small amount of relaxation in. I am tired all the time. My job really fills my cup rather than draining it, and I have never wanted to do SAH, so I think that's the only reason I'm able to "balance" it all.

Mine are 7 and twins are 5. I work anywhere from 40-60 hours/week depending on what phase of projects we are in. I've always worked at least Fridays from home but now....all the days. My kids are in hybrid public school so go 5 mornings a week for a little under 3 hours and then have assignments and 1 online specials class each day. I have a lot of systems in place and the kids are old enough to help out (some with much prodding). However, DH only works 20ish hours a week on/at our rental properties so he does pick up/drop off. I facilitate the 7 year olds learning in the afternoon while working and he facilitates the twins. I love the pockets of time I get with the kids during the day (a short book here, 3 cartwheels in the yard there, taking a conference call while supervising a craft). I would miss all of that if I were back in the office full time. During busy times, I sign back in after putting the kids to bed and do a couple hours of work (bonus - no one bugs you from work!). It's sounds much more idyllic than reality. I do a million loads of laundry on the weekend and most of my cleaning. DH does some but his standards are lower than mine.