Please give me all your advice!!

[newbie1992]

I don't really know why I am actually writing this but we all know once you get things off your chest you can feel a lot better.

We are Essex based (UK). We rent our house at the moment. I have a daughter who is almost two and due my baby son in October. Our tenancy is due for renewal in September. We currently pay £975 per month for a small two bed house which isnt that great.

Pros:
- We live nearby to my husbands work, a big shopping centre and my family
- Its decorated nicely inside
- It has a fully converted, liveable loft conversion which is accessible via a door in the corner of my bedroom.

Cons:
- Its small
- It only has two bedrooms, one of which is very small.

We are unsure whether to stay where we are because we are settled here and have the two kids share a room when the time comes or to move to a new property.. moving to a new property will involve saving quite a bit of money in a short space of time, sacrificing on my dream pram because its a bit expensive and the upheaval of moving, meaning my husband will be further away from his job, my daughter who goes to a good nursery will have to move (this i would hate as they are SO flexible, literally can put her in and take her out when I feel like it! Massive help when Im feeling unwell for a day and I call them ten mins before dropping her), also would mean being further away from family so lacking that support...

I just don't know what to do and I can't relax, on a Friday afternoon my daughter goes to nursery (i work for myself form home) and I like to take the opportunity to have a little nap but I couldn't relax.

I have checked with the estate agents and the landlord definitely wants to renew in september, he may just consider putting the rent up to £1000 a month. Not a problem for me, I just think its cheeky considering there is no reason to put it up, he's not done anything to the property, we have only been here one year. I don't want to stay and every year he puts it up and up, my wages aren't going up!

I just feel disappointed as I really wanted my little boy to have his own space, I want to breastfeed and would have loved to create a nice little nursery, that was peaceful and had a nice rocking chair, somewhere I could shut myself away and settle into becoming a mum again (my experience in the early days with my first was not great, lonely, she was hard work and i wasn't prepared so I went back to full time work after 8 weeks) so I just want to be the best I can but I feel like we are all going to be so cramped.

Please give me some advice!! x

 

[maryanne1987]

I can sympathise with you. We're are in a similar postion. Three bedroom house. Two tiny rooms, one slightly bigger. We have our third on the way. We had the choice to move, and have more space or stay here and let the two youngest share a room. We have chosen to stay, main reasons being we are settled here and I don't want the upheaval while pregnant or to unsettle the children right before we bring a new baby in. We will probably move in the future but for the next year or two but for now it's best for us to stay put even though we are short on space. Maybe right a pro/con list, that's what we did. Hope you manage to sort things soon.

 

[BunnyN]

We own our appartment. It is 3 bedrooms but two of them are small. One of them only has access through the other one and OH uses it as an office which he kind of needs as he works from home. When expecting my first I felt similar about a nursery. I do think that sometimes stuff you are desperate to have just so when you are pregnant doesnt seem so important once LO is here. We mostly turned the spare room into a nursery but to be honest it has never really been used. It ended up just being the junk room where we store the pram and stuff. DD who is 3 still sleeps in our room as well as DS who is 1.5, lol. It just turned out feeling like the easiest and most natural way of doing it. We do have to move DD to her own room soon because number 3 is due in December. We also have plans to convert an attic space so we will have room when they grow. We considered moving but I couldnt cope with the idea when I was pregnant or had a newborn or with two toddlers which covers most of the last 4 years .

 

[Lucasmum]

No advice but Essex is so expensive it makes me cry we renewed our tenancy for a year just days before I found I was pregnant we are paying £750 for a 2 bed shoevbox type size in Chelmsford, the only good thing is our landlady hasnt put rent up in years and is lovely we have decided to stick out the year we just signed for and put ourselves on the housing list as well we have an advatage of my DS will be 10 when this one is born so I'm hoping that helps

 

[tommyg]

Personally I'd let the kids share, save hard and try to get on the housing ladder yourselves.

Dream pram, I assume you are talking bugaboo £1000, go cheaper and stick some money in the bank. Personally I will be reusing my M&P Sola that served me well the last time.

 

[imaceful]

I feel your pain.

I really wanted my dream buggy, bugaboo donkey as my current youngest is 14 months old. But we've had to redo my daughter's room to make room for a third girl (we only have a three bed, 4 kids of which 3 will be girls). So we've decided to make a loft level for the older girls and put a cot where the current bunk bed is.

Anyway, long story short we've sacrificed the dream buggy to make housing arrangements easier and although it may seem trivial to most, when you're hormonal and use a buggy at least 6 times a day between school runs and after school clubs, it can be heartbreaking.

 

[BunnyN]

Have you thought about getting your dream pram second hand? We got the pram we wanted in almost new condition fror a fraction of the price.