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,