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.