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

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.

* Except she has five children and a hedge fund; I have two children and a hedge.