Tuesday 2 June 2015

An ode to the stay at home mum

A little over two years ago I made the tough decision to leave behind a career in journalism to become a stay at home mum.

I’d spent years in further education, college, university, then another round of college followed by lots of work experience to get where I was.

I was fulfilling my lifelong ambition to write for a living on a daily basis, and the little girl in me who used to create her own magazines in her bedroom quietly rejoiced every time I got a front page scoop.

In 2012, having been married for nearly a year, my husband and I decided it was time to embark on the bumpy ride to parenthood.

I carried on with my job while pregnant with my firstborn, believing I would return to work in some capacity after a year’s maternity leave, but knowing it wouldn’t be full time.

On my last day, as I started the immense task of clearing out my desk, which had accumulated nearly five year’s worth of crap, I was gripped by a quiet sense of dread in the pit of my stomach.

I knew returning to work part time meant I’d more than likely have to give up my senior position and face being demoted, or transfer to another office, but surely that was better than giving it all up to be “just” a stay at home mum, wasn’t it?

When I got home that night I shed a few tears, my job was a huge part of my identity and it did sort of feel like my arm had been cut off.

However, a job is a job and even if you really enjoy it the daily grind of the 9-5 does start to grate after a while, so I was really looking forward to the prospect of "relaxing" at home with my bundle of joy.

In 2013 my precious daughter arrived and as soon as that tiny hand grasped my finger the thought of not going back to work at all started creeping into my mind, until before long it was the reality.

Please don’t take this as some kind of moral attack on women who do choose to go back to work, I realise that many simply have no choice but to, and other women are eager to get back to work for the sake of their own sanity, and everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve and there is nothing wrong with that at all.

Believe me I have nothing but admiration for these women who come home after a long day at the office or on their feet and, instead of kicking off their shoes and relaxing, dive straight into the full time job of being a mum.

The simple truth is I’m just too much of a control freak to hand the reigns over to anyone else, and staying at home is simply what works best for me.

So here I am in 2015 with a two year-old and a four-month-old and, although I’m exhausted 90 per cent of the time, I don’t regret my decision to be “just” a stay at home mum at all.

And now that this is my main role in life I can’t help but bristle when I listen to people talking like staying at home is an easy option, like stay at home mums just sit around drinking coffee and watching TV with their abundance of free time.

True we aren’t juggling a demanding career with a running a home (seriously how do working mums find time to clean?) but shaping and entertaining young minds 24/7 is no walk in the park.

There’s no leaving the office at the end of the day, no lunch break.
 
It is often mum and not dad who gets called in during the night because daddy has to go to work the next day.

But it's also incredibly wonderful and there’s no doubting that stay at home mothers are lucky.

The truth is neither option is easy, neither the stay at home mum nor the working mum is a better parent.

I’m sure people who visit my house wonder why it often looks like a disaster zone when I’m at home all day, sometimes I myself wonder why there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to get everything done.

So, as a whacky experiment I decided to document a random hour or so in my day.

Let me know if you can relate : )

*Please note, 9.20am is the time I chose to start doing this experiment, not the time I got up, that was 4am folks.

9.20am- while sipping my second coffee of the day and sorting through one of the many hideously messy cupboards in my house, I stumble upon a folder of cuttings from another lifetime ago when I was a journalist.

What fun it was that writing lark, I mused. I really miss that, I know I’ll start a blog which will be read by millions!

I glance around me hopefully, what are the munchkins doing? Will this be possible right now?

The toddler is engaged with trying to remove parts of the baby’s play gym, the baby is asleep in his bouncer.

Believing I have the all clear I reach for my laptop.

9.23am- The click clack of my typing has attracted the attention of the toddler, she ambles over and asks “mum mum what doing?” I reply that I’m writing something on the computer, she immediately begins helping me.

Inside my head I am laughing at the foolish notion I held in my first year of being a stay at home mum that I could somehow work from home as a freelance journalist, pah ha ha!

I shut the laptop and decide it will be easier to do this on my iPhone, which she also covets but is easier to wrestle off her.

9.25am- The baby starts crying for a bottle so I go to the kitchen to make one using the greatest invention known to mums, the Tommee Tippee Perfect Prep machine.

The toddler begins helpfully shouting "baby cry! Baby cry! Baby cry!" at the top of her voice.

I briefly worry that the neighbours will think I’m neglectful.

9.27am- I return to my son who is now emitting the anguished guttural cry of a baby that hasn't been fed since last week, when in fact the little guzzler had a bottle a mere two hours ago.

After carefully selecting a dry spot on the sofa (we’re attempting to potty train and it isn’t going well) I plonk myself down and give him the bottle.

This is usually one of the more relaxing parts of the day, even if I do have do things like shout at the toddler who now is alternating between spooning out the dregs of my cereal bowl onto the sofa with using the spoon to deface the wall.

9.34am- I burp the baby, who lets out a fog horn belch which even startles him and is promptly sick on my shoulder.

I decide the volume of sick doesn't warrant a change of clothes yet and this much abused dressing gown probably has a few more hours wear in it. There is no way it will make it to the end of the day.

I spend the next three minutes trying to convince the toddler to give up my discarded coffee cup which she is now using to produce "beautiful" musical sounds aided by the spoon I've only just convinced her to stop redecorating the wall with.

9.36am-I have failed at trying to get toddler to give up the spoon and cup and have instead submitted to being aggressively force fed imaginary food from the cup, while trying not to mind that there's hair on the spoon and she's bashed my teeth at least twice.

9.42am- The phone rings and it’s a sales caller ringing for a Mrs O Gorman, a woman I get several calls for a week.

She is apparently a naughty woman who has given numerous companies my telephone number as some kind of elaborate ruse to foil an overzealous sales person in the past, or simply because she's just a bad person. I delight in taking my weariness out on the obnoxious sales person who gets all rude and shirty and makes me enjoy it even more.

9.44am- I return from the phone call to discover the toddler has spread the bowl of Weetabix I foolishly entrusted her with earlier all over herself and her play table.

Ah the play table, a space I envisaged her angelically colouring at and expertly eating her food at to save my walls and floor from the carnage of both these activities, which of course never happens.

As I wipe it up I find myself getting absorbed in an episode of Doc McStuffins that I've seen at least twice before, the one about the telescope and the meteor shower.

9.50am- Doc's big musical number is interrupted by the determined grunting of the baby who is now sitting on my lap. A warm rumbling sensation on my leg and an appalling smell inform me a poo landslide has occurred.

I start changing the baby’s nappy, which smells so much worse now he’s exclusively formula fed, and try not to vomit in my mouth.

I feel relieved when I hear that the infinitely more watchable Sofia The First is on next, and then worry that the toddler has watched too much TV this morning.

Next I grapple with the toddler who has a DVD in her hand and is repeatedly screaming "bird film" in my face while grabbing my arm to stop me changing her brother’s nappy so I can put on the DVD.

I calmly tell her she cannot watch the DVD and try to stop her throwing said DVD at me and the baby.

I feel relieved as she is momentarily distracted by Sofia The First which seems to be about challenging gender stereotypes today, "I believe anything can be a princess thing!" I tell myself it’s ok to let the toddler watch this, it’s clearly educational and socially responsible.

It dawns on me that I have mere seconds to finish changing the baby before she spots the DVD in her own hand again and resumes her onslaught.

9.56am –I engage in a coo-off with the baby to try and distract him from Sofia The First which he is now avidly watching from the changing mat.

I worry that I'm a bad mother and turn the TV off.

10.00am- I am still trying to calm down the toddler who has gone ape shit about me turning off the TV during her favourite program and is now screaming “no mum mum” repeatedly and hitting me with the DVD case.

I try to explain that hitting is wrong, and offer to do colouring or puzzles with her.

I am brutally rebuffed.

Eventually I decide to ignore the toddler’s strop and remember I must clear up the kitchen from last night’s takeaway, as well as start tackling "Mount Washmore".

I set the baby up in the bumbo with brightly coloured toys on the tray table, he immediately starts bawling.

10.03am- I politely ask the toddler to stop throwing the entire contents of the toy box on the floor, she screams in response.

I offer the baby an alternative seating arrangement and prey it is acceptable.

I mentally thank the baby for accepting the new chair and being so reasonable in the face of my evident distress.

10.05am- the toddler stops screaming and drags me by my dressing gown to the kitchen where she demands a packet of Organix crisps with a repetitive plea of "crispies mum mum crispies, crispies mum mum crispies!"

When she doesn't get her own way she resorts to pulling out the "big guns".

This is a particular type of whine which gradually crescendos in volume “aa aa aah aaaah AAAAH!” accompanied by an agitated wiggling on the spot while banging the kitchen cupboard. I secretly admire her determination to achieve her goal and am sorely tempted to just give her the crisps to make the whining stop.

Instead I desperately search the fridge for something more suitable.

With peace keeping skills akin to those of a seasoned hostage negotiator, I convince her a yoghurt is a better snack and that she should stop banging the cupboard door and exit the kitchen.

10.09am- I start sorting piles of laundry.

10.11am- it occurs to me that I'd better check on the baby in case the toddler has done something awful to him.

I find him happily cooing away at his Lamaze pirate, and am so overcome with love that I have to sit there and watch.

I soon get embraced by my toddler, who has clocked my besotted gazing and is a little bit jealous.

 She wraps her little arms around me and gleefully declares "I wuv you mumma!" I enjoy a warm sense of pride at how loving, funny and feisty my beautiful daughter is.

10.12am- the warm feeling is interrupted when the toddler suddenly grabs my index finger and starts shouting "no no no nooo!" for reasons unknown.

10.13am- unable to fathom what it is she wants, I return to the kitchen with the baby in the bouncer to resume sorting the laundry into piles.

10.20am- The toddler enters kitchen and announces "I've been naughty". I feel a sense of dread as I make my way back to the living room to search for the misdeed.

I discover she has smeared yoghurt all over the sofa, berate myself for buying fabric instead of leather, and concede that the level of stains, and potential wee, mean the covers must be stripped off and washed asap.

I wipe as much yoghurt as I can off with baby wipes and add the task of stripping it to my never ending list of chores.

The toddler hands me the empty yoghurt carton and says one of her favourite sentences "no likey", I muse that it's like living with Paddy McGuiness from Take Me Out.

10.23am- I am dragged into the kitchen by the toddler again where the campaign for crisps resumes, the baby starts crying.

I pick him up for cuddles and return to the living room in the vain hope of a sit down, it is then that I notice the yoghurt has also been smeared all over the floor as well, deep joy!

I cuddle the baby while trying to appease his jealous sister by agreeing to dress and undress her dolly repeatedly, using one hand, while her brother does his best to wriggle forward off my lap.

I try to remind/convince the toddler that she does love her baby brother really, with some success.

The baby starts crying.

I wonder where the baby’s dummy has gone decide there must be a black hole in the house and frantically hunt for another one to sterilise.

I locate a different dummy under the sofa and go into the kitchen to sterilise it.

The toddler follows me and resurrects her crisp campaign.

10.30am- I lay the baby down on his play gym and supervise as the toddler alternates between tenderly stroking his face and telling him off for something he hasn't actually done.

I try to stop her from taking his dummy out of his mouth and replacing it with the one I couldn’t find before.

I remind the toddler if she needs to go to the toilet then she should use her new Minnie Mouse potty, which I foolishly believed would solve all my potty training woes.

She screams “no!” and sprints off into the kitchen to sulk.

I enjoy the relative calm as the baby dozes on his play mat.

10.40am- I realise it's been well over an hour since I decided to do this experiment and I haven't managed to complete a single scrap of housework.

I feel a sense of strong admiration for child minders of multiple children and women with more than two children, I wonder how on earth they cope.


I decide I need a maid.