LivinginBrno

I vote for staying at home to raise the kids as much as possible and this post is about my experience and reasons why I chose to stay on a longer maternity leave rather than starting to work earlier. 1. I get to raise my own children, rather than working and paying another stranger to do it The private day care costs around 5000-10000 czk/month - by paying this fee, not much of my salary remains, so it simply is not worth it financially 2. These early childhood years are so precious and go by so fast - that is actually the most important reason of all, overcoming any financial or physical demands of raising children 3. I manage to cook healthy homemade meals more than ever - it gives energy to raise them, among many obvious reasons like - less expenses 4. Being stay at home mom might seem hard and it really is exhausting at times - but I still find the time for me and even a hobby - before having kids I didn't care about my hobbies 5. I get more involved in the communi...

Not much is written on the parenting experience as expats and far less is documented online about raising children without the support from an extended family. I will briefly summarize what it means for us as expats in Czech republic to have a family without any support from the ' village'. In 2014,  we had our first son and I was really scared about the idea of being far away from family and with almost zero support from anyone. I cried many days and waited 2 long weeks to make courage and give my son a first bath as newborn. Although the nurses had instructed me how to do it and there were many online helpers, I really missed some other mom around me - maybe my own mom, just anyone with more motherly experience. In the end, my husband said - 'look I will help, is our son, what can go wrong, we know him better than anyone, let's give him a bath, everything will be alright, no worries.' And we just did it, it was actually simple task. That was crucial moment when ...