The Mumpreneur Diaries: Business, Babies or Bust - One Mother of a Year

Prologue Anti Natal

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

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.*

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.