Age gap where mum is main breadwinner?

[freeflight]

I'd appreciate hearing some opinions from all you lovely forum people about what age gap between kiddies to aim for when mum is the main (full time!) breadwinner - what worked for you, or what would you have had ideally?

My situation: I have a 9 month old little boy. I worked full-time all the way up to 37 weeks pregnant (but was horribly sick every day so it was difficult!). I planned to return to work full-time when he was 3.5 months (for financial reasons) but actually returned around 6 months due to the flaky job market - good for the "baby time" but hard on the finances! My hubby is part-time at work and part-time stay at home dad. His regular full-time income isn't sufficient for our costs so it's not an option for us to switch roles or for me to stop work.

Our long term plan is to have 2 more kiddies. We don't want too much of an age gap between them - I don't want to be still in "baby" mode in 10 years time! Also since pregnancy was sooo extremely wretched for me, I figure it's sensible to get it "over and done with" as it may be even tougher on my body at 40 than it was at 30. So the "biology" argument says, have another baby soon!

The other factor is finances. It's something of a strain for me to take 4 - 8 months off work when the baby arrives. And after my experiences this time, it will be sad to go back to work before the baby is 6 months! Also if any potential health complications meant I had to stop work earlier (during pregnancy) then I'm not sure how we'd manage the financial stress. So the "conservative finances" argument says, wait and save up more!

We had been considering a 2 to 3 year age gap but my husband is keen to start trying soon so I'm unsure.. what do you think?

[cja]

Hi,
I was in a similar situation to you when I had my first bub. I went back to work within a couple of months and my husband stayed at home part time. We were considering the same scenario for when we had our second but my husband was offered a better job and I decided to work part time for a while.

We have a 14mth age gap between our kids. Like you we didn't want the baby stage to go on forever, and also financially it is only a short period of time in our lives that we won't both be working full time. Does that make sense...we want our kids to be looked after by us most of the time but know that financially we have to make sacrifices to do this and so can only manage it for a few years....couldn't have 3 kids with a 3yr age gap or we wouldn't both be working full time for the next ten yrs IYKWIM...

[babiesandlove]

For a breadwinner mum, I would think somewhere between 3-5 years?

[mim1]

I'm the main breadwinner too. We saved hard for 18 months before I went on maternity leave and I managed 14 months off work. It was lovely to be home with my ds for that long. Then I went back full time and dh went to part time. We renovated last year (8 months after I restarted work) so that drained our savings to zero and we've now rebuilt them to a level that I could take time off. But, due to work issues the plan for for me to work another 18 months, then hopefully have a baby shortly after that. So, it will be a 4+ year gap. I was pretty sick in my first pregnancy and stopped at 31 weeks (delivered at 38) and next time around I'd want to stop by 30 weeks at the latest.

You could go and see a financial planner to get advice on how to save before leave and to discuss what allowances you might be able to access. As I stopped work in Dec of one year and returned in Feb 14 months later I got some parenting allowances for those years, which helped.