The Mumpreneur Diaries: Business, Babies or Bust - One Mother of a Year
Mosey Jones
Working from home, no more commuting, flexible hours, spending more time with the kids – it’s what being a Mumpreneur is all about – isn’t it?It was a commute to work whilst heavily pregnant with baby number two that sparked Mosey's 'now or never' decision to get off the 9-5 treadmill. Inhaling lungfuls of deliciously ripe BO from a fat bloke’s armpit somewhere between Regent’s Park and Oxford Circus may have been the tipping point.After the birth of Boy Two, the thought of returning to the office wasn’t appealing to Mosey, but days filled with nappies and Alphabet Spaghetti failed to thrill either.Why not employ herself, Mosey thought. A mum’s concierge business combined with training to be a doula was bound to rake in a profit. Twelve months maternity leave to make it work. How hard could it be?But Mosey and her mumpreneur mates soon discover that sleepless nights, flaky partners, finance crises and marital breakdowns are all par for the course when mixing babies and a business. Boy One won’t eat, Boy Two won’t sleep, business ventures are strangled at birth, the mortgage is rocketing and sole wage-earner husband is on the verge of losing his job. In her own year of living dangerously, will Mosey make the break or reluctantly rejoin the rat race?Mosey’s down-to-earth, wry look at life as a frazzled one-woman business is laugh-out-loud funny and full of warmth. This is a ‘mumoir’ that will inspire, motivate and charm would-be mumpreneurs everywhere.
The Mumpreneur Diaries
Mosey Jones
Business, babies or bust, one mother of a year
To Tomos and Joshua, without whom the world would be a much quieter, but infinitely less entertaining place
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ue1738a02-0a8b-5c56-bdb6-928197d1e1d0)
Title Page (#ue9da9213-0cee-5721-9415-320a02dcc9e1)
Dedication (#u266c8756-4114-5160-be7f-92b4a84d6f4e)
Author’s Note (#u155a5659-31c8-5869-9f3c-7d2e5b5295bc)
Prologue (#ud70ecd89-8b01-55f9-8498-99f1e697bbc1)
Chapter 1 Born Again (#uabb52d3a-8f17-5873-b568-3ac4c4bd1d82)
Chapter 2 Baby Blues (#u5f71a966-8436-5a4f-84fd-7684ead2a8d8)
Chapter 3 Sleepless Nights (#u823cce51-f946-5486-b117-6ab916658575)
Chapter 4 Teething Troubles (#uaa1495a2-5a07-523a-a9af-5544fdb79c72)
Chapter 5 Postnatal Cheques (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 Developmental Delay (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 Crawling (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 Standing Unaided (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 Baby Steps (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 All Grown Up (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#ulink_786e5be9-5d56-588f-8d97-0cdfc1a2213b)
Many of the people I have written about in this book did not ask to be included so I have changed their names and in some cases other minor details to preserve their anonymity. Naturally others asked, pleaded, begged even, to be included, but I said, ‘No, Dylan Jones of Twyford, Berkshire, you remain anonymous like everyone else.’ Equally, memory is a fickle mistress, particularly that of a woman with ‘baby brain’ twice over, but I’ve tried to write conversations as closely as possible to how they happened. Certainly in the reporting the grammar may have improved, the swearing excised and the drivel paraphrased. Finally, the timeline may have been adjusted in places to help the overall – true – story make sense. In many respects I wish someone had fiddled with the calendar at the time. Then I might not have been perpetually late for everything.
Prologue Anti Natal (#ulink_db3d1aa9-a14f-5fc2-ba88-ee30a154233d)
Thursday 1 November 2007
Another day, another commute from hell. This morning I am trapped somewhere between Regent’s Park and Oxford Circus, my nose jammed in a damp armpit belonging to a very large man, inhaling lungfuls of deliciously ripe BO. This is made even more heavenly by the fact that:
1 it is rush hour
2 we are underground on the Bakerloo (or baking loo) Line
3 we’ve been stuck in the tunnel for half an hour
4 I am 8 months pregnant thus invisible to everyone in a seat.
I can’t wait for maternity leave to start. I don’t care if I never see the office again. Samuel Johnson said: ‘If you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life.’ If that’s the case, Sammy boy, I’m exhausted. I bloody hate London.
To achieve what is laughably called a ‘work/life balance’, the Husband and I share dropping off/picking up childcare duties. He therefore leaves home before the sun rises so he can get back in time to collect Boy One at 6 pm. I do the opposite, leaving for work at a leisurely 9.30 am, only to return home long after the sun has set.
On the way home I call the Husband from the train to see how bedtime is getting on. Sounding out of breath, apparently he and Boy One have been playing horseys round the living room. At 8.30 pm. As usual I assume the role of grown-up, telling him off for unsuitable parenting behaviour. But despite reading the Riot Act, I am secretly disappointed. It sounds like they are having heaps of fun – without me.
Friday 2 November 2007
I can see why I would spend four hours a day being transported in worse conditions than a veal calf if I was producing groundbreaking work. Somehow, whiling away the hours fiddling about on Facebook doesn’t quite measure up. I’m particularly puzzled by applications that allow you to buy your friends a virtual gin and tonic – the point of which is what, precisely?
Boredom drives me to poke old friends, the online equivalent of drunk dialling and a similarly bad idea. Most can’t fathom why you’ve chosen now to get in touch, and very few are genuinely pleased to hear from you. I instantly discover that the class geek from school has a varied and thrilling life doing something in security in Africa and several of the lumpier girls are now go-getting businesswomen with expensively highlighted hair and apple-cheeked kids, dressed courtesy of Mini Boden. My offspring isn’t so much apple-cheeked as banana-haired since most of his breakfast this morning wound up on his head.
Finding one of my old classmates on Friends Reunited, I decide I should refer to her as SuperScot. She is one of those people who seem effortlessly successful. I count myself lucky that I only get to see her once every ten years at school reunions. She’s the one you fret about seeing because the fabulous media career you’ve been so proud of moments before seems kind of hollow and futile now as she radiates home-spun contentment and you look about as deep as a puddle.
She has already popped out three children and now makes bijou, one-off children’s clothes for a local retailer. Her picture on Friends Reunited (looking at these is another exercise in self-flagellation should you ever need to cement your feelings of inadequacy) shows a relaxed, smiling woman, obviously in control of her life, her kids and her career. At home in her own skin. I often feel like a distant cousin who’s overstayed her welcome in mine.
So I poke and then stare at the office calendar in the same way a schoolkid gazes at the clock willing 3 pm – or, in my case, 16 November – to come.
Wednesday 7 November 2007
Boy One comes tripping downstairs for breakfast and shouts: ‘Lisa, can I have raisins?’ I am not Lisa. She is the Very Capable Childminder. He has taken to calling me by Very Capable Childminder’s name, which tells you something about the amount of quality time we spend together.
He has already started calling her his ‘second mummy’. I’m beginning to suspect, on the basis of last year’s showing (home-made card, complete failure on behalf of the Husband to pamper, spoil or generally remember the event he swore blind in the labour ward never, ever to forget), she gets the better deal on Mother’s Day too. Of course I am genuinely, hugely glad and pathetically grateful to the fates that I chose such a lovely person to look after my son, one who makes him feel so at home when I’m at work, but I would infinitely prefer to be the one doing the home-feeling-making, at least once in a while.
Feelings of inadequacy aren’t helped about 15 minutes later when I make Boy One cry in the rush to get out of the door to catch trains, win bread, etc. I may be overreacting a tad. Following the ‘carrot/stick’ parenting philosophy, I tell him: ‘If you don’t get a move on right now I’ll smack you so hard your teeth’ll rattle.’ This is a little more stick than carrot. That and the lack of oxygen from the massive baby pressing on my lungs leaves me more than a little tetchy. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that this wouldn’t happen if the office Nazis let me work from home.
At this juncture I would like to point out to social services that the most he ever gets is a tap on the hand and any rattling of teeth is the sound of them falling out after sweetie bribery. I’m a model of modern parenting, me.
Thursday 8 November 2007
My boss, the Editrix, takes me aside today and announces that she’s proudly secured me a pay rise. Perhaps the daily grind isn’t so bad, maybe that commute is bearable after all.
Five hundred quid a year. A raise of five hundred poxy quid for someone, and I quote, ‘with your level of experience and longevity in the job’. They say that when you have an epiphany, there really is a blinding flash of light. Well, I have one of those right now. Either that or it’s a migraine brought on by the sheer, gobsmacking tight-fistedness of it all. Admittedly it’s not her fault – the budget on our magazine is tighter than a gnat’s wotsit – but being blameless still doesn’t get Mr Waitrose paid.
It’s just not worth it. When people mutter that it’s not worth it, they’re usually having a bit of a bad week. Nothing a few pints and a lie-in can’t fix. But for me it really, really isn’t worth it. My travel and childcare costs have together gone up by more than £500 in the last year alone. It is getting perilously close to the point where I’m paying the company for the pleasure of seeing my son two days a week.
Enough’s enough. I’ve decided that when I go on maternity leave next week it will be the last time I darken their doors. I’ll have my baby, spend a few months floating about in a postnatal glow (I’m not thinking about the extra 2 stone of baby weight and leaking bosoms at this point) and then set up a modest little enterprise from the kitchen table, children playing at my feet. We aren’t exactly rich but the Husband’s salary can just about stretch to providing the serious money for the boring bills such as mortgage and gas. My little bit on the side could cover the Ocado orders, Boden binges and a (very frugal) trip to the Alps once a year. At least, that’s the plan.
Wednesday 14 November 2007
My thirty-fourth birthday. Because of my bloated state and the fact that I’m finding it very hard to give a monkeys about anything other than my swollen feet, I’ve given up every attempt to get to work on time. I decide that, as I’m about as much use as a chocolate teapot at work these days, I’ll be forgiven a quick(ish, very ish) saunter down Oxford Street to do some window-shopping. Of course, fingering the credit card in my pocket, it’s not long before I’m leaving Boots with a couple of new eyeshadows and a splash of perfume. At least they fit.
I daydream about this time next year when I’ll be able to take myself off for a birthday shopping treat at any time of day and I won’t even shout at myself for being late back from lunch. Of course, I will be the only person to put money into the birthday envelope, and therefore I will in fact be paying for my own birthday present but that’s a small detail. It’s the last week at work, hopefully for ever, and the countdown has begun in earnest.
But that little voice is still peeping at the back of my head: ‘You’ve got a good job. It pays well.’ (The little voice at this point is lying out of its arse.) So I do a deal with myself. I’ll go it alone, but I won’t tell anyone, not yet. That way, if I have to crawl back to my desk in 12 months with my tail between my legs when it all goes pear-shaped, no one will be any the wiser.
But Boy One called me ‘Lisa’ three more times over the weekend and announced, ‘When can I go back to see Lisa? Mummy’s boring…’. So I am praying I don’t have to go back – besides, this baby has crocked my back and crawling is so bad for the knees.
Friday 16 November 2007
Payday! And also my last official day in the office. I’ve managed to wangle the last couple of weeks ‘working from home’ (trans: ‘diving for the mute button on the telly every time the phone rings’) because I’m getting bored of the publisher following me round the office with a bucket just in case I ‘pop’. What does she think I am, a ruddy balloon?
In a way, I love my job. I’ve been at it for six years so it would have been a little dense to stay if I didn’t like it a bit. And the people I work with are a good bunch. But bitching about the size of a starlet’s boobs and knowing there are three Pret A Mangers within 500 yards don’t make up for seeing your own flesh and blood for less than an hour a day, and none of it in natural light.
When 5 pm rolls around I can’t be happier. Time for the dreaded leaving party, admittedly, but it means I’m on the home straight. Some cake for me, warm fizzy wine from Marks for them (and for me too, but don’t tell). My esteemed colleagues’ faces say it all: ‘You’re escaping. You’re getting a year off with mid-afternoon wine, Columbo reruns and no tube delays. We hate you.’ But their faces also say: ‘We know you can’t escape us. You’ll be back. Twelve months will fly by and you’ll be paying a fiver for a ham sarnie again. You can’t run for ever.’
Do you know what? I’m beginning to think I can.
Chapter 1 Born Again (#ulink_6d7a4423-28eb-5aa1-8183-3959294a8bc8)
Sunday 20 January 2008
Baby, meet world. World, meet baby.
We bring Boy Two home at 2 am this morning after a mere seven hours in hospital. I think it’s something of an achievement that the midwife is so happy to shoo us off home barely two hours after the birth. The Husband is less pleased as he sees his Star Wars DVD marathon evaporate, to be replaced by the carrying of many cups of tea and biscuits (essential for Mummy’s milk) and by telephone/email duty.
My sister and her boyfriend came down from London yesterday on the off-chance that something might happen. By 7 pm I was having contractions three minutes apart while simultaneously trying to teach my desperately undomesticated sibling how to make sauce for Boy One’s cauliflower cheese.
‘How will I know when the sauce is thick enough?’
‘When it starts getting lumpy again. Chuck in a splash of milk and take it off the heatnnnnngggHHHHHHH!’
‘And when do I add the cheese?’
‘When all the luuuUUUUUuumps are gone.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Just having a baby, otherwise fi-uuuuuhhhhhh!’
‘Shouldn’t you call the hospital to see if you need to go in?’
‘Mmmmppfffffffffffffffffffffffff!’
Now I’m lying in our bed at 3 am with our new 8 lb scrap of humanity snortling away between us. His 35 lb, three-year-old brother is snoring just as loudly in his bed, which has been transplanted to the foot of ours from next door, where he’d been ousted by my own sibling combo. Too knackered to sleep I watch the baby snooze. He is the image of his father, who is also out for the count (why are men never too exhausted to catch 40 winks?). All of a sudden I feel quite grown up, quite…responsible. With one child you can almost get away with pretending it was a bit of an accident, or that you aren’t really a parent, you’re just playing at mummies and daddies. I find myself trying out the phrase ‘my children’ to see how it fits. Sounds big. Sounds fun. Sounds expensive. Bugger.
Monday 21 January 2008
No rest for the wicked, or even just the slightly naughty. I decided weeks before his birth that Boy Two was going to integrate seamlessly into the Jones household. Just because there was a newborn kicking around, it was no excuse to take life slowly. I can therefore only assume that it is some kind of post-partum insanity that leads me to book a skiing holiday for when he will be barely five weeks old.
I don’t think the travelling itself will cause the headaches, even though we have also decided to tackle most of Europe by train, with the out-laws in tow. It is how to decide on a name, register the baby, get a photograph that doesn’t make him look like an alien and get the passport back in time to catch the 7.15 am from St Pancras on 8 March.
We had settled on a name halfway through the pregnancy, but now he is out I’m not sure Boy Two really suits it. I don’t have a great history with naming things. In my lifetime I’ve owned three cats so far. They’ve all been pedigree Burmese and came ready-equipped with fancy monikers, such as Aduihbu Buttermilk Dennis, which didn’t really trip off the tongue when I was rattling a bowl of Kibbles and bellowing the name into the garden at sunset. More shouty names were required.
The first kitty was a Chocolate Burmese, the naming of which, I felt, was a no-brainer. That would be Cadbury, then. But my sisters also got a chocolate and named that one the far snappier, simpler, cattier Wispa. Unfortunately Cadbury had an argument with a car and lost. Her successors were twins: the aforementioned Buttermilk was a Yellow Burmese and his brother was a Blue (which is actually grey) with a similarly mental name. I swiftly renamed them Little Leo and Ichabod (no, neither do I), respectively. When it became clear that these were as crap as the pedigree titles, they sort of renamed themselves by being skinny – Weeman, and fat – Fatso. And I’ve spent the past six years working with words in the branding industry. Boy Two was stuffed from the start.
But whether or not Boy Two’s name will dog him for the rest of his life is immaterial. We have four days to register him, get the certificate and get it off to the passport office. There is no time for creativity. I also need an official passport photo. The passport office doesn’t like ultrasound pictures – it’s really hard to get a foetus to smile for the camera.
The nice man at Jessops lies Boy Two on a white marshmallow and takes the pics. I’ve been fretting about how you get a baby to look straight at the camera with a neutral expression, but as newborns spend much of their time trying to focus on their own noses, the photographer says the passport office tends to overlook it.
Tuesday 5 February 2008
Whether it is sleep deprivation or a heady cocktail of hormones and my first G&T in many, many months, I’ve hit a period of manic activity that mixes Stepford wife with Superwoman. Largely, I’m not much of a success as either but I have my moments. Much to Boy One’s delight, I rocked the Shrove Tuesday pancakes with every topping conceivable, the favourite being chocolate and melty cheese. Together. The crepe fiesta is to celebrate getting all of his unused and grown-out-of toys and clothes into bags and into the attic. For a brief moment I surveyed the feng shui’d, decluttered, picture-perfect home before dragging out all the baby stuff I’d jammed under our bed for Boy Two, thus returning the house to its normal, chaotic state. I believe it is generously termed ‘lived in’.
In a rare example of foresightedness I have also just hotfooted it down to the local ‘paint your own pottery’ place to immortalise Boy Two’s feet in Dutch Blue paint on a variety of mugs and plates – bijou presents for friends and family. That’s Christmas 2008 sorted. Mind you, if I don’t break these by spring 2008 it’ll be a ruddy miracle.
Returning home with blue-footed children, I resurrect my old website that proudly proclaims: ‘Make and Do for Fathers’ Day 2007!’ in 56 point sans serif. Some time ago I published a moderately successful book which, every year, gets a bit of a push around Mother’s Day. With the sacred date looming once more, I didn’t want to get Googled and be caught with my virtual knickers down. Some quick updates later and becausemumknowsbest.com can face her public with pride.
All this before teatime and on three hours’ sleep. Move over Maggie Thatcher, eat your heart out Nicola Horlick.
(#ulink_53acbc1d-fbf9-5ae6-b2cd-09af452ba4e0)
Wednesday 6 February 2008
Boy One didn’t sleep through the night until he was at least two years old. But the quid pro quo was that he was a serious napper during the day. I could usually rely on a good four hours to myself during his first year, and about two during his second. So, the rings under my eyes rivalled Saturn’s but I still had the chance to knock together the odd magazine article or enjoy Diagnosis Murder uninterrupted. Thankfully it looks like Boy Two is going the same way. When the midwife turns up to stick a scalpel in my newborn baby’s foot – babies spend a significant amount of time in the early days doubling as pin cushions – Boy Two just sleeps on through. It bodes well for enough peace and quiet to make proper business phone calls without being rumbled as a sick-covered zombie.
And it looks like I might be needing second son’s good nature sooner than I thought. The Husband’s work situation is never totally safe and, even though he has until June on his contract, it can take months to find a new job. Faced with the prospect of a five month-old baby and no money, I decide that perhaps I ought to dip my toe in the old work water and just see what floats by. After all, it’s good to keep the mental stimulation going and a little light typing couldn’t hurt. Besides, even though my ultimate aim is to quit the rat race, it doesn’t mean I won’t need to earn some money. Only I want to do it on my terms.
So it is that a mere 17 days after the birth, I get back in touch with my freelance contacts to see if there is any work in the offing. It’s not exactly the business empire I’d entertained during those last, tedious days in the office but I don’t really have the energy for a full-blown attack of the Richard Bransons right now. But surely I can scrape together a few hundred words about potty training. And emails hide the reality of hungry newborn howling and cracked nipples. Still, the magazine’s deputy editor sounds a bit shocked to hear from me:
RE: BACK IN THE SADDLE
Message: Am amazed to hear from you so soon…
Reply: Everything’s pretty much back in the old routine!
Message: Are you really feeling up to writing again?
Reply: I’m finding it much easier to ignore the screaming this time round.
Until I come up with a better idea, writing freelance doesn’t seem like too big a burden. I don’t think it apposite to mention that the impending skiing holiday and the inevitable poverty thereafter is a great motivator.
Thursday 7 February 2008
If I’m going to maintain this mania, I’m going to have to introduce some method to the madness. I’m going to have to figure out what schedule Boy Two is on. It certainly isn’t mine.
But, having done that, now I realise that I shouldn’t have bothered. Early indications that Boy Two was going to cooperate by sleeping nicely while I try to work are all false. In fact he is the world short nap champion. This, combined with his ambitions to contest for the ‘longest feed ever’ title mean that he alternates an hour long feed and an hour long nap on a two-hourly cycle day and night.
So after being tied to the sofa for 60 minutes, I have a further 60 minutes to achieve everything else, from ‘Muuuuum, wipe my bottom!’ to ‘Yes of course I can have 1,000 words to you by next Friday.’ No matter that I probably can’t spell my own name at this juncture, let alone opine on the state of breastfeeding across the UK for a page and a half. I was so sleep-deprived I put the phone in the fridge three times today alone.
Boy One isn’t helping matters. I spent a significant chunk of the end of my pregnancy trying to persuade him to eat something other than scrambled eggs for breakfast, lunch and supper. I know that most toddlers go through food fads but this was ridiculous, not least because a diet consisting almost solely of eggs and chocolate created some serious poo issues. On one occasion I found myself bent over the loo trying to – ahem – relieve the pressure in his bum with my little finger. It’s at moments like that when I fervently wish I was back in the office.
But blocked plumbing aside, the food fads were annoying because every attempt to create a fresh and wholesome meal was rejected, leaving me furious at the wasted time. I’d been determined to get him out of the behaviour because I couldn’t stomach the thought of trying to make five different meals a day and feed a newborn. Shortly before Boy Two was born I thought we’d cracked it, having expanded the repertoire to include cauliflower cheese, fish fingers and even pasta with pesto. But now we’ve regressed. And this time the only acceptable dish is cauliflower cheese (though we will accede to chocolate spread for breakfast). It’s a bugger to freeze, or even keep in the fridge, meaning a fresh dose of cheese sauce twice a day, which takes about 20 minutes and is an affront to Boy Two, who demands that Mother should be available for his exclusive use whenever he should feel the need. Which is always. Sigh.
Despite all this, I’ve hardly noticed that the Husband has gone back to work. I wasn’t filled with the sense of dread that I thought I’d be. In fact, despite his doing his very best to smooth the way for the last few weeks, it actually seems a bit easier without him here. Without shouts of ‘Where’s the—’ every ten minutes, I can get on with my own work, such as it is, even if it is in 60-minute bursts. Boy One is at pre-school for the morning, Boy Two is sleeping, if intermittently. So, I fire up the interwebulator and start to look for ideas to earn money from home, particularly ones that are a bit more long term than freelance writing, and that pay better. What are other women like me doing to earn money and stave off boredom? There is only so much conversation you can wring from the disposable versus terry nappy debate before rendering yourself unconscious.
Friday 8 February 2008
Barely a couple of weeks back at work and the Husband is already full of doom and gloom. As a research scientist whose ultimate aim is to cure breast cancer, you’d think he’d be highly prized. Instead he and his colleagues are routinely stuck on three year contracts in which they have to cure it, or hop it. With his current contract running out in June and many younger, cheaper scientists competing for the same positions, there is a very real possibility he could be out of a job by June. Though it seems a long way off, it took the best part of five months to find this job and the thought of going through all that rigmarole again is depressing him and, by extension, disturbing me. With the whole waiting-for-baby tenterhooks, plus Christmas celebrations, he’d pushed it all to the back of his mind. Now that life has returned to normal he can’t put it off any more. It’s time to get back on the jobseeking treadmill. I know from bitter experience this will cause him weeks, if not months, of existential angst.
Last time we went through this was, coincidentally, just after I’d had Boy One. Instead of enjoying our babymoon, I spent every night listening to his tales of woe and unemployment predictions, and wondering if we were about to go broke. I’d hear that he’d chosen the wrong career, the wrong project, he should have been an industrial rather than academic scientist, his papers were wrong, his experiments went wrong… Every night he came up with a litany of disasters and reasons why he would never be employed ever again.
In the past I’ve tried to be the upbeat voice of reason. ‘Something’s bound to turn up,’ I’d say. ‘If Oxford University want you, you can’t be that bad.’ Sure enough, in the nick of time, something has come through. This time, though, I’m finding it difficult to sympathise. With two kids and my own job that is barely worth going back to, I can hear a voice in my head, saying: ‘Come on, caveman – provide! Hunt, gather, bring bacon… Pull your finger out!’ Of course, what I actually come out with is: ‘There, there, it’ll work out. I can always go back to the office early if the worst comes to the worst.’ And in the back of my head I scream, ‘NOOOO!’
I’m already having a hard time contemplating the return to the office after 12 months of maternity leave, but now here I am faced with the prospect of going back in little more than three months’ time. Whereas before I’d had visions of pottering about at home, writing the odd article and doing a bit of selling on eBay, I now have to think of some proper, bona fide and above all financially sound reason not to rejoin the rat race prematurely.
Of course, I could get a part-time job in the village shop or work in the pub, but have I really spent six years at university, four climbing my way up the greasy PR pole to account director and then another seven meeting the great and the good of the business world as the associate editor of an international marketing journal to go back to my student job? Having children is supposed to liberate, not lobotomise.
In a way, I’m lucky. The skills and experience I’ve picked up over the years are eminently adaptable to working for myself, using little more than a computer and the dining-room table. But am I cut out for working for myself? The idea of being self-employed has always scared the hell out of me: the fact that I might have to borrow money, then go bust (as about 12,000 do every year) and not be able to pay it back; the fact that I’d have to figure out tax and national insurance and other financial things with my barely scraped D grade maths from school; the fact that no mortgage company will touch you with a bargepole unless you have more than three years of accounts. All this when I could crawl back to the security of a big company that will figure all this out for me, provide me with nice normal payslips and a vague feeling of security.
Writing for a living is an obvious one. I’ve been doing that for nearly ever and sometimes people even pay me. But there’s never really been enough in my pool of freelance contacts to constitute a regular salary. Books are nice but, again, hardly a gold mine unless you’re Jordan and your twin marketing assets come in a 32DD. And you only get paid twice a year. I have trouble getting to the end of the month without a cash injection.
Before journalism, I was a moderately good PR. The definition of ‘moderately’ being getting clients coverage and not annoying the journalists. If I took the time to build up contacts in the regional press I could perhaps get a few local companies to employ my services – ‘Local waste company bins the suit’ sort of thing.
The problem with PR is that you spend a lot of time working on contacts and networking to begin with, before you see any money. And unless you’ve got a superstar client that every journalist wants a piece of, you spend your days doing little more than begging. And out here in the boondocks, the pool of stellar clients is vanishingly small, although celebrity chef Anthony ‘Wozza’ Worral-Thompson and famous consort The Lovely Debbie McGee™ both live up the road.
So I do what I always do in times of stress and head over to Other Mother of Boys to whinge. Other Mother’s Boy One is exactly the same age as my own and they’ve grown up together since birth. We met at the local NCT antenatal classes. I thought she was a grumpy northern tomboy and she thought I was, in her words, ‘a gobby media tart’. Naturally, we became fast friends, uniting in our ridicule against the knit-your-own-yoghurt brigade and insisting that champagne in our hospital bags was much more important than lip balm or whale song. Whenever one of us needed to bend the other’s ear, we knew we could relegate the urchins to the back room to murder each other while we chewed the fat in the kitchen.
I quite envy Other Mother’s approach to life. Of solid northern stock, the idea of a seat-of-your-pants, boho way of life is yet to appear on her radar. Supper is at 6 pm and if it’s Wednesday it must be chicken pie. Sun means hats, rain means macs, and we’re bathed and in bed by 7.30 pm sharp. In our house it’s more like:
Husband: Have you been to the supermarket?
Me: Mm-hm.
Husband: Hooray! At last, there’s food. Tonight, children, we eat!
Or
Husband: Do the kids need a bath?
Me: Sniff ’em and see…
The same structure applies to Other Mother’s career. Her father insisted, from their early years, that both his daughters train for something that gave them a job for life. Now a chartered engineer with the National Grid, that’s exactly what she’s got. She knows that she will step back in where she left off 12 months ago and that her pay will be commensurate with her skills, or that’s it, the union turns the lights out. Compare that with journalism where the pay seems to be whatever’s left in the petty cash at the end of the month.
But, equally, the lack of flexibility would drive me mad. She can’t do her job from a laptop in the garden, she can’t do a bit for a while to keep her hand in and she can’t just decide to stay off for longer because she fancies it. Her situation is similar to mine: she has two boys – the elder is five days younger than Boy One, and the younger is nearly four months older than Boy Two. Boy One is currently at nursery and Boy Two will join him in the autumn, making two care bills that she needs to fork out for. It won’t be so bad by the time her Boy One goes to school in 18 months time, by which time the nanny state and its breakfast clubs, after-school meets and holiday camps can fill in the blanks. But for now, she is about to spend the next 18 months’ working to keep her boys in nursery with nothing left over. But once they’re both at school she’ll be back in the land of disposable income, with job security and career consistency behind her.
‘I was only planning on doing a bit of writing now and again, now the Husband sounds like he wants me to be back at work already,’ I whinged. ‘I don’t want to go back at all.’
‘He will get another grant in the end, though, won’t he?’ Other Mother asked.
‘No guarantees, and it sounds like there’s someone doing the same research as him, only better, somewhere else. If they get to the grants first he’s had it. If he doesn’t get anything by May I’ll have to ask for my job back six months early. And that won’t go down well with whoever’s keeping my seat warm,’ I answered.
‘What about working from home? You’ve already been writing those parenting things. Heaven knows you’ve interviewed me for them enough times. Any juicy morsels there?’ she asked.
‘Not a sausage. The freelancing’s OK but it’s really irregular and it won’t keep Boy One in Noddy pants.’
Then she suggests that I look into being a doula – a helper for pregnant and new mums. I was quite surprised she’d even heard of one since she’s of the view that it’s the NHS’s job to get the baby out, then yours to get on with raising it. I had actually looked into having one myself for the birth of Boy Two but I’d dismissed the idea as too expensive at the time. Birth doulas can charge up to around £800 for just being with a mum in labour. My labours were both so short it would have worked out at about £200 an hour. Nice work if you can get it.
Other Mother points out: ‘I saw it in a magazine article a few months back. You were basically doing what doulas do when you helped me out for those ten weeks after my second was born. It’s not all placentas and panting. If you don’t want to do the gory bit then you can always be a postnatal doula – a bit of baby burping and some light cleaning – I know the cleaning part would be a bit of a stretch for you, but you’d have the money as motivation…’
She’s not wrong.
Monday 11 February 2008
Typing ‘doula’ into Google comes up with a whole raft of websites, but there seems to be an association called Doula UK that puts itself forward as the unofficial doula register for Britain. There are hardly any doulas covering my area so that’s the first rule of business covered – make sure you’ve got the competition sussed. The site also lists the courses you can take to become a trained doula, although again there seem to be no officially recognised bodies. I find one that’s halfway between the cheapo £90 version and the super-expensive £1,000. If I’m paying that much I want letters after my name and a mortar board.
I tell the Husband that I’ve sent off a cheque for nearly £400 for the course and that I figure a spot of doula-ing will be just the ticket for bolstering the family finances. He goes bananas. Well, actually, he goes totally silent, then quite squeaky for five minutes and then silent again, which is his version of bananas. He isn’t impressed that we’re surviving on one salary with an extra mouth to feed and I’ve just splurged that month’s nappy and packed lunch budget on three days of looking at ladies’ fannies and drinking tea.
I should leave it at that and give him time to marinate in the information; let him gently come around to the idea that you’ve got to speculate to accumulate and that going down the fanny route won’t be a bad idea. But I can’t resist picking at a scab. Once you’ve got that little flap teased up, it’s impossible to stop yourself from going the whole way and ripping it all off, revealing the raw skin beneath that’s going to take a good few days to calm down again.
In this case, I don’t leave it alone but bang on about how my job is hardly worth going back to, and that if he’d only badger his boss about grant applications instead of always saying he’d do it tomorrow, he’d have the job thing licked and we could make plans. From his point of view I’m probably being grossly unfair. Here I am, ensconced at home with the children, one of whom spends most of the week at pre-school or the childminder, and I have the freedom to see who I want, and generally gad about while he frets over providing for his newly expanded family and deals with the very real prospect of being out of work in three months.
And I know it seems mad that I’m spending valuable family cash on sending Boy One to the Very Capable Childminder when he could now be at home with me. I chose a childminder over a nursery in the first place because I wanted him to have that home environment, the sense of extended family, while I wasn’t there. It’s worked a dream and he now has such a sense of belonging that to remove him from her would be like a bereavement. Besides, he’s just had his world blown apart by the introduction of a baby brother, someone who creates an attention vortex around him whenever he’s in the room. He’s had enough upset to his routine. Even though he still goes three days a week I see him much more now than I ever did. I’m not getting home an hour after his bedtime for a start, and instead of spending the days he has with me accomplishing pointless tasks like grocery shopping and cleaning the car, I can do those while he’s not here and focus on what he wants to do when he is. I think the arrangement works well for all concerned, and I tell The Husband that.
We both hold our corners – he is insisting I would be mad to give up a stable job I’ve been doing since before we were married; I am claiming he has no vision and is worrying over nothing. We don’t go to bed on the argument, though. I go to bed, he sleeps on the sofa.
Tuesday 12 February 2008
The Husband and I experience a temporary cessation of hostilities. Just as I’m coming to terms with the idea that writing might not be the path to post-baby riches, out of the blue I’m told I’ve got a meeting with a man about a book. The money involved isn’t something we can retire on, but perhaps the advance will be enough to lift the Husband out of the doldrums, at least temporarily.
Now there’s no question of me attending that meeting in my present leaky, wobbly tracksuited state. So, for want of anything better to do while I wait for my career as a doula to begin, and because the Husband can hardly complain about me getting poshed up if it’s for money, I begin phase one of my transformation from posset-plastered, post-partum patsy to the magisterial mumpreneur: exterior renovation.
Disappointingly, I’m still sporting the ‘joey pouch’ of the new mother and I change bra size hourly. Raiding the Boden catalogue isn’t an option until my body ceases to have a mind of its own. However, when a girl has clothing issues she goes to the three things that remain constant:
a handbag will always fit
shoes will – almost – always fit
a haircut will always fit (though perms are often regretted).
I’m trying to curb my burgeoning handbag habit. My last ‘score’ was a baby pink Luella for Mulberry. A snip on eBay at £180, the original cost £800 plus. It was practically free. Shoes almost always do fit but as your feet swell a bit when you’re pregnant I’m not sure I can trust their size yet.
This has left a ruinously expensive haircut at the local ‘designer’ salon. A cut and colour sets me back £150. Not Nicky Clarke, I know, but easily a week’s worth of childcare or a week and a half’s maternity allowance. They say trust and openness are the most important elements in a marriage, so I’ll pay in cash so the Husband won’t spot my extravagance on the bank statement. If he spits feathers at my paying £400 for education, he won’t be impressed with £150 worth of salon time. He insists on spending no more than a tenner on a cut. He’s so proud of his thrift I haven’t the heart to tell him how much it shows. That’s the great thing about hair, it grows back. Most of the time.
In the end I get my money’s worth because while I am in the chair and they’re all cooing over the delectable baby, he is violently and copiously sick all over me, the gown, the chair and the floor. Curdled milk mixed with shorn hair and the scent of caramel highlight number 36. This is a small but instructive insight on what life is going to be like if I try to mix babies with business – messy, but we plough on regardless.
Wednesday 13 February 2008
Up to London to see, not the Queen, but our man about the book. He’s keen for me to write a ‘How to’ guide to being a mumpreneur – how you’ll manage your time (badly); how you’ll cope with childcare (expensively); and what the most suitable sectors are for mumpreneurialism (you’re asking me?). Somewhat ironic that I should be putting myself forward as the expert when my own enterprise is still pretty much at the drawing-board stage.
Book Man seems a little shocked when he’s told that I’ve left the Husband in charge of three-week-old Boy Two to come to the meeting, and that he is currently pounding the streets of Fitzrovia with the baby strapped to his front. I tell him that it isn’t going to be any more distracting working and writing a book with a three-week-old than with a three-month-old or three-year-old so, effectively, there’s no time like the present. I don’t mention that there is absolutely no time like the present because, when the maternity pay runs out in September – they tempt you with twelve months off then hit you with the killer that they’re only going to pay you for nine – so a juicy little advance would do very nicely thank you.
I hope that I come across as relatively capable despite the baby brain. I have one eye on the conversation and another on the clock as Boy Two is still doing his one hour on, one hour off trick, and my bosoms are ticking. If I’m not careful, my man with the plan will find his americano turned into a latte.
Duelling with the commuter chaos on my way home only serves to enhance my determination to leave the London limelight for good. Tucked up snugly in his papoose, my erstwhile baby bump now has a baby face, but that doesn’t stop other commuters cannoning off my front with a single-minded determination to get to their destinations in record time, to hell with whoever they flatten on the way. I don’t like playing human pinball any more. I just want to be human.
(#ulink_59a507db-b7a6-5ac4-8ad1-253b4f036c45)Except she has five children and a hedge fund; I have two children and a hedge.
Chapter 2 Baby Blues (#ulink_91f00da6-4a43-5533-8218-7ec99fba8921)
Thursday 14 February 2008
Last year, the Husband made a surprise video compilation of our home movies to the tune of Outkast’s ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’. I always bang on about wanting the flowers, the diamonds (I have a diamond thirst on a zirconia budget) for Valentine’s Day and this cost him nothing. It was the best present I’ve ever had. To make matters worse, when he pulled that romantic rabbit (note: not rampant rabbit – a girl should always be responsible for the purchase of one of those) out of the hat, I’d got him nothing so I felt adored, happy and really, really bad at the same time.
I have high hopes for this year.
I resolved to do what I could on a limited budget and even more limited energy. The Husband has always been a bit of a metrosexual at heart, though his nickname is Muscle Man because he did a bit of bodybuilding when we first met and could never wear a normal-sized shirt because of his massive neck – and arms, back, wrists, chest…Despite the cheesiness, I know that a big box of chocolates and sickly card will still go down well. Although I can’t match the high standards he set last year, I present his gift with a flourish and wait, preparing to blush at my romantic inventiveness.
‘Umph…whaaa—’ is his response when I lay his truffles on his bare chest as he wakes up.
‘Your valentine, sweetheart,’ I coo. It is quite tricky to maintain the turtle dove act as Boy Two has been chewing my bosoms off all night and the last thing I feel is flirty, but I think it best to have a go. Besides, he can’t cash the cheques my body is writing as he has 40 minutes to get to work and it’s hard to manage even a quickie when the clock radio sets off stirrings in Boy One’s room across the hall.
‘It’s what?…It’s today?…It’s, um, thanks. Haven’t got you anything, y’know,’ he admits, sleepily.
Still thinking that somewhere may be a gift money can’t buy, I bat those lashes still not glued together by sleep and reply: ‘That’s OK, darling, you’ve got all day.’
‘Mm, I can’t afford anything – we’ve just had a baby, you know.’
Really? I hadn’t noticed.
‘And I haven’t got time to shop ’cos I’ll be late home. The boss wants to go over the grants. I don’t think we’ve got a hope in hell, but she wants us to try all the same. Probably won’t be before 10 pm. That’s OK, isn’t it.’ It isn’t a question. On that note he stumbles off into the bathroom, scratching a buttock and leaving me with murder on my mind.
On top of this, the birth of his second son last month has still gone unmarked, though, to be fair, all he managed on the birth of the first were flowers from the supermarket and a Pot Noodle, so the bar was not set high. (That said, a Pot Noodle was the thing I most wanted in the world at that point, all sanity being out of the window as I was probably still high on pethidine.) This is the second time in as many months he’s missed a Hallmark moment. Not that I’m keeping count…
A bad day is made worse by having a trolley/car interface in Sainsbury’s car park. Somewhat unfairly, the trolley wins. A large, angry gash appears down the passenger side of my car, denting both doors. The mental cash register rings up four figures with a ‘Ding!’. It may only be a Fiat Multipla rather than an Audi, or a Porsche, but it is my Multipla. It is my 12-month-old Multipla and the only car I have ever bought from new. In places, if you can get beyond the trodden Hula Hoops and chocolate raisins, it still even has some new-car smell. And now it has a stupid, stupid hole in the side.
The Husband isn’t best pleased but I blame him for it anyway. If he hadn’t been working so late on grant applications and had been at home bathing and feeding the kids, I might have had a chance of some shut-eye and therefore wouldn’t have been so spaced out as to prang the car. He retorts that surely I’d prefer he spent his time finding a full-time paying job rather than greasing Boy Two’s creases with nappy cream. I have to admit, grudgingly, that he has a point. However it’s still all his fault. On principle.
Friday 15 February 2008
When I was doing PR for a book I wrote a while back, I did the rounds of BBC local radio. This usually meant sitting in a little booth at Western House in central London, listening to a DJ in a far-off land via a pair of headphones and having a surreally pally conversation with the wall. One of the interviews, however, was with my local station, BBC Radio Berkshire, so it was just as easy to pop down the road and grace them with my presence. We had such a hoot that they invited me back again, and again, and again. What was a one-off puff for a book has now turned into a regular Friday slot doing the papers with Henry Kelly, the avuncular Irish broadcaster of Classic FM, Game for a Laugh and Going for Gold fame.
Though all of my stints are unpaid, I enjoy my weekly banter over the airwaves. Every now and again I entertain thoughts of sliding effortlessly into a job as a presenter but mostly I stick to the reality, which is that it’s a bit of a laugh and handy if I ever need somewhere to plug anything. In fact, I don’t fancy the thought of being replaced, which is why I go back less than a month after Boy Two’s birth.
Throughout last year, my growing bump had been the sole topic of conversation on Henry’s show. He delighted in telling me that ‘boys make a disgrace of ye’. When I occasionally turned up on the Saturday show too, the DJ looked petrified that I’d pop on his studio floor while he was inadequately stocked with towels. Henry also kept threatening to send the radio car round to the Royal Berks maternity ward for a live outside broadcast of the happy event. I had to subtly inform him that of the emergency numbers pinned to the fridge, the outside broadcast unit at BBC Radio Berkshire was not one.
They probably think it’s mad that a woman with a three-week-old baby is so keen to get back on air. But, now that I have some possible projects in the pipeline and there is still a rabid PR girl lurking inside, I’m damned if I’m going to let free airtime pass me by.
The bonus is that Henry’s Producer Man is quite happy to look after Boy Two while I’m on air. Breastfeeding, burping and nappy changing aren’t quite compatible with companionable banter on-air about the state of Reading Football Club’s relegation prospects. I’m not at all worried about how Boy Two will react to a bosomless stranger for an hour or so, but how is poor old Producer Man to cope? Since the episode in the hairdresser’s, Boy Two has been affectionately renamed ‘the vomit comet’.
Sunday 17 February 2008
On a visit to worship at the chubby feet of Boy Two, Middle Sister suggests I get into child modelling. Well, not me, obviously, but the offspring. Once I’ve recovered from the laughing fit I have to concede that she has a point. My children aren’t astoundingly beautiful by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, Boy Two’s passport photo is back and in it he is doing a fine impression of a Hungarian shot-putter – male or female, take your pick. Now, naturally I think that the kids are stunning, but that’s a mother’s prerogative, along with believing that everyone else’s children have appalling manners and are borderline ADHD.
However, Boy One certainly fits the wholesome, outdoorsy image favoured by kiddie catalogues – Boden and their ilk. Boy Two’s bottom is just crying out for a Johnson’s Baby Wipe to be artfully draped across it. Middle Sister says that a friend of her boyfriend’s is a talent scout for this sort of thing and that she’ll send over some pictures. It isn’t really morally wrong to send a three-year-old out to work to support his parents’ Merlot habit, is it?
After Middle Sister has left I crank up the internet and look into this modelling malarkey. Children don’t have to be ‘overly beautiful’ (good), just ‘clear-skinned and bright-eyed’ (would chocolate-smeared with unidentifiable foodstuffs in the hair count?). They also have to be ‘sociable, good at listening to instructions and carrying them out with the minimum of fuss’. This is all right for Boy Two who, having just discovered his smile, flirts with anything that moves, making for a very slow journey round the supermarket. Smiling babies are an absolute granny magnet.
Boy One, however, may prove a little trickier. Massively photogenic (like his mother, natch), he does have a tendency to try to crawl inside my clothes when he meets new people. It doesn’t take long for him to get over himself and start showing off like a pro, but probably long enough for ad men to get bored and move on to the next angel-faced urchin. Equally: ‘Bad manners or sulkiness will not be tolerated.’ Boy One’s manners are fine but I’m a little sceptical about his Tourettelike penchant for bellowing ‘POO!’ for no good reason. He also does a nice line in teenage sulks if things aren’t going his way. (What will he do when he’s a teenager – behave like a toddler? It’s not beyond the realms of imagination.)
Nor does it bode well that shoots can take ‘two to three hours, but factor in lots more time as they often overrun’. Bored children, shyness followed by obstreperousness – it doesn’t sound like a recipe for an easy life. And then there is the pay, which initially sounds great until you realise all the ‘extras’ you need to accommodate. Babies can coin in about £50 an hour, and older children even more. But, and it’s a big ‘but’, the agencies take a quarter of that and you have to be willing to leave everything at the drop of a hat, plus pay for your own transport costs. Sure, one day they’re grinning over a bowl of peas and the next they’re Patsy Kensit, married to a rock star and doing a nice line in soap operas. But twenty-odd years is a long time to wait to hit pay dirt. I’ve given Middle Sister the go-ahead just in case something comes of it, but I’m not sure that I’m suited to the role of Mother of Supermodel.
Monday 18 February 2008
The good news is that the doula course stuff came through so I’m moments away from my new career as fanny monitor/urchin burper. However the bad news is that the course isn’t until June, unless I want to attend the one in Manchester. It’d be fine for fitting into the grand scheme of using twelve months’ maternity leave to set up an alternative to going back to the office, but leaving it that late doesn’t cover me for the more immediate crisis posed by the Husband’s lack of career prospects.
But, every cloud – silver lining and all that. Mr Book Man is champing at the bit for some more meat on the bones of this book idea we are tossing about. He reckons if he can get a full chapter breakdown, his editorial team will bite and we’ll get the green light. I can’t escape the irony that, after having decided writing isn’t going to provide the bread and butter after having Boy Two, suddenly it’s all taking off. I have even managed to use the delay in the doula course to pitch related stories to old freelance contacts. The Times blows me out as usual but my baby mag contacts seem really keen. I get roughly 350 smackers for every article I send them. It’s not much but it keeps Boy One in Hula Hoops.
As I send off the chapter ideas to Mr Book Man, I reflect that I ought to get on with starting a business for myself, practising what I preach. But I still don’t have a clue where to start. In a flagrant example of ‘do as I say, not as I do’, I’ve written in one of the sample chapters: ‘You can always find time to squeeze in a phone call, meeting or web update – you just have to be creative! Use the crèche in the gym, the local playbarn or even beg a favour off a mate.’ My latest business phone calls have been punctuated by hysterical screaming (Boy Two), chants of ‘wipe my bottom, I did a poo’ (Boy One), and several muffled moments as I dropped the phone that had been cradled between jaw and shoulder, both hands being occupied in wrestling a baby onto a boob.
Tuesday 19 February 2008
Finally, the Husband has finished his grant proposals. Instead of being swathed in a black cloud of despondency, he now carries an air of quiet resignation, born equally of not having much hope but being able to do bugger all about it. On the positive side this means he’s a bit more available for bathing duty but it also means that his career – and our financial security – is in the hands of the gods, or charity accountants, which is practically the same thing.
Wednesday 20 February 2008
It seems I’m not the only one struggling with finding a new direction, post baby. Academic Mother brings her three-year-old daughter over for a playdate with Boy One and settles in for a good old whinge.
Shortly after having her daughter, Academic Mother resurrected her postgraduate thesis, aiming for a lectureship in one of the local universities. If I ever moaned about there not being enough hours in the day I just needed to look at her to get over myself. She rose at 4 or 5 am to start writing, getting her daughter up at 7 am and doing a full day of full-time parenting while her partner went out to work, putting her little girl to bed again at 8 pm only to pick up where she’d left off that morning. I don’t think her head hit the pillow for more than three or four hours at any given time. She kept this up for nearly three years until she finally submitted her work, sailing through the viva and earning her PhD.
You’d have thought that it would have been the start of a glittering career…
‘The research just doesn’t sit well with those conservative bastards,’ she moans. ‘I’ve got to get the thesis published and try to write a couple of really straight-laced articles before I’ll fit in anywhere.’
‘Weren’t you helping out at some college or other?’ I ask.
‘Only one day a week, and it was only temporary. Besides, it didn’t even keep the dog in balls.’ Academic Mother’s dog has a bit of a rubber fetish. ‘I’m beginning to think there’s no future in academia.’ She sighs.
I could have told her that, based on the heavy depression hanging over our house at the moment.
‘Your man won’t be happy with you being a Stay at Home Mum surely. What are you going to do?’
Academic Mother’s partner is certainly keen for her to get back to earning. He’s an estate agent and the rocky economic climate isn’t doing his employers any favours. His enthusiasm for her to start earning again doesn’t extend to sharing the childcare though. I can’t believe she hasn’t folded under the sheer exhaustion of it all. The Husband may be many things, but he tries to be helpful and spends time with his children. I know I can count on his support, and for that I am always grateful.
‘Ironically enough, I’ve gone into childcare – I’m registering as a childminder,’ she answers. It makes sense, if you think about it. Apart from the enormous waste of lie-ins writing that bloody thesis, she’s a natural mother and enjoys spending time with children. It’s something I’ve thought about too, but only for a nanosecond because a) my house isn’t big enough to swing a toddler – even a small one, and b) though I love my children deeply, the idea of singing ‘Wind the Bobbin Up’ for three hours straight makes me want to chew my own legs off.
Thursday 21 February 2008
I’m briefly leaving my country hovel to go and meet up with Mother from Work in London. She and I both work for the same magazine and have a peculiar habit of getting pregnant at the same time – twice so far. In fact, in our core team of four people there have been eight babies in the last four years. I think it’s something to do with the chairs. We’re both returning to what used to be the real world, a place where they get dressed before lunchtime. A place where they commute to offices and spend their time scanning Facebook for old boyfriends and sending emails to the person they sit beside.
We meet our Editrix in Starbucks and show off our respective babies. Mother from Work has already winkled out of me that I have no desire to go back. Nor has she, it seems. I won’t say anything to the Editrix – I’m keeping my options open until the very last minute. It would be very embarrassing to have to eat my words and have to beg for my job back if it all goes pear-shaped for the Husband. I’m keeping everything crossed that it won’t.
Having admitted to each other that neither intends going back, Mother from Work and I sit there feigning interest in the latest ad agency faux pas, or some consultancy that’s showering the team with gifts and dreadfully purple PR prose for the magazine. I worked with some lovely people and we had great times but, as with all the best break-ups, it’s not them, it’s me. Oh, and the peanuts pay and the smelly bloke on the underground.
Tuesday 26 February 2008
One of the benefits of being on maternity leave is afternoon wine. I haven’t been exploiting it fully until now because I am being a virtuous breastfeeding mother and trying to keep Boy Two off the Chianti for a few months at least. Also, I’ve just been too bloody busy to kick back with a glass or three.
My best friend from university in the east of Scotland somehow wound up living a mere five miles away in the deepest shires of England. Aside from the usual party nights and ill-advised snogs we have in common from our student days, we’ve also conspired to have babies only a few months apart. This provides endless scope for my Partner in Crime and I to gossip over a glass of wine and pick apart the horror that is OPC – other people’s children.
Today, the Partner in Crime calls round with her little boy in one arm and a bottle of wine in the other. It will be rude not to join her in a glass or two.
After last week’s trip to London, we get on to the topic of going back to work. I don’t think I know anyone less enamoured of the idea of going back to work than Partner in Crime. But, because she feels that there really is no alternative, she’s grasping the nettle and checking out nursery places, despite the fact that her son isn’t even six months old. Loathe as she is to leave him, if she has to then she’s going to make damn sure that she leaves him in the best place possible. And now it seems as though the good ones got snapped up moments after she left the delivery suite. She likes what she sees well enough, but she’s only just getting used to mornings of Kindermusic and trips to the park rather than to the water cooler. I think for her to feel happy about leaving her son with someone else, they have to be one step away from sainthood.
To be honest, Partner in Crime is unlikely to really need to work anyway. Her husband has a good job and they live in a fourteenth-century, original-features-intact house with a teeny mortgage in the centre of one of south Oxfordshire’s most genteel market towns. It was recently voted as having the most expensive real estate anywhere in the UK. Of course, things can go wrong, the value of shares, houses and marriages can go down as well as up, but the chances in her case are slim. But while part of her is just blissed out spending every waking moment with her baby, there’s still another side of her that can’t quite let go of the university-educated, emancipated career woman thing.
As we mull over our options I tell her about the doula thing I’m planning and explain that it’s all about being a mother’s help as well as a labour partner. She opines that she could do with one of those just on a day-to-day basis. Unlike me she doesn’t have any regular childcare so planning a lunch or going to appointments means relying on the in-laws or baby comes too. What she could really do with, she says, is a babysitter on call.
‘You can always call me,’ I suggest. ‘I couldn’t be a childminder full-time, but I don’t mind a spot of child-wrangling now and then. Especially if there’s a bottle of wine in it for me.’
‘Thanks, but wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to rely on hugger-mugger help from friends? I feel like I’m imposing…’ she says, worried.
‘Not at all, I’d help where I could,’ I reply, and I would, except I have to admit that I barely have time to look after my own children, let alone someone else’s at the moment. I have a deadline for a thrilling article on breastfeeding and I still don’t have any answers for my mumpreneur dilemma.
But then I have what can only be described as a Eureka moment, without the overflowing bath and wrinkly Greek man, obviously. If we both needed someone to sort things out for us, take care of babysitting, wait in for deliveries and so on, then there must be plenty of women in the same boat. What if we get together some mums looking to earn cash, who we could send out in times of need? We’d be the Ticketmaster of babysitting, a concierge service for harassed mums, a mumciergery!
Becoming excited at the prospect of not having to go back to work gets the Partner in Crime’s creative juices flowing and soon we’re talking about party organising, managing mums’ diaries and all sorts of services. Fuelled by wine we get a bit excited and start sorting out all the important details – who is going to appear on GMTV, what wardrobe suits the joint CEOs of a booming mumcierge business, whether a trip to Selfridges to acquire said wardrobe is a bit premature, which exotic island we can retreat to on holiday to spend the profits.
I call the Husband full of excitement that we are on the way with a proper business idea, one that will make money and have employees and be famous and everything. He puts on his best ‘indulging the little wife’ voice and asks, ‘How exactly is this going to make money, and who will be looking after our children while you’re building this empire?’
I’m on too much of a high, and possibly a little drunk, to care that he isn’t exactly bowled over by our magical money-making schemes. In fact, in my mind we’re practically in profit already.
Wednesday 27 February 2008
I’m still basking in the glow of my new-found mumpreneur status. At last I feel as though there is actually a business from which I can make some real money. I spend the day researching the competition, and find there isn’t any – well, there is an identical service in west London, but as that is over 40 miles away and this kind of thing is a bit dependent on help being practically round the corner, I don’t think we need to worry about them. It does mean that we can pinch, or rather be inspired by, the things they have already set up. Bonus! I’ve been trying to come up with a mission statement for our new mumciergery as well. We also need a decent brand name because mumciergery is, frankly, a bit weird.
I take a break from empire-building to go and collect Boy One from pre-school. His teacher greets me with what I take to be an admiring look as I troop up with the baby in a sling. ‘That baby is still practically a newborn,’ I imagine her thinking, ‘and here she is already back in the groove. What an inspiration!’ Perhaps I just exude success…
Walking home reflecting on her obvious admiration, I can’t resist a quick preen in a nearby shop window. Quick flick of the hair, and I’m a picture of yummy mumminess framed in the dark glass, with Boy One frolicking beside me and Boy Two angelically asleep tucked against my side. That and the two dinner-plate-sized orbs of leaking milk darkening my top. What I had taken for admiration was obviously indulgent pity as she thought to herself, ‘Bless her, she’s so sleep-deprived and hormone-addled that she hasn’t noticed her milk’s come in again. Maybe the poor love’s in such a state she’s plain forgotten to feed the baby.’ Not Superwoman, then. Bugger.
Sunday 2 March 2008
Mother’s Day. I remember the Husband talking about Mother’s Day shortly after the birth of Boy One. In obvious shock at someone having driven a bus through his wife’s lady-parts, he said to the midwife: ‘Now I understand what the fuss is all about. I’m never going to give my mother a crap present again. And I’d better make sure our son looks after his mum too!’ Three years and one more son and heir down the line and what do I get for this special day? Nada, nothing, zip. So that’s the birth in January, Valentine’s Day in February and Mother’s Day in March – three months, three Hallmark moments missed and I’m not impressed.
I’m only slightly mollified by the fact that my old book’s biggest selling season is just before Mother’s Day so it should have been flying off the shelves as desperate dads and children snap up anything with ‘mum’ in the title to dispense their duties for another year. Our skiing holiday is imminent so it’s comforting to think that the vins chauds and après ski aperitifs are being taken care of.
Friday 7 March 2008
Finally the long-awaited skiing holiday rolls around. But it also reminds me how little time has actually passed. Barely six weeks ago we were rushing out of the delivery suite to post Boy Two’s passport application. In the interim I’ve found two new careers and discovered that I can – almost – function on three hours’ sleep in every twenty-four. Things look rosy. Even the prospect of spending ten hours taking five separate trains across Europe with two small children can’t dampen my spirits.
Of course, the Husband’s precarious work situation is overshadowing things a little. Both the doula and mumcierge ideas could bring in a decent part-time income but on their own they won’t be enough to sustain our growing (grown? I’m really not in the market for a third) family if his (the main) breadwinning income is taken away. There’s still a very real possibility that I’m going to be back at my desk in less than three months. But now is not the time to think of such things. Instead it’s time to think of cutting through fresh powder and ignoring the fashionistas’ advice to slap on the sunblock. Even if it stops at a tide mark round my neck, I’m determined to get a tan.
Sunday 9 March 2008
First day of the holiday and instead of trooping straight up the hill, the Husband has curled up in an armchair, resembling a deflated Michelin man in his salopettes. He’s trying to steal Wi-Fi. It seems we can’t live without a permanent umbilical cord to the outside world. Miraculously he finds one. Webmail should, must, be read. And it cheers up my nonskiing father-in-law no end to discover that he can get the boxing results as a reward for being tied to fibreglass and thrown off the top of a rock, then left to hurtle down a sheet of ice with only a small, spiky forest to use as brakes.
Wednesday 12 March 2008
So far on my relaxing holiday I have:
Cooked five dinners for six people.
Used the medieval torture device known as a breast pump to extract two feeds a day for the baby, to be delivered into his gaping maw by my mother-in-law while I’m up a mountain.
Answered twelve emails covering, variously, names for the mumciergery, the impossibility of getting a criminal records bureau check and the consequent absolute necessity of one, queries regarding the potty training article (apparently, in one of the case studies where a boy had learned to do a poo in the big toilet, I’d put his age at 33. They wanted to check this is what I meant. I mean, it wouldn’t occur to them that the extra ‘3’ was a typo or anything).
Fallen over three times – twice when Boy One snow-ploughed into me at speed, having learned how to start, but not how to stop. The third was when the Husband also used my ankles as a braking device, scything into my legs with his skis and rearranging my kneecaps.
That I have had only one hour-long crying fit after all this is, I think, a good thing.
Monday 17 March 2008
We survived yesterday’s epic journey home from the Alps despite Boy One’s constant diarrhoea on the Eurostar. Fortunately he is still in night nappies so we had something to catch the accidents, but inevitably the nappy supply ran out somewhere under the Channel. We resorted to padding out his underpants with bits of newborn nappy that we hoped Boy Two would not require before we reached home.
Our happiness at being back home is short-lived, not least because of the three separate credit card bills waiting for me on the welcome mat. I always feel the worst bit about going on holiday is not knowing what you’ll come back to. I fantasise about break-ins, fires, floods and unpayable bills languishing on the mat. On this occasion we avoid all but the last. As I hide the offending articles from the Husband I pray to the god of re-mortgaging, hoping that our recent switch between banks will see much-needed funds land in our account soon.
At least I don’t need to worry about a slew of demanding emails because I’ve pretty much kept up with them while we’ve been away. Some might say you’re wrecking your holiday by never leaving work alone, but I say that I’d wreck it anyway by worrying about what was going on in my absence.
What I didn’t bank on was other people holding on to their bad news emails until I got back. While we’ve been away, someone has published a ‘How to’ book on becoming a mumpreneur that is almost identical to the one I have in the pipeline. No funny business, just a coincidence that someone else had the same cracking idea, but about four months earlier. Mr Book Man drops the proposal like a hot rock. As I’ve mentally already spent the advance and, reading the credit card statements, have actually spent some of it too, this is a bit of a blow. Never mind, there are still the proceeds of the mother’s day book, the latest payment instalment for which is due any day now.
Friday 21 March 2008
Galvanised into action by the sudden vacuum in the family finances I kick the Husband out of the house on Good Friday to fetch chocolate eggs and distract the children while I get on with some work. I still need brand names – mum4hire? Mumsitters? – and a website, posters, fliers…
This leads me to making yet more to-do lists with action points and division of tasks between my Partner in Crime and me, involving neatly folded paper and different coloured pens. I have always had this fetish: I have written the list, ergo the job has been done. Which of course it hasn’t and I’ve spent so long cataloguing jobs to do I no longer have any time left to do them. The Husband is now back with the children – one of them is high on chocolate and the other is desperate for some boob. Project millionaire is postponed for another day.
Saturday 22 March 2008
At last the unmistakable franked envelope from my first ever publisher plops heavily through the letter box. I’m not ashamed to say I practically drop the baby on the floor in the rush for it. Figures baffle me at the best of times but I’m fairly sure that the number of minus signs next to four- and five-figure numbers is not encouraging. Matched by the virtual tumbleweed blowing through my online banking account I think it’s safe to say that those minus signs mean what I think they do. To cheer myself up, I hop in the car to go to the supermarket. I intend to spend next month’s freelance income (not actually commissioned but hey, it’s on the list) on baby trinkets and wine.
Or that is the intention but I am in such a hurry that I prang my neighbour’s car while executing a speedy three-point turn. He is parked on the double yellows that are there precisely to give you enough space to do a three-point turn without hitting any parked cars. I call the insurance company and pretend to be on their side:
‘I hit his driver-side bumper but it’s only a wee scratch really.’
‘So it’s your fault, madam?’
‘Ye-es, but he’s parked on the double yellows that are there to let you turn safely. Really, it’s his fault because he shouldn’t have parked there in the first place. If it’s his fault then you should refuse to pay. That I get to keep my No Claims is neither here nor there.’
‘But, madam, you were moving, he was not. Therefore, it’s your fault, your claim, your insurance and your No Claims, I’m afraid. I’d say you were into him by about £500.’
‘Bugger.’
It’s not 1 April yet, is it?
Chapter 3 Sleepless Nights (#ulink_3e0721d2-bd39-518c-88ca-24ec1e3df8fc)
Thursday 3 April 2008
You know that you’re a proper mumpreneur when you find yourself fixing your make-up in the dark in an underground car park using little more than Touche Éclat and a pair of blue Noddy pants, age 2-3.
I’m venturing out into the big wide world today. Often there aren’t just days but weeks when I don’t go much further than the edge of the village. But today I’m going up to town, to the smoke, to London. I’ve arranged to meet an old contact from my PR days who knows a bit about start-up businesses and how to go about getting them going.
The thrill of being allowed back into the world of the grown-ups (mothers’ corner at playgroup doesn’t count) is swiftly extinguished by yet another wardrobe crisis. That joey pouch is refusing to budge despite me spending the last four weeks pounding on the treadmill. Bosoms are also an issue, insofar as they don’t stay inside anything that’s not made of metres of cotton jersey. Shirts are a definite no-no as my cleavage is paying tribute to Debbie Does Dallas. I eventually drag on a dress which somehow manages to be both frumpy (hemline) and whoreish (neckline) at the same time. Hopefully the Pepto-Bismol-hued pashmina will distract my friend’s attention.
At least this time I remember the breast pads. Three weeks ago I was happily burbling away at Henry K on the radio show when I felt the telltale tingle under my armpits. This signals that I have exactly thirty seconds to deploy padding before the milk dam bursts and my top starts to darken in two very unmistakable ways. Halfway through dissecting the American Presidential Primaries I nonchalantly crossed my arms, hoping no one noticed me trying to stem the tide. I’m sure Henry thought it slightly odd that I kissed him goodbye and tried to leave the studio at the end of the show still with my arms firmly crossed over my chest.
My meeting today is instructive:
Could I cope if lots of mums wanted to use the service straight away? (Probably, maybe, in fact no, not really.)
Could I survive financially if no one used it straight away? (See 1.)
Had I thought about marketing, had I developed a distinct brand and did I have a budget set aside for it? (Yes, no and although I have a percentage of revenues set aside for marketing, 10 per cent of nothing is still nothing so, no.)
Was there a distinct division of labour between Partner in Crime and me to establish roles, boundaries, remuneration, etc. (No, in fact I haven’t seen her in ages. Must do something about that.)
Had I arranged my tax, insurance, qualifications, criminal record checks, etc.? (No, no, no and um, no. Oh dear.)
There’s a saying: ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’ Well, there are precious few solutions that come out of my meeting but a massive list of problems. At least I had a fairly comprehensive to-do list. I suppose I should be depressed that I thought I was good to go and it seems that I’m not even 5 per cent of the way to getting going on my own. But strangely I’m not. Now I’ve got my list of things to get on with, and if they’re all completed satisfactorily, I should have me a business.
Saturday 5 April 2008
Boy One has a date at his friend’s birthday party. Twenty screaming children aged three and four rampaging round a playbarn fuelled by cheesy puffs, cake and lemonade. This doesn’t frighten me as much as perhaps it should because:
it’s someone else’s party,
in someone else’s building, and
in two hours Boy One will experience a massive sugar
crash and lie comatose and drooling in front of The Lion King until it’s time for an early bed.
Therefore I can look forward to a longish period of peace and quiet this evening. I think I may sleep. Haven’t done that for a while.
Sunday 6 April 2008
Party was a great success except Boy One is now determined to have his own bash there in September. This will, I fear, be expensive and painful. However it has made me realise something about starting up this concierge service. Managing people doesn’t bother me, the tax situation is baffling but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Setting up websites and whatnot is actually quite fun (new career as an IT wonk? Not impossible). But, by offering a party helper service as part of our package, it dawns on me that I could be stuck in a kids’ party filled with hyperactive three-year-olds every Saturday from now until the hereafter. This is terrifying.
I also give Boy One his biannual haircut today. I usually wait until 40-year-olds start saying, ‘What a pretty girl!’ before deciding he needs a trim. We’re going for the long-locked surfer dude look at the moment. The haircutting experience usually consists of a large bar of chocolate to keep him still, large quantities of spray-on conditioner to get the dreadlocks out and the kitchen scissors.
So far I’ve entertained the idea of starting up as a PR, childminder, doula, radio presenter and website manager. I don’t think we’ll be adding hairdresser to that list.
Wednesday 9 April 2008
We make yet another pilgrimage to the venerated grandmother north of the border. It’s nice to visit the old home town. In a life where I’ve picked up two fathers, four mothers, two half-siblings and three step-siblings, seven schools and twelve family homes – and that’s just up to age 16 – it’s nice to know that Gma and Gpa stayed put in the same village for all of my nearly 35 years. Gpa’s moved on to stay with some floozies with white dresses and wings and a big bloke with a beard, but Gma’s feet are still firmly planted on Scottish soil (as opposed to in it).
Indeed, there is much to love about the old family homestead: discovering an old printing kit I was given for Christmas 1983, ink all dried up and letters missing; or finding the electronic keyboard Gpa made for me out of wood, a sheet of aluminium, some wires and a battery bigger than his fist. The benefit of having a relative with a double first in Physics and Maths and part of the team that developed RADAR was that he could take a bundle of wires, wood and metal and make something really quite wonderful. You can take your Barbie, I’ll have my home-made stylophone any day.
Unfortunately, despite being fascinated by computers and the internet, my Gpa selfishly failed to install broadband into the bungalow before he popped off to electrify the angels’ harps. So here I am armed with a laptop and a feature on toddler play to file by tomorrow and no way of getting on the internet, not even with dial-up.
We are but minutes from Silicon Glen where many of the IT advances were made in the 1980s and 1990s but I can’t get a signal on my mobile or connect to the internet. With my web habit this is a serious problem. Nor does Gma’s village have anything like an internet café. It has a café but the only cookies they’re interested in have chocolate chips and go nicely with a cuppa.
In the end I resort to filing copy the way so many hacks did before the war – over the phone, using my voice instead of the beeeee-awwwww-bipbip-beeeennnnnnggg of the modem.
I’m also too embarrassed to do this direct to the editor of the magazine. After all why pay a freelancer to dictate to you something that you may just as well have knocked up yourself? Instead I call Middle Sister who is handily at her desk in a super-cool sports and music marketing agency in London.
I wonder what they make of:
‘“Your toddler will enjoy shouting rude words like POO and WILLY”—got that?’
‘Do you want me to capitalise all of poo and willy?’
‘Yes, please.’
I hope her boss in their nice open plan office is understanding.
Tuesday 15 April 2008
The trip to Scotland was nice but it puts us all out of sorts. Perhaps it’s the seven-hour slog up and down the M1 in the middle of the night that does it. You can’t contemplate a journey like that during the day. Bored children with permanently full bladders make for slow progress. And during the brief moments when you are actually making time up the motorway the children are bouncing up and down in the back, hyped on sugar from the endless chocolate bribery. Boy Two is a little young for the sugar rush but Boy One has a surprisingly long reach for someone strapped into a car seat.
So an overnight drive it is, speeding through the wee hours down the coast, listening to mad programmes on Radio 2. The Husband ponders why stations insist on playing bagpipe music or Wagner when you really need a bit of Bon Jovi or The Eagles to keep you going. But the children are both snoring peacefully in the back so we have to be grateful for small mercies.
At one point we both get hit by a dose of the snoozes so we need something more peppy to keep us going. The Husband has stored some comedy on his MP3 player so we plug in a bit of Billy Connolly to blow the cobwebs away. We’re right in the middle of a lovely juicy skit about inventive sex, in which Billy C gets himself in a right old froth and shouts, ‘FUUUUCCK, Fucking FUUUUCK!’ with great gusto, when a little voice from the back pipes up:
‘He said “fucking”, Mummy. Has he got naughty manners?’
I find myself completely incapable of speech. I’m trying so hard to stop myself from laughing that I clamp my mouth shut and my eyes well up. The pressure threatens to blow my ears off. It’s just as well there are few other cars about because I’m finding it hard to see. Eventually the Husband recovers his composure long enough to say:
‘Very naughty manners, darling. Now, how about a bit of “Puff the Magic Dragon”?’
The humorous interlude is unfortunately short-lived. Every time we do this trip the combination of petrol station food, recycled air and sleep deprivation leaves us all twitchy and tetchy. Back home the Husband starts to pick on the state of the house, a niggle that then swiftly descends into the usual argument over money or, more importantly, the lack of it:
‘I just can’t stand all this clutter, it makes me claustrophobic, ’ he complains.
‘It’s only Boy Two’s toys and he’ll grow out of these soon, then we can get rid of them.’
‘But can’t you put them somewhere?’
‘We don’t really have anywhere to put them, but I have ordered some storage boxes to go under Boy One’s bed. When they arrive we could stuff a lot in them.’
‘How much did they cost?’
‘About £80. Why?’
‘You shouldn’t be spending any money. We don’t even know if I’m going to have a job in a month. You don’t seem to have got anywhere with this business thing.’
‘It takes time to get going.’
‘You haven’t even got a name yet.’
‘The name’s the most important thing, I’ve got to get that right. And what about you? We’d have had that cheaper mortgage if you’d got your paperwork to me in time.’
With that I deal the decisive blow. The Husband is on my case in a second if I let a credit card bill go past the payment date. He is an arch-interest avoider. And yet when we had to bail from our mortgage company last month because the monthly payment went stratospheric, he dithered for so long about getting his proof of salary to the new one that we lost the low percentage deal. I managed to secure another one that was only a tiny bit more expensive but not before blubbing down the phone to the operator. She must have thought I was a victim of spousal abuse:
‘It’s just [sob] that my husband won’t help me.’
‘I’m sorry, we can’t get that rate back. The system’s automated.’
‘But we had everything, all the papers but his and he wouldn’t pull his finger out [sob]. Can’t you do anything?’
‘Sorry.’
The new deal we finally secured wasn’t a great deal more expensive than the first but I now have some great ammunition to shut the Husband up when he starts nagging. I’m not sure how long I can get away with it for, though.
Thursday 17 April 2008
Returning from the shops I find a waif and stray on my doorstep. I often find friends and acquaintances loitering on my doorstep as it’s a conveniently warm place to hide if you miss your train, what with the station being barely a two-minute walk away. Anecdotally, ours seems to be the coldest station in England with an icy wind howling past the platforms as frequently as the trains. Of course, being of good Scots stock and naturally well-insulated, I don’t find this a problem at all. I am, however, surrounded by soft, southern Sassenachs.
Perched on kerb is in fact the Partner in Crime’s husband, the Family Friendly Businessman. Though he’s often away for days at a time on business, when he is home he’s a real hand-son dad and you can tell from his expression that he genuinely loves kids. Mind you, he’s quite slender so he clearly couldn’t eat a whole one.
I invite him in for a coffee and small talk while we wait for the telltale horn sounding at the bottom of the garden that tells him his next train has arrived. He reveals that he and the Partner in Crime have been discussing this mumciergery idea already. As it will affect his family finances as well as mine, and therefore he has a pretty big say in whether or not she goes ahead with it, I tentatively ask him if he thinks it’s a goer, really not wanting to hear the wrong answer.
But Family Friendly Businessman thinks that a mumciergery should fly with no problem. But…
And then he spends the next half-hour coming up with all sorts of questions that I have no idea how to answer. It shows how little I’d thought this through. If I charge a booking fee but I’m not there to enforce it, what’s to stop people bypassing me and going straight to the source? Have I got a criminal record check and do I realise how hard it is to get one? What about insurance – what would happen if a child choked while in my care? Could I cope with offering all these services at once – shouldn’t I think about starting out smaller?
I try to keep smiling in the face of this onslaught but in my head all I can think is ‘What the hell have I let myself in for?’ Finally, the horn sounds and Family Friendly Businessman shoots out through the door to catch his train. I’m left with a head swarming with more questions than answers. To shut them out I self-medicate with a large glass of wine and crappy telly. Am I going to have to rethink the whole thing?
Monday 21 April 2008
Out of the blue a child modelling agency gets in touch about the email I sent them weeks ago. They’re interested in getting Boy One on their books and would I mind bringing him for an ‘audition’. This sounds like a sensible option while I wait to get everything else off the ground, until I read further.
Would I also mind paying a couple of hundred quid for his portfolio shots, oh, and his insurance premium. Plus, they can’t really guarantee he would be used in the campaign shots that they have in mind for him as the client will ‘order’ a few boys to come along and only use the one that looks best on camera. Apparently you’ll get paid a nominal fee for them to go along, but only the boy who is to be used in the campaign will get his hands on the moolah.
Due to the ongoing failure of the new mortgage company to provide us with the actual mortgage, money is getting a little tight. I got away with insisting to the Husband that we spend a few hundred pounds teaching me how to deal with screaming women but I don’t think he’s going to be happy about funding the next Naomi Campbell (I can’t think of any well-known male ‘Naomis’ – perhaps that should tell me something about Boy One’s potential career trajectory as a model?). I send the agency a polite thanks but no thanks on this occasion, making up a spurious story about getting over a bug and not being in the most cooperative mood. I initially wondered about pretending that he had chicken pox but thought better of it as they’d instantly think ‘spotty, scarred’ and therefore modelling career aborted before it began. Perhaps with a bit more money in the kitty in the next few weeks I’ll call them back to get that portfolio done, but not right now. We need to eat.
And despite the flow of funds dwindling to a trickle, we are eating rather well. I am in love with Ocado. As I’m perpetually tied to the computer anyway, I decide to shop online instead of schlepping to the supermarket every day. I’m going to try to train myself to do the weekly shop, rather than the daily impulse buy. And, apart from the fact that I’m wedded to posh shopping, I love that they’ll deliver for free at 10 pm after the kids are in bed. The Husband is mollified by the fact that they claim to be no more expensive than Tesco and Boy One thinks Santa comes every week now. If he’s refusing to go to bed I say, ‘You have to be asleep when the man with the van comes or he’ll realise you’re awake and won’t leave any treaties for the treaty basket.’ Oh Mr Sandman, bring me some bream, and the sweetest taters, that I’ve ever seen…
Tuesday 22 April 2008
I get my first taste of what it will be like to run the mumcierge service. One of Boy One’s friends came over to be child-minded today. The Very Capable Childminder had to go to an appointment so I took her only other ward. Normally with a house full of three-year-olds, I’d let them tear around the house and garden, refereeing fights from a distance, lazily blowing kisses from the sofa to kiss anything better and surveying the damage long after everyone has gone home. However, because I’m ‘on’ in a professional capacity, I feel I have to loiter no more than 5 feet from their every position. This means marshalling games of ‘bonk each other on the head with a tennis racket’, ‘lob the ball into next door’s garden’ and ‘running in circles really fast until you fall over in the funniest way possible’. For its novelty value it’s amusing but each game rapidly becomes crashingly boring. The Very Capable Childminder earns her money twelvefold. Just don’t tell her that or she’ll put her rates up.
Sunday 27 April 2008
From tomorrow, Boy One will be at pre-school in the afternoons as well as the mornings. It’s going to be bliss. This means I will be able to achieve more than simply the journey to and from the school, one supermarket shop and one nappy change before the three-year-old whirlwind returns. I might even be able to – gulp – get some work done. If only Boy Two would sleep! Goodness knows I can. Aren’t babies supposed to be sleeping for around 16 hours in 24 at this point. Now, I know that I’m not getting that much sleep, so why won’t he stick to what the book says? Honestly, can’t he read!
Monday 28 April 2008
I got back from an interview at 9.45 am and am already so tired I don’t know what to do with the day. BBC Breakfast rather deliciously wanted me on at 7ish to talk about the insanity that is Nannycams – plastic trinkets that ‘hide’ a camera where you can check up on the hired help. I have never seen anything that so obviously screams WE’RE WATCHING YOU! If you’re so scared about leaving your children alone, don’t. And if you have to, do your research, don’t just abandon them with the local psycho and hope for the best, secure in the knowledge that if they’re being slapped six ways from Saturday, you can watch it all happen 40 miles and two hours away.
Despite a background as a cynical hackette, I still get excited about the prospect of being on the goggle box (if TV is a goggle box, does that make a computer the google box?). The first time I was on TV it was about men being useless at home. I suggested on air that they weren’t and that division of labour was key. However, as my maths isn’t up to squat, division of labour at our house comes down to: work divided by 2 = emptying dishwasher by husband + rest of everything by me.
And I suspect the first time I was on I couldn’t have been too coherent, since I was horrifically hungover. When I got the call the night before (being called onto BBC Breakfast is all very urgent, last-minute stuff and is a deeply thrilling ‘I only got the call at 6 pm the night before and simply didn’t have a thing to wear’ affair), I got all overexcited and insisted on bending the Husband’s ear about how great I was going to be over several gins and bottles of white. As I was being conveyed in a luscious Jag – nice to see the wise use of my licence fee, Auntie, by the way – to Broadcasting House at 5 am the following day, or it could have been the same night for that matter, I was clutching my 2-litre bottle of water very tightly and attempting to turn my eyeballs from pink back to white. The make-up ladies were very sympathetic and didn’t mention the fact that I was sweating pure ethanol. And apparently studio lights are so strong they bleach out your eyes anyway, hence the orange pancake make-up.
This time I didn’t make the mistake of staying up all night drinking. Instead I stayed up all night breastfeeding. The pink eyes were still there and instead of ethanol I seemed to be sweating Gold Top. What poor Sian Williams thinks of me I do not know.
But even with an hour’s sleep and leaking boobs, I’m ducking and diving, doing deals. Once I was back in the green room (an affront to trades descriptions since it is the orange broom cupboard), I had a chance to chat with the bloke I was pontificating on screen with. He’s the publisher of a dads’ mag and I’m anxious to get my foot in the door. Much as I’m getting excited by my nascent mumciergery, wonga for words is what’s currently paying the bills and it’s good to have a standby. I loosely pitch a couple of ideas at him and leave it at that.
Tuesday 29 April 2008
Call the editor of the dads’ mag to go over what I’d said to his publisher yesterday morning, but he’s not in so I leave a message. On the school run I bump into the Glamazon. She’s a fellow pre-school mum and I’m always guaranteed to bump into her when I’ve failed to shower for three days and have dragged something to wear out of the washing up box. Never leaving the house without full warpaint, she’s got this old school glamour thing going on. Masses of long, wavy black hair, eyes kohl’d to the max, red lips and HUGE Jackie O sunglasses, she positively sashays. She’s also filled with boundless energy and seems to know everyone in the village as the playground echoes to ‘DARLING!! How ARE you?!’ at 3pm every day. She’s a blast.
We get talking about deadlines as you do and she mentions that she’s running late on one for this men’s magazine she occasionally writes for, one for the dads. I realise that this must be the same magazine I was talking about with BBC Brekkie and get all excited that we have a shared interest.
The second thought I have, following hot on the heels of the first is ‘Oh bugger – I’ve just tried to poach this woman’s column from under her.’ The editor must realise that we’ve got the same dialling code and, as we’re in the sticks, we must live very close to each other. I hope he doesn’t call her to tell her. Hacks can be at each other’s throats for the exclusive on a story, but equally it’s bad form to poach a column from under a fellow hackette’s feet. Particularly when you share the school run. Frantically think of ways to get her onside – perhaps she’d like to be in the mumcierge biz?
Chapter 4 Teething Troubles (#ulink_a0366d9b-fd64-54c3-8776-48d503ee9f18)
Monday 5 May 2008
Realising that the possibility of getting the mumciergery off the ground any time soon is unlikely, and having to wait until next month for the doula training course, I need to get money coming in somehow. My only real recourse is to go back to hawking stories round publishers again.
I may as well write about what I know so I send several beautifully crafted story breakdowns about becoming a doula and trying to set up a business as a Stay At Home Mum. Convinced that these are the topics du jour I can’t help but imagine that the commissions will come rolling in. I email the Husband to warn him that he may be needed for babysitting cover in the next few days as I’ll be busy churning out copy for magazines and newspapers – I’m convinced that the Saturday Times will snap up the doula story, Labour’s failure to provide adequate maternity care being one of their favourite drums to beat.
Tuesday 6 May 2008
Nothing. Not a sausage. The Times replies to say they did a story on doulas two years ago and therefore it was recent history. The parenting magazines don’t bother replying. A follow-up call to one reveals they haven’t even looked at it as their commissioning editor is on maternity leave and they seem less than keen to fill her shoes, claiming: ‘We have enough stories for the time being.’
I would say I’ll go on to plan B but I don’t really have one. Should I just calm down a bit, wait for the doula course and stick with that? What about the mumciergery? It seems like such a good idea; there must be a market for it. The Partner in Crime and I will both be gutted if we decide to give it a miss then some bored, filthy rich housewife decides to give it a go and makes an absolute fortune, cornering the market in our area completely.
I don’t have to make a decision about anything this very instant. I’m lucky that I’m getting payment of sorts for maternity leave, not that it leaves you enough for shopping anyway. It’s a treat not to buy own-brand pasta at the moment. Still, it would be nice to have some kind of income to fatten up the bank balance. Plus, the novelty of sitting around watching daytime TV has worn off a bit. Yes, it’s great that I now see a lot more of Boy One and Boy Two is getting some quality parenting. I’m even seeing more of the Husband although in his current state of mind it’s debatable as to whether or not this is a good thing. I’m in danger of getting bored and overdrawn so clearly I should be doing something…
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