How to be a working mum?

This is what happens when you have children: they get sick. You call everyone you know in a mad panic to see if anyone can look after them as you've got to go into work tomorrow; everyone says no, because they are either working themselves, or have children they don't want to get sick, so you have a big fight with your other half, raging about why your career is (vaguely) important (and so you can't carry on taking time off work to look after a sick baby), and then you realise the car engine has gone flat because the chemist (supplying the baby's medicine of course) has taken twenty minutes to find the wonderful array of banana flavoured Amoxicylin and in that time, your utterly CRAP car battery has died. Oh, and it's a Sunday night and it's pissing down with rain.

This is what happens when you have children. You sail through the weekend saying things like 'oh well, it's saturday, the surgery is closed, I'll wing it' and as you notice the flush in your childs' cheeks increase, their appetite go down the pan, curling up to sleep on your outstretched leg in the middle of a game of peek a boo...the penny starts to drop that perhaps you can't wing it and you'd better get that child to a doctor, PDQ.

"So, how long has your baby had a fever of 39 degrees C?" the doctor asked me this evening, in the out of hours service in our local A&E hospital.

"Erm, well, he's been this hot for, well, a couple of days" I muttered, followed by a shamefaced look at my boots.

"And, how long have his eyes been oozing green mucus?"

"Since Thursday, so that's about 4 days now..." A greater inspection of my boots. They seemed to have drool on them.

When you say to the doctor things like "But, I'm sure this type of conjunctivitis isn't contageous" they look at you like you have grown horns and a long spikey tail. The temptation to give your baby a quick face wipe and sneak him into nursery so you can get to work for a full day without worries, is enormous. The problem is clearly that we're all doing it, so as soon as once child gets sick, they ALL get sick. So, we're going to be good tomorrow and not put him into nursery, (besides which, he's clearly not well with his high fever) which means calling everyone I know in Glasgow to see if they can help.

And sitting in your car, in the pissing rain with a flat battery and a baby who has banana smeared over his angelic flushed face, way past his supper time or bed time, knowing you have about 2 hours to find that person, can be fairly stressful. Which is why, in my opinion, we should all relocate immediately to live next door to our siblings or parents, so we can all help each other out as and when. Which isn't going to happen to us, so this ridiculous Sunday night stressing is likely to endure until I go off on mat leave again, and will repeat with our next child. "Working mothers"! What a joke. The only career a "working mother" can possibly do, is balance the demands of meeting very basic expectations at work, providing food and nourishment for the family, and nurturing everyone in sight. The ability to achieve anything else - without a live in nanny - I think, is impossible.

Ug.

The elusive search for perfection

After six or so weeks of being fairly unlucky with house viewings, we have found somewhere to live! A initial weekend optimistically set aside to see six properties and decide which we'd live in was depressingly unhelpful. The first was about 20 minutes from the nearest neighbour, up a moor which is ram packed with nuclear warheads hidden in tunnels, the second was the nearest neighbour and yet also managed to be a ruin, about 6 months away from being habitable. The third was the size of my left hand, the fourth was a bit like exploring the hotel in The Shining, complete with endless corridors that morphed into each other and a wierd violin which played screetchy music behind my head. It also had a landlord who refused to answer any question with an answer. e.g:

Me: I see there's a flat underneath the house - does it also have access to the garden?

Landlord: I've lived here twenty five years and there's a great local butcher.

Me (He can't have heard me): What about the garden - who would have access?

Landlord: I've never known a frosty winter like this one. Hey, do you like my massive Wranger with personalised numberplate? I'm a massive multi squillionaire.

Ad infinutum.

The fifth was set up a lonely pot holed dirt track and on initial inspection, looked pretty decent, apart from the wierd brick wall interior decor (?), but as we stepped outside, I realised I could see the gold tooth of a Quantas pilot who was flying overhead.

"That plane's fairly low" I exclaimed as my heart sunk into my boots.

"Yes, we don't even notice them" the owner said.

As the next plane banked overhead and I saw thirty or so faces peering down at me I, my blood pressure hit the roof and I went back to sit in the car.

The following day we saw the sixth house, again up a track but near a gorgeous village. As we approached I saw some mammoth pylons straddling the fields. Oh god, there's always something. The house itself was perfect in size, with a lovely garden...the only 'uh oh' were the 750,000 volt power lines which ran within 60m of the property, and the subsequent electromagnetic radiation that was fizzing in the air. I could practically feel my brain pickling and my baby bump receiving more radiation than ideal.

We did consider it, due to the ideal size of the house and all the space we would get, but talking to experts, including a telecoms guy who worked for the very power company which supplied the line, made our minds up fairly conclusively.

So, with about 4 weeks to go until we had to move out we were back to square one and by now, very stressed. James had also had enough of being driven around the countryside endlessly.

So, it was a fairly remarkable turn of events which led us to the house we've finally found - a casual conversation with a colleague who in turn knew someone who knew someone who had an empty property! Just as I was about to give up it fell into our laps, and we are VERY grateful. It's fairly small, but in a lovely area and certainly has enough room for James AND another baby. It has a garden, a playroom and no voltage lines, nuclear warheads, wind farms or low flying aircraft within sight.

It was therefore with a spring in our step that we flew to New York for a weekend en famille and then onto Antigua for a much needed break! A week of beaches, hammocks, hot sultry skies, hoby cat sailing, swimming, snorkelling, reading novel after novel and genuinely relaxing! Some memories include the sheep goats, Wadadli beer, SLAM!, pineapple smoothies, amazing sunsets, Vaughn the nature walker, tamarind trees, mongooses, aquamarine waters and birds that sound like hiccups. We stayed at Coco Bay resort - definitely look it up and go for it if you want a stunning place to unwind. No children (James was being looked after by his wonderful grandparents), so it was utterly adult heaven.

Now all that lies in store is selling our flat and moving into our new house, going on mat leave and having another baby. Easy.