am i selfish?

Hi There,

I am not sure if this is in the right area so I apoligise if it is not. My husband and I have been together for 6 years, married for 4, and emotionally we are very ready to add a little baby to our household. Financially we probably have a ways to go, if we were to have a baby now then I will need to go back to work after my 12 weeks paid maternity leave.

Am i being selfish wanting a baby now even though I know that I will have to go back to work (at least 3 days per week)?

Thanks for all opinions!

:

---

Hi There,

I am not sure if this is in the right area so I apoligise if it is not. My husband and I have been together for 6 years, married for 4, and emotionally we are very ready to add a little baby to our household. Financially we probably have a ways to go, if we were to have a baby now then I will need to go back to work after my 12 weeks paid maternity leave.

Am i being selfish wanting a baby now even though I know that I will have to go back to work (at least 3 days per week)?

Thanks for all opinions!

---

if everyone waited til they were financially in the best place possible to have a child, population growth would be in the negative big time! it's entirely up to you when you have a child - for one thing, you may not become pg straight away, which gives you additional time to save for baby's arrival...

i think if you look at the baby bonus payments, and maybe work out with your employer if you can take your mat leave over twice as long at half pay (i'm doing this) you migth find you can spread your leave over a longer period of time...

do what is right for you - if you're ready, you're ready. anything can change your financial situation at any time - you simply learn to cope! going without a family until times are ideal - well, that isn't so easy to do...

As usual BG good advice.

No one is ever finically stable for a baby, and there is nothing wrong with going back to work part time for 3 days.

For me id like to continue my studies when my 2nd baby is around 6 mths old. just so i feel normal and apart of the human body.

Hi Leigh,

IMO, if you wait till you are financially ready, it may never happen.. BUT, you can make things work for you.. We were married for 4 years before we had DD and would have loved a baby earlier, but we needed and wanted to get a few debts sorted 1st..

But there are ways you can make it work. It is hard going back to work when baby is so young, but if that is what you need to do and want to do, then that is ok. I know a lot of ladies who have had to put children in CC at that age, and while it tore them to pieces, they had no choice. I did it for a while, but then we made some sacrifices so that I was able to stay home again.

I don't think you are being selfish, but maybe if you do a bit more planning and you might find some ways to cut costs so you can afford it now.. GL

Thanks ladies,

I was really happy with our decision but a friend today made an insensitive comment.

Feeling much better again now :D Yay to officially starting trying to conceive! At the end of the day our baby will be loved, thats the main thing.

darl, people will always say rude things, someone said to me that im irresponsible cause DP and i are not "set up" yet, as in own a house etc...so i said, you think itd be better to wait til we have a debt of $400k? she was a bit taken aback by that one LOL

im planning on staying hm for at least a yr, cause that suits us (i worked out that if i go back to work i will lose alot of centrelink benefits plus childcare costs, even if i went back 30 hrs a week wed only be about $100 a week better off, not worth it IMHO)
but its diff for everyone. i dont think youre selfish at all. just make sure you research and check out whichever child care centres your keen on sending your bubs too...my friend just went back to work fulltime and puts her 7 month old in CC, since hes been there he has become very clingy cause the CC workers hold him ALL day, she gets hm from a day of work and he wont let her leave the room for 1 minute....and theyve mucked up his previous sleeping patterns too.
just gotta weigh up the pros and the cons, HTH GL

i'm going back to work when bubs 9 weeks. i work at a childcare centre so bub will at least come to work with me. people keep saying to me am i taking 6mth - 1 yr off and when i say 9 wks they give me a strange look, but i have bills and a mortgage and i also love my job and think i'll be bored out of my mind at home alone, but that may change when i settle into a routine, and may only go back part time. ultimately its your decision.

I have heard people called selfish for going back to work early, and selfish for not going back at all. Honestly you cann't win. You just have to do what works for you and your family - Children survive and thrive both in childcare and at home with mum.

I think its more important to work having children around your biology than around finances. Like someone else said, even when things are going well financially- you still cannot predict what tomorrow will bring (ie- a recession!), however you CAN predict your biological age and that is something that will not change.
You will find that babies cost very little in the first year anyway. The baby bonus pays for the pram, cot etc. If you host a baby shower its unlikely you will need to buy many clothes, toys etc (at least for the first 6 months), and if you breastfeed, your baby will cost nothing to feed for the first 6 months of life.
I think the suggestion to receive half of your maternity pay over 24 weeks instead of the full pay for 12 weeks is a brilliant idea. I don't want to put you off going back to work early (that is entirely up to you), but in my experience, it takes a good month for your body to recover from the birth itself (you bleed for quite an extensive period), and most women are still feeding their babies a couple of times a night at 12 weeks and this can leave you feeling rather exhausted.
I think that at 24 weeks you would feel much more prepared physically and emotionally to handle going back to work - but that is nothing to do with guilt or anything - just purely from a health and re-cooperation perspective. Mothers need to take as much care of themselves in those first few months as they do their babies!!
Do you have a mother/mother-in-law that will be able to help out with bub when you go back to work a few days a week? This will save you alot of money on day-care expenses, plus the assurance that your child will be getting one-on-one attention.

Goodluck with your decision and don't feel bad for whatever you decide.

X

i dont think anyone is selfish when it comes to going back to work, some people have no choice but to go back, some people just want to go back, others dont "have to" financially, others chose to stay home and just learn to live on less income.

i started back at work a year ago (i have just finished up) i worked part time (18-30 hours per week, depending on the week, i sometimes covered shifts, and sometimes gave up shifts because we had something on) and bought home roughly $300 per week. i worked in a take away shop (not what i had planned, but it worked out to be the best decision!) i started an hour and a half after dp got home from work, and was home just in time to put DD to bed. i did this 3 nights a week, and one night on the weekend. this meant no child care costs for us!

look into what benefits will be available to you. i have already worked out what we will be entitled to once this bub is born, and it works out MORE than what i was earning at work (taking into account the baby bonus payments for 6 months) so for that 6 months, me working wont even be an issue.

good luck TTC!

Leigh, I understand what you mean about worrying that people would think you selfish going back to work. I went back to work when my DD was 7 months old. I had been off work for 2 and a half years and I was very ready to rejoin the adult world. Yes I worried that my DD didn't have the Mummy time that I devoted to my DS, yes I worried that people would judge me for putting a baby in childcare even just for 3 days a week, yes I worried she would be neglected amongst other children vying for attention, in fact I worried about a whole lot of things. But when it comes down to it I know I love my children with all my heart and I would walk on water for them but in order for them to be happy I needed to be happy too and for me that meant going back to work part time. They are both very happy, my DS does a Kinder Dance program which he loves, they paint, draw and generally have a ball in their centre, their carers are wonderful and the extra money is a bonus!
I looked at about 6 centres before I found the "right" one so keep in mind you might need to do your homework early.
Good luck, have fun whilst in baby making mode and don't worry about what other people say, there will always be something that some people find fault with.

Thanks for the replies everyone, I am offically in baby making mode for now and I have to admit that I have done my best not to get too bogged down with the details. At the moment we have saved halve of K Rudd's monies and we will use that to buy some of the essentials and we will also get the baby bonus and that will help too. I guess I will have to wait and see how my body holds up after bubs, fortunately though i work in an office environment and so my work is pretty light.

I think that most likely husband will be a stay at home dad as he is still studying, so he would be better off finishing up work for a bit and finish off his studies whilst he is at home with bubs...

Now just have to get preggers :P

Yep, I don't think it's a question of selfishness. There's always points in life where our heart tells us one thing and our head might tell us another.

Yes, it might be 'sensible' to wait until you've got a bit more money saved up but at the same time being pregnant is a GREAT incentive to save!

Luckily, I've never had to worry about the timing because my fertility is running out so there's no dilemmas on the "should I wait until we're better off financially," we just have to get to it now, now, now.

If you're ready, you're ready.

Good luck and best wishes.

Yes, good advice indeed!

I was in the same sort of situation, can we afford a baby or not, we sat down and worked it out, and have a saving plan and are TTC. Don't feel guilty at all, like someone said, we have mortgages, rent, bills and food to buy, it is very different to when our parents had us and stayed at home and raised us and didn't get back into the workforce until we were at school! I would like to be able to take 12months off once I am on maternity leave, but whether or not that happens, I don't know.

Good luck hun, don't worry, there is NOTHING at all selfish about adjusting your income/work pattern etc to suit your personal situation. As others have said, and I firmly believe - if you wait until you're 'ready' financially, chances are you'll be old and grey before that day arrives! I truly believe that in some cases it's better to just jump in at the deep end and figure the rest out later on - babies don't need buckets of money and nice things thrown at them to thrive, so if you have the money, great, but if you don't, you'll figure it out :D
DH and I were in pretty dire straits when we got pregnant with DD, and she was planned. I was waitressing part-time, he was on the dole, and we managed to provide the necessary things for her despite struggling to pay the bills. We planned to have another baby 'when we had the money', and then DH was having a chat with an older workmate, and the workmate just told him, 'Mate, get in there and have another one or you'll be 60 before you can 'afford' the next one'... so DH came home from work that day and said if I wanted to, we could start trying right away - which was awesome because I'd told him months beforehand that I wanted to start trying in August, so its birthday would be in the middle of the year, and he had said no until the chat with his colleague, which just so happened to be at the start of August! Of course a lot of people called us crazy, wondering how we were going to afford two kids, but it's so easy when you prioritise and use what help you can get - family/friends can help you out at baby showers etc, Centrelink is quite generous to families so definitely look into what sort of entitlements you will be eligible for (honestly, don't know what we'd do without the couple of hundred a fortnight we get for DD!), and employers can be very accommodating if you just put yourself out there and ask what sort of options can be worked out for you.

I'm a stay-at-home mum and DH works, sure money can get a little tight at times but for the most part we are doing really well - budgeting is so important, learning to live without those little 'luxuries' is hard, but it makes you feel like a much stronger person when you can see that you can do it :) If going back to work has to be done, then it has to be done - you won't miss out on anything and the best thing is that you will have your gorgeous little family to come home to every day! Everybody's individual circumstance is different to the next person's, so don't worry about the judgment you will get from misinformed people who think they know better because they did things a certain way. Stay at home, go to work, partner at home, part-time work... trust me, you can't win!!
So just go with your heart and do what feels good *for you*. You own't regret it.

Good luck with the babymaking!! Hope it all comes to fruition very soon :D

I don't find it selfish at all. In fact probably the opposite.

You may find it's not easy going back that early. I went back at 7 months & I really wish I'd stayed home 12 months.

If you are like the average mum at 12 weeks you will be sleep deprived and adding work into that mix as well is going to make life tough for yourself.... no chance of having a nap under the desk at work.....that's why I say not selfish.

You will get comments from people but you may as well get used to it as TTC, pregnancy & being a mother opens up the flood gates to all sorts of comments from people.

Leigh so happy you're now TTC! :dance:
I agree with the others, if you waited till you could 'afford' a baby, you'd be waiting a long time! LOL! Things will always work out. Don't stress what others say, starting a family is a beautiful thing!