Hey Rach! My partner and I have been discussing family planning and one thing that comes up repeatedly is that we live very far away from family but don’t want to move closer to home.
If I remember correctly, were you far from family when your first was still quite young?
Was it difficult to have a baby away from family?
I hear a lot of mixed things and am curious about your experience / thoughts.
i think it just really depends on what your life is like! when we had our first we lived about an hour away from my in laws, and we saw them often (probably every other weekend or so!) but they didn’t “help” us if that makes sense. like we weren’t dropping our baby off with them or receiving help from them - I’m sure we could have if we asked or wanted to, but we didn’t! we just love spending time with them. so it wasn’t jarring in any way when we moved farther away, “help” wise.
we are the type to just be very nuclear in our family and i have friends who are similar (even if they have family close by) and i have friends who rely a lot on their families for childcare and help etc, everyone is different! i think it really depends on the couple. especially with me being able to be home with our children we don’t need any help for childcare, so that wasn’t ever a factor. we do definitely miss our family but not to the point that we would uproot our lives to move close to them, we like visiting and having them visit us and that is what gives us all the best quality of life overall, which is ultimately what’s best for our kiddos!
