Managing childcare with twins and a toddler

6 January 2025

Emily had only recently returned to work after her maternity leave with her oldest before she discovered she was pregnant again and expecting twins. She shares her story about how she managed her childcare finances for three children under three.

In 2022, I finished my maternity leave with my twins and was faced with the dilemma of how to pay for childcare for three children under the age of three. My oldest child is 22 months older than the twins, but was an October baby so for six months we didn’t qualify for any funded childcare hours.

Deciding to leave employment

Prior to having the twins, I worked at a design and marketing agency that was an hour’s drive away from home and wanted employees to be back in the office post-pandemic. This meant I needed ‘full’ days of childcare to be in the office - dropping off at 7.30am and picking them up at 6pm. This still meant leaving work an hour early and reducing my hours and pay.

I worked out the costs for our family and it would cost more than my monthly salary to send the children to nursery for two days a week - so for us personally, it made more financial sense for me to leave my job. However, I had a creative career that leant itself to self-employment - and the cost-of-living crisis meant that we still needed some extra income to keep the house warm and family fed. So I started running a very flexible freelance business from home once the twins turned 10 months and my maternity pay stopped. I worked early mornings, late evenings and around nap times to establish my business and start earning some money as a copywriter.

I realised that I needed to keep working for my sanity, but I needed the flexibility and income to mean that I didn’t need to send the children into formal childcare for full days as this was too costly for three young children.

Childminders and tax-free childcare

After a few months of freelancing, I had secured a work contract for 20 hours a week, which meant I could start paying for some childcare to give myself the space to work during the day. I was also lucky to have my parents living 45 minutes away, so they agreed to look after the twins one day a week. The oldest was going to a nursery in the village for two days a week. I couldn’t afford to send the twins to that same nursery as they needed all children under the age of two to be doing a full day (7am-6pm). This made it incredibly expensive when I was only working 9am to 4pm from home, so I found a childminder locally instead.

Using the tax-free childcare scheme saved us hundreds of pounds a month. You can use it for childminders as well as the formal childcare providers, as long as they are registered on the government system. Our childminder also offered us a sibling discount due to us having twins, which made it so much more affordable - half the amount we would have been paying for nursery. It really doesn’t hurt to ask if discount is an option.

For six months I was taking our oldest daughter to the local nursery, then dropping the twins at the childminder. My parents would then take the twins for the third day and I worked with our oldest at home.

Increasing our childcare after the 30 funded hours kicked in

In January 2023, our 30 funded hours kicked in for our oldest daughter, which we were eligible for because I was working and earning over minimum wage. Self-employment still counts and you get one year for setting up your business before you need to hit the income threshold for eligibility. This took the pressure away from earning enough money for the first year.

Once we could start using the 30 free hours at nursery, we increased her days to three short days (school hours 9am-3.30pm) and we moved the twins to nursery too so that they could start interacting with more children of their age group. The childminder was great, but limited in numbers and we were worried about the twins starting to get very clingy to each other. We decided to take the twins to a different nursery as that provided us with more flexible hours (8.45am-3.30pm) and gave us a sibling discount on the second twin, making it more affordable than the nursery our oldest was going to.

We didn’t want to change our oldest’s nursery because she had great friends there, it was a short walk from the house and it’s connected to the primary school so we felt we would be taking her away from what would become her school group and closest friends. So now we still have a double nursery run, but it makes the most financial sense.

Childcare funding updates coming in 2024

This April [2024], we will qualify for the 15 funded hours that all two-year-olds will be entitled to in England. Our nursery has said they will be able to provide this for our twins. I know that many nursery providers won’t be able to offer it straightaway, so we feel incredibly fortunate to have this reduction in costs coming this year. We currently pay almost our mortgage again in childcare costs, even with our oldest getting 30 hours funded - so it takes the financial pressure off us a little.

I’ve been fortunate to be able to work self-employed to help grow my income to a point where I can pay for childcare - but introducing it incrementally through the childminder, using grandparents and then increasing days as funding comes in has helped us manage this huge challenge. I would urge anyone to look at the funding that might be available to you, as I know a lot of friends assumed they couldn’t get the tax-free allowance when they could have done. We wouldn’t have been able to afford childcare at all without it.

Audrey's story

Parenting her sons while keeping up with a corporate job had had a huge impact on Audrey Haffner. She has shared her story of why parenting multiples is tough and why we need to be kind to ourselves as parents.

Personal experiences, Mental health