having another baby????

DD is 8 months old and DH and I both want at least one more child. Ideally I would love to get pregnant again this summer and have our children be 2 years apart. Here is my dilemma:

I work FT as a teacher and my mom watches DD 5 days a week as well as my nephew who is exactly the same age. I CANNOT ask her to watch DD, nephew, plus another baby!

Would i have to put both kids in daycare? I really would not want my mom to watch one and have a stranger watch the other.

the only other option (i can think of) would be to wait until DD is 3 so she can be in some sort of preschool for at least half a day...then i think my mom would do it.

I hate that our economy/society makes it so difficult for moms to stay home

any suggestions??

Re: having another baby????

I don't really have any advice...I just wanted to say that although sometimes we try our hardest to plan our next child, sometimes our plans don't always work out the way we had hoped...

I was planning for our 2nd child and unfortunately it took us a year to get pregnant....that was after two pregnancies that only took 3months to achieve (one was a miscarriage), so you just never know how long it will take...

I do understand what you're saying though about your mom watching the kids...you could always do an in-home daycare type setting for the baby, then put him/her with your mom once your first starts preschool...I think that's the best alternative if you want to start trying soon...

Re: having another baby????

I have similar thoughts when it comes to planning for DC #2. My ILs watch DS 3 days a week and it’s a godsend. But I would never dream of asking them to watch another child, its just not fair. When my best friend had her #2 she put #1 in daycare and #2 with her ILs until she was a year and now they both go to DC but only 3 days as DC #1 is now in preschool. Another friend hired a nanny to come to her home when she had #2.

Unless I can afford to stay home FT, I plan on waiting until DS is in preschool to have another. If it does happen sooner I would probably do some shifting and have DS go to different places on different days so that my ILs don’t have 2 kids more than 1 day. It doesn’t really bother me though because I don’t really want another child right now and I always had planned on my kids being 3 years or more apart.