As some of you may know before I had Gabe I was working as a Modern Languages teacher – I taught French and Spanish in secondary schools before we moved back to the north west from Scotland. Had we stayed in Scotland I probably would have gone back to work after my maternity leave finished when Gabe was one. But moving house changed things, and we’re now two years on and I still haven’t gone back to teaching. It’s seems it’s time to make a decision.

When we first moved we decided to send Toby and Gabe to nursery for two days a week, I signed up with a few different recruitment agencies and I hoped that I would be able to get a part time teaching post somewhere. And although there have been a couple of things come up over the last two years, none of them have worked out for one reason or another. Mostly because they have been full time posts and I just don’t want to go back to work full time at the moment.

One of the big reasons I didn’t want to go back to work full time was because I didn’t want to be losing half my wages to pay for childcare. I did that when Toby was one – but that was only because we knew we wanted to try for another baby and working full time would mean I would get full maternity pay for my second maternity leave!

Working full time would mean not only putting Gabe into nursery or with a childminder full time, but also having to find before and after school care for Toby. His school has an after school club that we could use, but the before school care only starts at 8 am, and that wouldn’t be early enough for me to drop him off and then get to work myself.

From September though, if I went back to teaching, Gabe will be eligible for the 30 hours free childcare but that comes with its own problems. It’s term time only, and as a teacher I would only need term time childcare, but if he were to go to private nursery we would need to pay all year round. The preschool he currently goes to is only open for 18 hours a week, and is only school hours anyway so that wouldn’t really be an option.

And it’s not just financial. I just don’t want to put Gabe into full time nursery. We’ve only got another year before he’ll be at school and I want to be able to spend some of that time with him. The same goes for Toby – although he’s at school I want to be able to do the school runs, and go to sports day, or stay and learn sessions. I know I am really fortunate that we are in a position to be able to do this, and I want to make the most of it while I can.

So I’ve made a decision. After half-heartedly looking for a teaching job for the last two years I’m not going to do it any more. We’re going to look at it again when Gabe starts school next year but for now the plan is that I will carry on working from home, working on my blog, and hopefully continue to bring in some extra money that way.

I still feel like a bit of an impostor as far as blogging goes. I never tell anyone that this is my job, if I mention it at all I tend to say I write a blog and ‘make a bit of money from it’ but actually I now make a pretty decent part time wage from this little internet space of mine. In fact I’m close to earning enough that Gabe could get the 30 hours free childcare in September even without me going back to teaching. As it is he’s going to go to preschool for an extra day anyway which will give me a bit more time to work on developing things even more here.

I never thought when I started writing this blog four and a half years ago that it would end up being my job but it looks like it is and it’s about time I started being proud of that and what I’ve achieved instead of trying to hide it. Wish me luck!