Since I first started blogging my life has changed considerably with wonderful happy safe arrival of Billy. But perhaps most recently, its changed dramatically with me going back to work.
Now on Week 3 of full-time work I’ve started thinking about how I felt when I first went back to work having had Jemima. I’m going to spare you the ‘but I miss my baby’ emotions. They are a given, I’m a mum! Anyone who’s been there has experienced all those emotions by the bucket load. Instead, this post is going to focus on the practicalities of fitting it all in.
When I first had Jemima and once she’d got past the early days when she slept for long stretches at a time, I remember thinking that I must have been kidding myself to think that my life was busy before she was born. It seemed so easy in comparison – get up, go to work, come home, cook or go out to dinner and go to bed.
Once I went back to work when she was 6 months old, I remember hitting a whole new level of busy-ness and genuinely thinking there truly weren’t enough hours in the day to do the above and somehow do it all while making sure she was healthy, happy and generally thriving within our family – and not at the expense of our own emotional and physical well-being.
Well, throwing in baby no. 2 but without work, kept things on a more or less par in the busy-ness stakes. Billy replaced work and in many ways was far easier to manage than my clients and their associated demands. I was on a level playing field and it felt good.
So, how can the simple act of returning to work throw things into such a spin? I actually don’t think the word ‘busy’ doesn’t describe it. And today, I’ve had a couple of realizations which have shed some light on the matter. Essentially, it all boils down to exponential growth.
Hear me out here…
For the most part my adult life has consisted of building a career and a home. Sounds easy. But as we get older, and build our careers the career itself gets more demanding. As the careers get more demanding, they thankfully come with bigger (financial) rewards which in turn allows us to live in the bigger houses that we dream of. And as well know, the bigger the house, the more it takes it to maintain it. As we have children, our laundry multiplies many-fold (saying two fold just because there are twice as many of us than there were without children just doesn’t cut it). As our family expands, we eat more, so need to cook more, so need to shop more, need to load/empty the dishwasher more. All of this takes longer. But does the day get longer in return? No that would be too simple. If anything it gets shorter because, to a degree, most of what’s involved our days now has to be squeezed into children hours i.e. between the time they wake up until the time they go to bed. We essentially have 12 hours between 7am and 7pm.
Whereas in my pre-children days I could extend my day by either getting up earlier/going to bed later, if necessary finding an extra few hours within the day. After all, when you’re in your early-late twenties we can survive on less sleep and still function at maximum capacity. Sadly, at the old age of mid-30’s neither of these two is now an option – if only because we’re simply too exhausted as it is,the thought of cutting down on sleep quite frankly fills us with horror. As it is we’re surviving on about 7 hours a night.
So, if my life was a business and I was the CEO, the only way to deal with this exponential growth is to increase the size of your team. And businesses have the luxury of shutting down for 2 days every week. But if anything, my life is more frantic at weekends. As anyone who has them knows, children don’t subscribe to the theory of vegging out on the sofa on Saturday and Sunday. Instead, for them weekends are an opportunity to do more fun things – soccer, swimming, baking, playing games etc etc.
So as working mum, my only option is to try to fit it all in by using the resources at my disposal more efficiently and having a water tight schedule that doesn’t really have any room for error. To put all this into perspective on Saturday morning we crammed in Jemima’s soccer, a trip to the gym for both of us, took Jemima (and her bike) and Billy to the park, had a friend over for the afternoon and supper, plus general house chores. Sunday’s activities included going to church (more about this in a later post), taking Jemima to a birthday party, cleaning the inside of the car, fixing the garden gate, laundry, cooking, tidying, general house chores.
So, as I put words on paper I’m reminded that my adult life hasn’t really changed in the last 10-15 years – I’m still trying to build a career and I’m still trying to run a house. The career has morphed over the years, the house and the children have grown. There are still only 24 hours in the day – but I now have fewer of them available to do most of the things I need to to.
So, to sum up, the words might have changed but I’m still singing the same song. But do you know what – it’s my favourite song and I LOVE MY LIFE. My occasional complaints about it, just make it more fun and make me more human!
This post is dedicated to everyone who’s trying to do it all.
