“Every month we are short of money and we ‘candy’ more from our account”
Image: Getty Images
Maaike is expecting the fourth. Although her pregnancy was really meant to be, that extra mouth to feed actually turns out really bad.
Maaike (38), mother of a son (8) and two daughters (5 and 3).
“Had I known in advance that this fourth pregnancy would be accompanied by many quarrels at home, I would have acted differently. Then I would have at least waited to try to conceive until my husband got a job again. It’s a very mixed feeling, because getting pregnant is not obvious and I feel incredibly lucky that I succeeded so quickly at 38.
But fair? Secretly I counted on it taking a long time before I would have a positive pregnancy test in my hands. With our son it took more than a year and a half before it hit and with our two daughters who followed at least a year. Naive perhaps, but because of that I didn’t take into account that it would be a bang-boom all at once.
When we’re not arguing, we sometimes “joke” about this; ‘past performance is no guarantee for the future’. We look hard at it, because we clearly feel uneasy about how we should knit this around financially.
Snacking from the bill
4000 euros is in our bank account. No savings account, just three digital piggy banks for the children with 600 euros each. We should buy a car so that my husband can at least easily get on the road to freelance cooking jobs. He is a cook, but when the catering industry had to close during corona, the restaurant where he worked soon stopped working.
“If we have paid the mortgage, gas, water, electricity and all insurance, we will have 400 euros left over”
He is entitled to unemployment benefits. In the first two months that was 75 percent of his previously earned daily wage, now it is 70 percent, which comes down to just under 1600 euros net per month. When we have paid the mortgage, gas, water, electricity and all insurance, there remains 400 euros. Groceries and diapers cost a lot of money, about 300 euros per month. Every month we are short of money and we ‘candy’ more from our account. I get hot just talking about it.
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Meanwhile, my belly is growing steadily. After a son and two daughters I am pregnant again with a boy – 35 weeks now and all ultrasounds look good. When we decided in a fit of romance to have a fourth child, we assumed that my husband would soon find another job. That is disgusting.
We live in the countryside where restaurants are sparse anyway. Then there are few vacancies for full-time cooks because many restaurant owners seem to be approaching it cautiously after two corona years. I dare say that my husband has responded to every cook job in a radius of thirty kilometers from where we live. Without success. It is to become hopeless.
“He thinks I think he’s a loser who can’t support his family”
If there is another rejection, we both get stressed. Out of uncertainty I say that we should never have gone for a fourth child now that we are short of money every month. To which he recalls that I persuaded him. That he believed me blindly when I said it would probably be forever before I was pregnant again. He also claims that he sees me as a loser, a man who fails to support his family. ‘Go and apply yourself, then you’ll find out how difficult it is’, he sneezes.
Also read – ‘I lost my brand new job during the corona lockdown’ >
stay at home mom
I have worked for years as a primary school teacher. I did that with great pleasure, until I suffered from severe pelvic instability during and after the second and third pregnancy. The youngest is now a year old, that instability should really be over. But when I stand and walk a lot, I feel the pain increase.
I also think it’s unfair that my husband calls me to go to work, because until a few months ago we all agreed that the benefits of a part-time job don’t outweigh the fact that I’m a stay-at-home mom. In our view, the most stable basis for our children with plenty of room for development and fun at home. Neither of us thought about sending our children to a daycare.
I want to be a mother who is always there. Who can experience every step of development. The kind of mother who has tea and biscuits ready when they get home from school. I used to be a ‘key child’ myself. With two full-time parents working, I had to make it on my own when I got home from school. I experienced that as very unsociable and lonely and it was my dream, our dream, to do that differently with our children.
Bargain hunting
My parents are honest about it: they have doubts and concerns about this upcoming fourth child. They are not the parents to give me money and I don’t want to, but it would be nice if they were at least happy for us. Being able to understand why we would like to have another child to complete our family. It makes me keep my anxiety about our financial situation to myself.
I don’t tell them how I walk all over the village with the kids for cheap groceries. Little do they know that I am a fervent consumer of the “free pick up” pages on Facebook and that the clothes we wear are all warriors. That we haven’t had a single outing in two years, except for the free forest playground.
Stress about money
I feel stress because the bill is empty and my husband is angry with me that we did not wait with a fourth child. I try to imagine that a lot of families have to get by on the same monthly income. And there is hope: my husband has been asked to do catering jobs. On a freelance basis.
“I am afraid that the stress will not stop for a long time”
He would have to travel to Utrecht for this, a distance of 120 kilometers. Should we buy a car? Can we afford insurance and petrol? And what amount does he actually have left over from those freelance jobs? Do we have to stop his unemployment benefit? There are so many questions running through my head that I am afraid that the stress will not stop for a long time.”
This article can be found in Kek Mama 07-2022.
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