So a little update with both good and bad connotations.

The good – well amazing – after a long 2 year struggle Claire has fallen pregnant. We really couldn’t believe it. We’d taken steps to look into IVF and adoption and it happened.

The bad now – a day after finding out Claire was pregnant we get the news she is getting made redundant. 8 years she stayed at the hell hole and now she won’t even get maternity.

We’re heart broken. How we will get through this financially (the pregnancy) is beyond me and the light at the end of the tunnel feels like it’s been closed.

I’ve not slept for a week with worry when it should be the most exciting time of my life.

I know I need to concentrate on the pregnancy and how positive that is, it’s really all we’ve ever wanted and a door we thought was firmly closed.

Firstly, congratulations on the pregnancy. That’s wonderful wonderful news. You have received a most wonderful gift, the chance of a baby. That is what you should focus on, the other stuff can be dealt with no matter how tough that seems now.

Does the employer know she in s pregnant ? You and her may not feel strong enough for this but a challenge to the redundancy and/or the terms (i.e. how much money she is getting) could yield results. Is there anyone that could help you with this ?

Mosey, congratulations to you both, You will find a way, not much else matters.

We’re heart broken. How we will get through this financially (the pregnancy) is beyond me and the light at the end of the tunnel feels like it’s been closed.

She’ll be entitled to statutory maternity pay at least. Take it from one half of a self-employed couple – you’ll manage fine. Cut your cloth accordingly. Buy second hand stuff – buggies, cots, Moses baskets, whatever. Welcome the chance to be a skip for all your mates getting rid of baby stuff. Sell stuff as soon as you don’t need it anymore. And finally, it isn’t money that gets you through a pregnancy, labour and a new baby – it’s other far more important stuff. Don’t worry – you’ll both find a way.

And congratulations! Awesome news. 😀

Thank you, it really is everything we always wanted. Anxiety and arthritis can’t stop that!

Deadly, she won’t get SMP as the redundancy is before the 25th week/15 weeks before due date.

I’m appalled at after 8 years working there we won’t get maternity pay.

Congrats!!

First off, maternity pay is generally crap anyway, depending how long your other half was thinking of having off.

Second, you will always find a way to get through. Always.

Finally, we’re due to drop any day, and we’ve genuinely kitted ourselves out for less than 250 quid. That’s everything – 2 car seats, decent pram, travel cot, carrier, bouncer thing etc… most stuff is hardly used. All came from a local baby buy/sell Facebook group.

Enjoy it!!!! It’s an amazing time 🙂

Mosey, my biggest heartfelt congratulations to you both. as has been stated above, while money may be one important aspect in having a baby it is not the be all and end all.
you will both find a way, and it may feel like one more struggle to add to the mix but you will both be able to look back upon this chapter of your lives and smile one day soon.

And please remember that the hive will always be here, for better or worse there will always be someone on t’internet to listen, to advise or just to relate to.

Good luck! 😀

Congratulations!

Congrats fella, don’t stress about money, having kids will mean you will be broke for the foreseeable anyway! 😉 don’t get sucked into the industry that is baby stuff, we bought loads off fleabag and kept the costs down. I think we probably still have stuff so if you are anywhere near Chester give me a shout and I’ll have a look, I’d rather give it to someone who actually needs it rather than some git of a reseller.

Cheers Marcus, I really appreciate that.

It’s more the lack of maternity pay and a pretty much unemployable wife that’s getting to me.

Congratulations.

I can’t offer any help with arthritis or illness bit, but I can help with babying on a budget. It doesn’t have to cost anything like as much as people make out.

1) Buy the absolute bare minimum at first, then buy what you need as you feel you need it. Most of us have a 24 hour shop. For us, that was a baby sling instead of a pushchair (appreciate this may not be ideal for your wife); about a dozen baby grows in plan colours, a car seat, some burping rags and a cot. Some baskets to keep the clothes in. Don’t wash its clothes every time they get slightly dirty, you’ll be there all day!

2) Consider re-usable nappies. Pretty easy to use and way cheaper after the initial outlay. We’ve got a couple of sacks of the damn things you can have for nothing – only I’m not sure if they are baby sized. You can even get re-usable wipes which are very effective.

3) We bought a normal chest of drawers from Ikea for furniture, that was about it – didn’t need special wardrobes and crap. Feeding pillow helped so we didn’t buy a special feeding chair.

4) Ask around for baby clothes. People are desperate to get rid of the damn things. We hardly had to buy any at all. We’ve got a local Facebook ‘booty’ buy and sell group, which is a good place to look for these kinds of things.

5) Ignore almost all the bullshit. You can get by quite happily with very very little when it comes to babies. They really don’t care about much past a warm bosom, milk and something to play with. Which could be any household item – it’s all fascinating to them 🙂

You sure about maternity pay? My wife quit her job a few weeks before she found out about the pregnancy and we still got maternity pay.

Hi, again thanks for all the advice and kind offers.

Yeah, Citizens Advice said today you only get SMP if your working a set number of weeks before the baby birth date.

I think we would be eligible for the maternity allowance but not fully sure as yet.

1 for looking at an alternative to citalopran. I had similar issues with it and went on to fluoxetine, got the result I needed.Best of luck with everything, you and yours have been through it and you are still standing that shows strength.

Awesome news – congratulations both of you! 😀 Now take care of each other, stay strong, focus on the positives and slowly work your way around the finance issues.

Cracking news re the pregnancy. As others have stated you’ll find loads if cheap kids stuff second hand, in fact we have a loft full of stuff we need to move on. More than happy to let you have what you want for nowt, car seat, Moses basket, loads and loads of clothes, just drop us an email, serious offer and not far from you.

Can’t help with the redundancy situation other than get advice, still amazed how incompetent companies are at letting staff go.

Enjoy the pregnancy, financially you’ll find a way it’s not everything in the world, embrace the good news and think of the redundancy as a clean break and an opportunity, hard I know but focus on the positives within your control.

Yeah, Citizens Advice said today you only get SMP if your working a set number of weeks before the baby birth date.

That’ll be right sadly. They are (or at least were) very strict on the cut off last time I encountered it.

Congratulations on the baby by the way. Kids are awesome (and unbelievably irritating once they learn to answer back).

Congratulations on the good news! The SMP issue is rubbish though!

Congratulations on the pregnancy! As others have said, plenty here will help out with baby stuff – I’ve a car seat, buy bag of toys, a bottle steriliser and probably some clothes you can have for nothing. I’m often over in cheadle Hulme and can drop them if that helps you.

As for the employment, the timing of announcing redundancy straight after being informed of pregnancy sounds a bit shifty. Is there any way (union, CAB, etc) of looking into this, as the law is pretty strict about discrimination against pregnancy.

I was given my redundancy letter on Christmas eve after 11yrs. Tbh I was more than ready to go. OP I’m in south Manchester, I can meet for a ride or pint. I’m riding Sat am from Hope and ISure ain’t riding fast.

As above I’d question timings.

If we all stuck £10 a month into paypal account for him, I bet we could make up most of her wages 🙂

Honestly Weeksy, the support and advice I have got on here is worth far more than money to me. I wouldn’t see a penny from anyone. I do however appreciate the thought.

My wife just burst into tears reading through this thread. She can’t believe that a group of people, most of who I’ve never met, can come together like this.

We will get through it, life has dealt us enough dud hands and the pregnancy and my wife are all that matters. Timing is a funny old thing. There has to be a reason this has happened now.

Molgrips is right on the budgeting thing, you can get yourself sorted out for very very little if you spend a bit of time digging around. Even new stuff from some of the big box places is cheap (though i guess it’ll be a little more expensive than it was when i last looked!).

A neighbour has a 1 year old and an unemployed/unemployable wife (some sort of lower back/hip problem made worse by actually having the kid.) Some judicious shopping and a fair bit of second hand stuff means that their only serious outlay was the kiddie seat for the car.
Some of the other parents in the village have spent (literally) thousands to end up in the same place, all the clothes are still covered in shit, milk and dribble and are too small within a few weeks. So they get washed and handed down, so someone gets £500 worth of slightly used second hand clothes for virtually nothing.

If the single salary is an issue, there’s lots you can do with that as well, my wife was looking at going back to uni to retrain 5 or 6 years ago and we went through a loop of budget cuts and looking at all our expenditure so we could do it without taking too much in student loans/grants. When you actually start shopping around it’s quite amazing what you can cut out of your day to day budget and only lose stuff you don’t actually need. In big numbers, we were looking at making my salary go about 50-60% further, so we pretty much wouldn’t have needed any loans at all. (She got a new job in the end, so we just spent the savings on more pointless toys 😆 )

Congrats on the pregnancy as well. Good luck.

So the time has come. The wife is redundant and the arthritis is at its worst. It has to be though as she’s off all medicine. It’s what we know was coming and we are crawling through.

I’m still struggling with the anxiety but I’m getting by. I really can’t thank everyone who reached out on here enough. The offers of help and rides blew me away. Sadly the bike had to go as we can’t get maternity pay and my wife is unable to work.

The bike money will be used to buy a second hand pram, we just have to find one.

The baby is the light at the end of the tunnel I needed and I couldn’t be happier. One day I’ll look back and see how much stronger this low period made me.

This is going to appear a strange question, but how tall are you?

Does that mean you now have no bike at all.

I’m sure there’s something we can do here chaps ?

Hell yes, of course we can. But the guy needs to accept our help before we can give it.

Mosey, we’ve still got a bunch of baby clothes, grows, and stuff leftover.

Send me your address via my email in my profile and ill send you a parcel of bits and pieces for jnr.

V true, and tell us how tall he is.

I have an baby maxi cosy car seat you can have if you haven’t got one yet?
Also have the carry cot section of an Icandy apple pram, in excellent condition with rain cover.
Both free of charge, can grab some pics if you want them 🙂

I have some bike bits too, brakes and bars/stem. Nothing fancy though!

I’ve got an old Cannondale F4 (think its a 2008 model, with a headshok front end), and it’s in really good nick. Due to an RTA a couple of years ago, and a recent fractured vertebrae and damaged disc, I’m no longer able to ride it, and for the past couple of years, it’s just been gathering dust in the garage. I know it’s not much, but if you want it, it’s yours. I don’t want anything for it, and though I understand how difficult it can be to accept handouts, the offers there.

No bike for now but it’s just whilst we get on our feet. It’s so kind of you all to offer bits but there are others in need far more than me.

Any baby bits people have to sell we’d be very interested. We might not be able to buy things new but the baby will never know right.

Everyone is so kind, I just hope one day I can repay others when they need it too.

Just read through the thread – so chuffed to hear you’re pregnant! (well, not you obvs!) I wish you all the best. Props to STW – this thread makes me feel all warm & fuzzy and kind of restores my faith in human nature 🙂

I’ll pay the paisley freight if you want Mitch’s bike or his/your fuel etc.

I’ll ask Mrs Weeksy when she gets back from holiday as she’s been selling off stuff of our boy. I know we’ve got a stair gate, but other that that. I have no clue

Got some red DMRs looking for a new home once you have something to put them on.

Best of luck to Mrs Mosey with the medication-free period. I can only imagine how strong she is being and I am sure you are too.

Don’t be too hasty in turning away the offers of help – many of us have gone through tough times and would love the opportunity to make it just a little easier for someone else.

I’ve got various bike bits you’ll be welcome to if you accept barnsleymitch’s offer and anything needs replacing. I work in south Manchester so can either drop them off or else post them to you. I’ve got brakes, tyres, various components etc.

When the baby arrives, you’ll NEED a bike!
Whats your email and I’ll have a rummage in the loft for baby stuff.

Tell you what Mosey, why don’t you borrow the Cannondale ?. I’d rather know it was being used, as like I said, it’s just gathering dust here. Entirely up to you of course. Email in profile if you need it.