Just wondered if you wonderful mums from B&B have any ideas for me. I go back to work in Feb and cannot find childcare for my son, it looks more and more likely that we will need to use a nanny agency and have someone different every day which is not going to be good for him.

Here is my situation, I am a nurse from the UK living and working in Vancouver, Canada. I have no family here apart from DH or close friends. My hours are 7-7 days and nights and all of the childcare places are pretty much 8-4 or 8-6 ish with a little variety nothing that can accomodate my work schedule. I am desperately trying to find a day job so that this can work, if I find a day job then my husband is going to work late shifts starting about 7pm till 1-2 am and look after LO in the day time. Unfortunately day jobs are hard to come by and in this system here it is highly unlikely i am going to get one anyway. My husband is a bus driver and works shifts which are pretty bad too usually about 5-5 in the days.

I have an advert out in several websites looking for a nanny or childminder but so far i have no replies. I need to go back to work as I pay the mortgage and I also want to accrue maternity benefits again so we can have another child.

There isnt a solution that we can think of apart from one of us giving up work which financially we are not able to do. Its a bit of a nightmare really and now its getting close and I am so incredibly stressed out with the whole situation.

Any ideas welcomed!

Eek, sounds like a tricky situation. I don't have any real advice, I just wanted to share what my parents did when I was little.

My mum's a nurse and worked a few nights a week and my dad worked long days. When my mum was working, she needed to leave home a few hours before my dad even left work, so on her way there she would drop all four of us off at her parents. They would play with us, feed us dinner and give us a bath. Then on his way home, dad would pick us up and take us home and put the younger ones straight to bed. It worked really well for them. Mum also worked on 'the bank' whenever she could, which added a lot to the household income.

I know that arrangement wouldn't work for everybody, but have you thought about trying to arrange you and your OH's shifts so that they only overlap by a few hours? You might find that more people are able to childmind if it's only a few hours.

Good luck finding something.

Will your job offer you a bit of flexible working if you talk it through with them? i understand that you would struggle with the til 7 part, my mums a childminder and her doors open 7am - 6pm, so i'm sure there must be other childminders that are the same?

do you have a friend that could pick him up from nursery and keep him for the last hour?

Yes we are in the same situation but thankfully one of us works days mon-fri and the other works at the hospital doing shifts.