stay at home

Keep in time….

31/03/2014 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Freelancing from home while I raise Oscar is great but it’s not without is challenges.

Imagine you work in a office, with no one else around you, and you work almost entirely from written instructions. Not ideal but all going well so far.

Now image that you’re in that office, working alone, when in comes a marching band. And the band is noisy and its distracting, but hey, you can just block it out and get on with your work. Except the marching band also wants you to be its conductor. You know – the guy at the front who leads the way. So you have to do your work, whilst trying to block out the sound and the distraction of the band, all while conducting the band.

But eventually the band decides to leave for a bit. Yay! But oh no. You don’t just get to stop being the marching band’s conductor once they go out of the office. You still have to think about conducting the band, even when it’s not there. Them’s the rules!

But OK it’s quieter and you can think about the band, whilst working. As long as the written instructions come on time. Because if they don’t, you’re going to have to work, ignore, conduct as before.

But you do it.

Because you’re a stay at home/work at home mother.

Or a Marching Band Conductor – whichever you prefer.

Am I boring you?

20/01/2014 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

I don’t know if any of you guessed this, but I very rarely plan my posts. I sit down on a Monday (or whenever I’m able at the moment) and wait to be inspired. I may process a few things in my head the night before and occasionally, when I’ve unexpectedly found myself with a few quiet minutes I might jot some lines down by hand, but I honest to goodness never write like we were taught at school – rough draft, revise, revise again, final draft, check, hand in. But then I never wrote anything like that at school either. Just ask my English teachers!

Its not always easy to know what to write about. I can have a list of things I think might make good posts in my head, or scribbled in my notebook, but sometimes when I sit down to write, none of them feels right. I originally wanted to use this as a space to discover more about me as a parent by reflecting on things I’ve learnt as I’ve gone along. And I really love writing my parenting posts. I’ve had so much positive feedback about them. But some weeks, I just don’t feel I’ve learnt anything “new” or different enough to write about. Some weeks life just confirms what I already thought. Or a subject that I’ve dealt with before comes up again. And I think that’s always going to be the case. Some weeks I’ll learn massive life lessons, other weeks we’ll bimble along, just doing what we do.

This week has been one of those weeks. We went back to our Toddler Groups. My main buggy went mouldy so I got a new one. We played with playdoh and cars and books. Friends came to visit. He was snotty. Then he was sick for a day. It was just a fairly average week. Nothing to get too excited about. I remember having weeks like that at work. Not boring as such – just normal.

So for those who think those who parent in place of paid work have so much more fun – yeah sometimes you’re right! But then sometimes you’re wrong. Sure I get to watch Despicable Me with lunch. But I get to watch it every day. Yes I get to go to the park and the leisure centre with him. But I get to stand around in the cold, pushing the swings for hours or wiping snot and dirt off him and me. Our lives can be just as mundane as they can be exciting.

But then I think this is OK. Its OK to be a bit boring as long as you’re happy and I know I am much happier than I was a year ago. I don’t feel like I’m missing out so much if I’m not doing something. A couple of weeks ago various things conspired to keep us at home for four days in a row. And it was fine. I wasn’t climbing the walls and shouting for help through the letterbox at passersby like I would have been a year ago. I was glad to go out when I did, but until then, it was all good.

The other day a friend asked me how I dealt with the particularly stressful (for us) transition from weaning to feeding. I told her, but said (without thinking) that I was a very different person then. I had to mentally stop and check myself. Was I? Am I so different? And I think I am. And I think that’s to do with contentment. I spent the first year of Oscar life thinking everything should be all singing all dancing and getting disappointed when it wasn’t. I’m much happier with the ordinary, the everyday than I can ever remember being in my life.

So yeah, sometimes I might struggle to know what to write and it wont just come to me every week. That’s OK. It might mean nothing exciting or truly life changing has happened recently. But it also means nothing awful has happened this week either. And for that I’m grateful.

Come here often?

23/09/2013 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

When I found out I was pregnant, one of the first things I did (apart from scream!) was to join our local NCT branch and register for their Antenatal course. Not because I wanted to do their course over any other particularly, but because although I’d lived in Surrey for 6 months at this point, I really didn’t know anyone in the area, especially not other mothers (excepting the wonderful Sarah Ord who was a life saver before I had Oscar and has continued to be ever since).

I was supremely lucky with my NCT group. I know I was. There were nine couples and with one exception we have all stayed in close contact since meeting in our third trimesters. The ladies were there when he wouldn’t sleep, they were there when he wouldn’t eat, they practically saved our lives when they took us places in their cars (I don’t drive due to my epilepsy) I couldn’t have hoped for a more friendly, supportive and caring bunch and I thank my lucky stars for them regularly.

But when our children started to near a year old, most of the ladies went back to work. Of course they did, I was expecting to myself. But I didn’t. Most of the girls were going back part time and Friday was the most common day off so we moved our meet up to a Friday morning. But I could suddenly see a time looming when I wouldn’t be seeing my lovely NCT friends throughout the week anymore. It was awful. But what could I do? Stay at home moping, waiting in until Friday to go out? I knew I had to take action.

I looked on the internet for suggestions. babycenter.com had a whole article about how to meet other “mommy’s”. Some of the advice was good, but carrying a “mommy card” (a business card with my contact details on it) to give to other mothers when out at the park just sounded bizarre. So much of the advice sounded like dating advice, it may as well have been called, “How to pick up other Moms”. I laughed.

But they were right in some respects. Making new friends as an adult is hard. Most of the friends I had in London were not from London. They were people I had a connection to via my home town in Devon. Most of my close friends were and still are living in Devon. For a friendly type, I’d made very few real friends in my eleven years in the Big Smoke. The NCT group offered me a ready made solution, but how was I going to move beyond that?

What I didn’t reckon with was the ice breaking properties of a small child. Oscar has made more friends for me than I ever managed myself in my whole adult life. The groups I attended for him as a wee tot were almost more about me than him. Strike that. On reflection I think there were almost entirely about me. Getting me out and about and meeting new people. Now he’s older and we go to Toddler Groups that are obviously a bit more about him and what he’s doing (learning through play, socialising etc). But you know what I still think they’re useful for me. I’ve met some great characters at these groups.

I had a lunch date with one of them this past week. We met initially through a webpage www.netmums.com that have a section called MeetAMum. It could almost be construed as mummy dating and in fact I have been on several mummy dates. When I had two “dates” in one week my friend Emma laughed and said I was a mummy tart! ;-). Hayley was new to the area and I offered to meet her to show her round. As it turned out she came to one of our toddler groups and we started chatting. Boom!! New friend made.

I’m not saying it’s easy. You really have to push yourself out there. Confidence is not always at its highest after having a baby. A new mum worries about everything. But I found the more I went out, the more Oscar did the hardest part for me. Before I knew it a “pop” to Tesco this Tuesday took an hour as I had to stop to chat to at least three different people I knew through the boy.

I never did the whole dating thing. Ben was only my second ever boyfriend and we’ve been together since we were 19. But I understand that in dating, as with making friends the same rings true. Faint heart never won fair maid. I must have a bold heart. I’ve met me some wonderfully fair maids.

Money, money, money…

02/09/2013 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

So we had a baby back in 2012 (Oscar, he’s 17 months and awesome!). We’d be married nearly 4 years and together for nearly 14 and he was totally planned. But what I didn’t plan for, rather naively, was the financial impact this baby would have on our lives. I’m not talking about the cost of nappies or putting him through University (although holy crap how do we do that!??!). I’m talking about something much more fundamental and that was my capacity to earn.

I absolutely expected to go back to work. I didn’t loooooove my job, but I liked it enough, it was in a sector I wanted to be in and I was doing OK (having been promoted twice in a year). I fully expected to go back once my year of maternity leave was finished. The organisation had a generous maternity package and I saved enough to cover me through the three months at the end of my leave which would be unpaid. I was OK.

However when we started to look into childcare in the local area I was horrified to find out just how expensive it was. I wasn’t on great money (slightly under the national average), but it wasn’t bad. However all of this would be swallowed by childcare fees. When I added to that travelling costs and taxes I found that, even if I went back full-time, I would be paying out more than I earnt per month, without even contributing to the household costs in any way. I was horrified.

We looked at the numbers and realised we could afford for me not to work, but we couldn’t afford for me to continue working in my current role. I knew I should feel grateful. So many people said they wished they were in my position (at least to my face). But for me the thought of giving up any form of financial independence left me feeling slightly nauseous! I just didn’t see it coming and with all the fuss this government makes about “getting people back into work”, how could this even be the case? I was and still am baffled!

So these were the circumstances I found myself in and the circumstances that I have now had to accept. Don’t get me wrong I have days when I absolutely love not having to leave Oscar and days where I feel I’m doing a real bang up job. But there are also days I feel completely isolated and guilty and lacking in any kind of control. I have had my own source of income, one way or another since I was 13 years old. Moving away from that and living a very different life has been harder than I ever anticipated.

But people to do it all the time, some for many years. They seem happy enough. Are they? Maybe I should ask them how they do it and whether they ever felt the same kind of shame I do not contributing and if not how come? Seriously. I’d love to know how to live this life, without feeling guilty all the time.

Or as I said in another post, maybe I just need to look harder for another job. One that pays enough to make it worthwhile, even if it’s only just worthwhile.

I’m not running down what I’m doing. I’m proud of the care I’m able to give my son. A friend said to me the other day “you’re very brave to do this, I don’t think I could do it!”. I don’t feel particularly brave, but it was nice of her to say. I just have to figure out how to move forward in a way that’s best for all of us. And I guess that’s really the biggest change I’ve had to make.