Back to FT work - what to do?

I don't know what to do and I need to hear advice from others who might have been in a similar situation.

I need to go back to work full-time as we are struggling to "keep our heads above water". I don't want to increase my hours in the position I am in now as I would be bored out of my mind ( I am already and I only work Mon-Thurs 9-2.30pm and every Sat 9-12pm).

I have applied for an awesome job based in Parnell and seem to have a great chance of getting it and I was quite excited about it until trying to get to sleep tonight and I was overcome with a huge sense of guilt/loss(?) when I realised that I would lose about 10 hours a week of time with Noah. (yes I did the math )

There may be an oppurtunity to work in Pukekohe due to someone getting a promotion and I would be doing the same job now just in a (hopefully) busier branch.

I don't know what to do though, even writing the pro's and con's hasn't really helped me.

Do I take the job in Parnell for around $7K more a year(if offered it), not get home till 6pm or later (if traffic is crap) and only see Noah for a couple of hours a night but then have all weekend every weekend with him

OR

Try and transfer to the Pukekohe position, asking for a finish time of 4pm and work every 2nd Sat (hopefully) until midday.

Do I put my career before Noah now or is this time in his life really too precious to miss out on any small amount of time with him?

On top of that hubby looks like he will have to change his hours to working 2.30pm - 11pm, meaning if I took the job in Parnell neither of us would be with him in the afternoons/early evenings.

Arrrrggghhh! I really don't know what to do!

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Regrets for working or regrets for not working?

Going with what mummy_becks said, go with your gut. It sounds to me from your post that you will end up regretting not spending the time with your wee one in the long term.

When I was faced with the decision to go back to work or not, I thought to myself "when I am on my death bed, what am I going to think, that I should have spent more time with my family, or I should have spent more time working?".

Thanks ladies. Thank goodness for a long weekend to think things over!

I lost a lot of sleep agonizing about it last night so that's probably a sign that the Parnell job wouldn't be a good fit.

I work almost full-time, and looking at going full-time in the next few months. My DD is now 13 months old and she has been in daycare since 3months old so I can work. I dont have to work necessarily, but I love to work. It makes me a better person to have this other side to me. DD is a confident, happy, healthy, thriving girl and I have absolutely no regrets for making the decisions I have done.

I think as soon as you get into whatever routine you decide on, things get easier. While it can seem overwhelming to start with, as soon as everyone is used to what goes on then things will settle.

How much will you stress about finances? Will it weigh up more or less than stressing about working?

When I lay on my death bed, I will think of how well I have done managing to make a great job of being a mum AND a career person, Ill think of all the awesome holidays weve managed to go on because I worked, and the difference in other peoples lives Ive made, because I worked... I hope that DD will be proud of me for what I do, and she will appreciate the hard work DH and I do to make her life a better one that we had when we were young....

Take what people say on here, digest it, and retain what YOU think is good advice because it is super easy to be made to feel guilty for working - I think as mums we are hard-wired to feel bad for any decision we make and sometimes others opinions can make this even worse. Good luck with your decision

I'm on maternity leave atm so both my girls are at home with me, but DD1 went into care at my work at 6 months. I'd pick her up each night and we'd usually be home just after 5.30. Every evening was a struggle to get her to eat her dinner cos she was tired, and then she'd wake all night and get up super early in the morning cos she was hungry. She did have some wicked ear problems complicating the night wakings though. By about 1, if we were organised and had dinner for her ready the minute we walked in the door we seemed to be mostly ok. I did find I spent more on groceries for the convenience foods than I do now though - things like those quick cook rice etc to go with what I'd put in the slow cooker.
I commute via the manawatu gorge, and when that closed it meant we weren't getting home till about 6 pm. That was a real challenge for DD and put us right back to the too tired to eat, too long in the car unhappy kid. We stuck it out for the 6 weeks I had before going on mat leave, but it really was too late a home time for DD - if she fell asleep on the drive home, she'd be up for hours and end up way too tired. After 6 months at home, she's settled into her natural rhythm and she's asleep at 6.30 and up at 6am. So a 6pm hometime was way too late for her. You'll have some ideas about Noah's rhythms, so how do you think those will work for him?

For what it's worth, this time, I'm going back to work and DH will be WAHD, so he'll have dinner ready on time for the kids etc and I'll do their bedtime routine so I get to spend some time with them each day. I found being a working parent married to another working parent (both full time) pretty hard going. I'm hoping being a working parent married to an at-home parent will be a bit easier as I won't have to spend all my weekends doing washing etc.

Do what you think will work for you and your family.

I work full-time, and have done since January. We usually leave at about 8.15am and get home just before 6pm. Tea is on as soon as we get in the door, and they naturally wake up around 6.30/7am in the morning. It's mainly organisation really. I don't get to "make up" the time with them on weekends, as they are at their dads, but I find that the girls are okay with it. We tend to have more "quality" time, I guess to make up for the lack of "quantity" time. Do I regret going back to work fulltime? Nope, without it, we wouldn't be able to eat. I am a lot happier and relaxed now, as I know we have money to pay the bills, I know we have the money for groceries - the stress that caused outweighed the stress working fulltime has caused. It was a VERY hard decision - I worked approx 30 hrs/week before going back to full-time, which was also good, but it wasn't enough to keep our heads above water. It's only an extra 10 hours now, but it shows.

You need to make the decision for yourself though - it is a hard decision!! I did 3 million budgets with different scenarios to try and find out what the best solution was going to be for us as a family financially, and then worked things around that. The girls have adapted very well also.