One day they are just tiny six pound babies in your arms, and suddenly you realise you are about to have a teenager in the house, with just a few short years to go before they may want to fly the nest, as I did when I was 17.
I meet many working parents and we all have different arrangements to make our lives somehow come together, some more effortless than others. So from my almost 13 years of raising kids and juggling a career, here I will share some personal experiences with you. If you are planning on starting a family soon, maybe some of this will be useful to you. I went in with absolutely no idea, having had a baby at 23, but if I had my time again I would do things a little differently. And I’ll tell you something…. I thought I wanted to be a stay at home mum when I was pregnant first time round. How wrong was I!! So never plan your parenting and career choices too far in advance until you’ve experienced it first hand, and be prepared for your feelings to change all the time in your child raising years.
The longest period of time I had off work after having a baby was 3 months, that was my choice. That was with my first-born, Ahlia. During that time I also studied, but I honestly couldn’t wait to get back to work. When I had my second, Levi, I was supposed to have 3 months off but ended up going back to work (from home) when he was 2 weeks old due to my employer needing my help because some A-hole resigned. Luckily Levi was a very easy baby, and I could not have done that with my first.
The third time around, with Sienna, my youngest, I was running my business. If you think you can have more than a few weeks off when you run a business, think again! But it wasn’t too bad, I only worked part-time until I really needed to increase my hours again. And my lovely receptionist enjoyed taking baby Sienna for walks in the pram while I met with clients. Sienna was born into the fast lane – she was carried in the crook of my elbow from 4 days old to school drops offs and pick ups. She somehow never got sick, and was the most placid of them all.
Child Care
So we’ve pretty much tried all child care options, apart from an au pair. Despite the total dependence on you, the broken sleep and nappies of the early childhood years, I think these were the easy years for us to manage. I was in my 20’s for most of it, still taking off in my career and then early in my business when I had Sienna when I was 30. My husband Jason was working FIFO for about 5 years in the middle of it all, which meant he was able to look after the kids on his weeks home.
Daycare – We had a horrible daycare experience first time round. Poor little Ahlia caught so many sicknesses, many keeping her out of action for a week or more and having to call in family to help us when we still had to get to work. That was the biggest stress, so you really need plan B for those times if it’s difficult for you to get time off. Otherwise when she wasn’t sick, daycare worked well. The long daycare hours meant we could both work full-time without too much of a drama.
Besides sickness, the other big negative of daycare was cost. For us it pretty much ruled out having another child in quick succession, or if we did it would have hardly been worth me returning to work, and we could not live comfortably on one income. So we had a pretty big gap of 3 and a half years between each child due to this.
Before and After School Care – for a time this suited us well, but I found the kids got extremely tired, especially Levi because he was only 4 when he started full-time school and after school care. It was a really long day and often he just slept through the after school time. It wasn’t every day, but it meant I could work past 3.15 pm when I needed to and the kids didn’t get stressed by it because their school provided it on campus. The kids were pretty happy because they had friends there, were well fed and got to do fun crafts or play games.
In-home-child-care – After I had Sienna, I discovered through word of mouth, the in-home-child-care arrangements which for eligible families, meant you could have someone look after your kids in your own home and still be eligible for Government child care subsidies. We were eligible due to our working hours falling outside of traditional day care (sometimes I had to go to Perth and wouldn’t get home until 8pm & Jason worked away). The downside was that we had to find our own carer, but fortunately that wasn’t too difficult because we had full-time care needs for three children by that stage, with one at school full-time, one at kindy, and a baby of 9 months.
This was absolutely brilliant, still not cheap, but a life changer. Our in home nannies provided the kids with a safe environment in our home, providing them with educational benefits that we sometimes don’t do as parents because we are busy doing other things in the home (like working). They were both qualified child care workers and loved being with our kids. Our nannies were also happy to cook dinner when we had to work late, and kept the washing going for me. That was the life changing part! Sadly when my baby Sienna got to full-time school age we had to say goodbye to the nanny, but it was a damn good 3.5 years!
School Years
Now that our kids are in Year 7, Year 4 and PP, it’s actually a lot harder. They are less dependant on us, but their activities and needs increase as they get older. This is where we found ourselves struggling and were deliberately holding them back from extra-curricular activities and play dates because it was too logistically challenging.
My mum has been looking after the kids for a few hours after school each day and in the holidays when we can’t take the time off. Please bear in mind that we don’t have mean employers. Both my husband and I run our own business. We call the shots. But when we had our kids, we had no idea our careers would be this demanding, so it’s been challenging of late.
We have experimented with boarding school for our eldest this year which has meant she got to do loads of sports, music, and socialising, but that isn’t perfect either and it’s at the extreme end of the cost spectrum. So we tried it, but we are bringing her home and making a different change to deal with this ongoing conundrum.
My business has grown considerably over the 8.5 years from inception so I’ve got to the point where I can no longer keeps tabs on both my business needs and my families needs, so I had to make a change. In consultation with my husband, we made a tough choice together that he will take the reins on the family front and pull back his working hours, because frankly I enjoy my work more than he enjoys his. PLUS he is a very good hands on dad and the kids can use a bit of a dad discipline in their lives. He’s got a bit of time to make up with them too. And honestly he’s probably a lot more fun than me when they are having downtime.
So 2020, we are having career mum in over-drive, and laid back dad in part-time self-employment and full-time dad mode. I guess at the end of this you will realise that life is always going to change and throw challenges at you, which you have to face as you go along. Many, many times my husband and I have questioned everything we do, whether we sell a business and simplify things. And it’s ok to do that, it’s ok to challenge your status quo and make sure you are living out your life on your own terms. We structure our personal finances as best we can to ensure we give ourselves these opportunities to work more or work less when we feel that we need to, and that’s a blessing as a parent. You get one chance to bring your children up and I like to think we are all doing our very best version of that and it is not for us to judge how others decide to do it. Jason and I certainly don’t give a jatz cracker what anybody things about how we decide to manage our life, after all, the kids are just one aspect in a very complex web. You do you – but if this little tidbit somehow helps you to do that, my job here is done.
Shonel x
The Business of Life 