Careers, kids and having it all

“I have never met a woman, or man, who stated emphatically, "Yes, I have it all.'" Because no matter what any of us has—and how grateful we are for what we have—no one has it all.” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook CEO

If Sheryl Sandberg’s book had come out two years ago I might be in a different place by now. It’s the story I’ve been searching for since I had my first child. It doesn’t have the answers but it reassures me that other people are asking the same questions.

A year ago today I left my middle-management, nicely pensioned, bloody hard work but very inspiring local government job. I’d worked for someone else since I graduated at 21 and I was giving it all up to go it alone.

When I handed in my notice three months and one week earlier, everyone had seen the signs and guessed it was coming. They knew I was struggling to juggle work, two young children and a husband whose own career was taking off. The tears gave me away.

We’d had a tough few months with two small children timing their chicken pox and childhood bugs perfectly with our peaks in workload. So after pulling too many all-nighters working (and even more all-nighters awake with a young child), I knew that something had to give.

He’d support whatever decision I made (for me or him), but knew I could be the only one to make it.

For the first time in my life I decided my career would take a back seat, I had to focus on family. It’s the hardest decision I’ve ever made. I'm lucky to have had a choice, even if it wasn't the choice I wanted to make.

When I resigned I got lots of “I hear you’re leaving to spend more time with your children, oh that’s lovely.” No! That’s not why I left. This is why;

• Because I value my career, I loved my job and I wanted to be the best I could be
• Because having children made it impossible to live up to my own expectations of what I could achieve in work

• Because I was failing. My career was on hold. Being a mother was holding me back

I would rather stop doing the job, than just do it to a satisfactory level. I no longer had the energy to be the person I wanted to be. Because you can’t have it all.

So I resigned from my proper job and went freelance. I spent the first three months with a huge hole in my heart (that's no exaggeration). Missing my colleagues, the work, even missing the commute – that valuable two hours a day alone with just a radio or book for company.

But as the work picked up I started opening my eyes and living again. One year on I’m back to working almost the same hours I did before  - but now I can bill for it! If I want a day off, I take it and more often than not I’m doing the school run.

It isn’t perfect. I’m suited to working in big teams, in big organisations and I miss my team, local government and all the challenges it brings. But I’ve stopped trying to have it all and I’m happier for it. I can’t have the career I want and be a mother at the same time.

But I do have one regret. That I wasn’t strong enough to believe that I could continue in my job and be a mother at the same time. That I didn’t have the confidence to say "right, off on the school run” with all the attitude and self-assurance of a man in my position.

I still wonder why it's so hard for many people to understand that women can love their jobs as much as they love their children. Working makes me happy and being happy makes me a better mother. I shouldn't be afraid to say that. But this is still a tough blog post to write.

And that’s where women like Sheryl Sandberg come in.

“Our culture needs to find a robust image of female success that is first, not male, and second, not a white woman on the phone, holding a crying baby,” 

what success looks like to me

 

 

 

Star Wars and sunglasses - the Gallery

I've got a son and a daughter. In my ideal world they'd indulge in non gender-specific play and my daughter would be as happy playing Star Wars as my son would be dressing up.

Life doesn't always work out that way. Here, dear reader, is my reality.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words........... :-)

This post is part of The Gallery, a weekly photo link up on the Sticky Fingers Blog.

History repeats itself

I promised myself I wouldn't brainwash my children the way my Dad brainwashed us. It was all Man Utd and the Beatles. If we weren't watching football we were singing along to his guitar.

I want my children to make their own choices about football teams and music. I want them to support the local team through highs and lows. Rugby even (!).

To be fair to my Dad, United were in the old second division when I was born and we used to sit in crowds of twenty-odd thousand. They were our nearest major team. Ish.

But still,  I want my kids to find their own way. Find their own sport. Support the underdog.

Yet last weekend I found myself here, with my big sister (also brainwashed from a young age), my son and her two boys.

History repeating itself.

The Gallery - Walks with kids in Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire. A county full of places to walk, ramble or hike.

I could dedicate a whole blog to Gloucestershire walks (is anyone doing that?) but for this post I'll concentrate on walking with kids. It's the thing we do most because it's the easiest, they just run free in a safe environment and get to make their own fun.

Here are my top 4 places to walk with kids - within spitting distance of my house in the South Cotswolds. 

If you go on them I expect you to return wet or muddy, or both. Otherwise, what was the point?

Coaley Peak - FREE 

A council run picnic site on the Cotswold escarpment with views across the River Severn to Wales and the Forest of Dean.

Windy, exposed and spacious, with gliders taking off above you and paragliders jumping for their lives as you walk.  Kids can run about, fly a kite, play football or rugby, or just enjoy the open space and explore the woods. And you know when the ice cream van is there 'cos he puts a sign on the road.

Woodchester Park Play Trail - FREE (£1 to park if not NT members)

This National Trust park has 3 set trails through woodland and the shortest one (about a mile) is great for kids.

With a zip wire, rope swings, see-saws and plenty of places to climb, if you take a picnic to keep their energy up, you can easily spend three hours here.

It's good for parents too, although you shouldn't go on the zip wire in a summer dress.

;-)

Dursley Sculpture Trail - FREE

Not as glamourous as its Forest of Dean equivalent but loads of fun all the same.

It's a woodland walk which is good enough for kids, but with interesting sculptures to spot as you go - in the trees and on the ground. Most of the trail is suitable for pushchairs and it's located on Stinchcombe Hill which is also a great place to walk - with views across seven counties on a good day.

Westonbirt Arboretum

£4-£8 for adults. Under 5s free. Annual Membership around £30.

The stunning National Arboretum near Tetbury is split into two parts (the old and new) with a restaurant, cafe and play area. The old arboretum is flat with tracks suitable for pushchairs (and wheelchairs) and lots of places to explore for kids.

Great in hot sunshine because there's plenty of shade but also great in the rain because there's lots of shelter. Full of muddy puddles and although bikes aren't allowed - little ones with stabilisers are. One of my favourite places to be, all year round. Annual membership is brilliant value.


This was posted as part of The Gallery on the Sticky Fingers Blog. Click here to view more posts.

The Gallery - RED moments

RED.

There are times when your kids make you laugh out loud. These two pictures are from the last few days.

1) My two year old in what she calls her wet suit, on a slide (Sunday)

2) And one I found this morning as I switched on my laptop to start work. (I wasn't going to bother with this blog post until I saw this). The four year old's idea of a joke - my new desktop image.

(Red is also the colour of the Chancellor's Budget Box (well, Gladstone's) but let's not talk about that)

This is in response to Red on the Gallery, click the icon to see posts from others.

About that six day warning...

Last week I wrote a post about the unrealistic expectations and laziness of men when it comes to leaving the house. You can read it here. One male blogger, incensed by my nonsense, sent me this response. Read it and weep.

Dear Wife,

Last Sunday you told me that we would be going to your Sister’s house this Saturday, for lunch. I grunted my acknowledgement and forgot about it instantly.

On Monday, you mentioned that we would go for a walk in the woods while we were at your Sister’s at the weekend. I filed that under ‘that’ll-be-nice’ and gave it no further thought. We only need legs to go for a walk and I have two of those. I considered myself ready for the challenge.

On Tuesday, you said how excited you were about going to your Sister’s at the weekend and I distinctly remember asking what day we were going, why we were going and what we were going to do while we were there. You did a special womanly sigh and informed me that we were going on Saturday, for a walk and for lunch. “What time will lunch be?” I asked, “Lunch time, or later?” It’s important to know the difference between a ‘meal’ which can be served at any time, and ‘lunch’, which should be at 12 O’clock. I’m very set on this detail.  “Lunch” you replied.

On Wednesday you asked me what time we needed to set off in order to get to your Sister’s for lunch on Saturday. I remember thinking to myself that this was a remarkably strange question considering that I didn’t even know we were going to your Sister’s, not to mention the fact that we have both lived in the same respective houses for at least six years and we have visited them at least four times a year ever since. Surely by now you should have got the hang of how long it takes? We don’t even use the sat-nav anymore. “Half past ten,” I say, “eleven at the latest if we are to get there in time for lunch.”

On Thursday, you had a day off talking specifically about your Sister but instead spent an hour banging on about how you don’t have anything nice to wear at the weekend, and the general lacking in your ridiculously over-stuffed wardrobe at the moment. I told you that fourteen different outfit combinations looked lovely on you but no actual decisions were made.

On Friday, you pointed out that if we were to leave the house for half past ten the next morning, then we was really going to have to get on with it when we got up. You mooted the idea of setting an alarm but shelved it in favour of a gamble that the kids would wake us instead. I reminded you how long it always takes you to get ready and that we really did need to be away in time because your Sister’s kids would eat all the sausage rolls again, if we were late. You nodded in agreement – that particularly cold and food depleted visit has never actually been forgotten nor forgiven.

For six days you have nagged me about this visit. For six days you have been planning it.

So why is it, love, that with twenty minutes to go you are still sat in your PJ’s with your nose deep in Twitter and need me to tell you to get ready?

An hour ago I mumbled that perhaps you could possibly have a shower first, on account of how much faffing this always entails, and you shrugged me off. I looked over at the kids half an hour ago and I thought you were leaving it a bit late to get them ready. I shook my head in disbelief at your apparent lack of thought. 

It only takes me five minutes to wash my pits, sack & crack in the shower (I’m nothing if not thorough), five minutes to dry and throw on the closest pair of trousers and shirt to the end of the rail, and another five minutes to follow you around as you use your special female Voodoo magic to locate my otherwise lost phone, keys, socks and sunglasses.

Fifteen minutes – that’s all it takes me to be ready! I’m ready with five minutes to spare and where are you? Upstairs, messing about with the kids now that you’ve finally noticed they aren’t ready.

Will you please get a move on? Those greedy nephews of yours will be tucking into the garlic bread soon.

Love you

Husband x

My Shadow - National Poetry Day

It's National Poetry Day today.

I'm a bit late posting this, but here's the poem that reminds me most of my childhood. It has to be read in a North Wales accent, because my Dad always read this to me.

My 4 year old son loves it too. It's from the book A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. Dated but still beautiful. (I tend to replace 'nursie' with mummy!)

My Shadow 

 

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

 

Stop child abusers using Twitter - Sunday Mirror campaign

As a twitter user and a parent, I've signed this petition. Click through, sign up and please RT

Follow this link

The Sunday Mirror is running a campaign calling on Twitter to clean up its site and prevent paedophiles using it as an open platform to trade child abuse images, videos and information.

For every image that is viewed and exchanged on Twitter a child is being abused so your support is crucial to make sure this stops NOW.

Could you help us by retweeting this link and ask your followers to open the link and sign our petition, then retweet it to their followers.

#sundaymirror

Staying-in-bed Olympics

There’s no moving me, I won’t be beaten. We’re competing in the ‘staying-in-bed’ Olympics and I’m going for gold.

You thought your luck was in when I reacted first to the cries, didn’t you?

A quick glance at the clock, 5.45am, on a Saturday. You roll over to face the wall as you hear me talking calmly, hushed, my reassuring tones soothing the baby. You’re hoping for one of two things; I get her back to sleep and return to spoon you back into slumber; or I’ll take her downstairs, out of earshot and play with her quietly until the 4 year old whirlwind races in to wake you up.

But I’m on to you. There’s no way this baby is going back to sleep and there’s no way I’m getting up. So let the games begin.

I climb back into bed, baby wrapped tightly in my arms and soothe her “shh” stroking her gently, urging her to close her eyes. Just 30 more minutes, please.  I close my eyes tightly and pray silently.

She wriggles, she kicks, she’s up in a second. Sitting, shouting, pulling my hair, fingers in my eyes. I keep them closed as tight as I can, ignore the fingers poking me, the nails scratching my cheeks. I know that if I persevere she’ll get bored, she’ll move away to the other side of the bed. To Daddy.

A few more minutes and she’s gone. Shouts of “DA, DA, DA” ring through the air and I hear you groan. “You get up” you say. I ignore you, pretend I’m sleeping.  I know you are weak. I know you can’t take the ear-pulling, elbowing and slobber sliding down your cheek. The snot being rubbed into your face.

We both know we’re in competition, we both know we’re playing the same game. We both know I’m going to win.

If I wanted to get up, I’d have jumped out of bed by now and you know it. This is all about staying power, will power, the power to resist, the ability to ignore the grating sound of a child now starting to whinge.

Just a few more seconds and I’m there.

“God, I’ll get up then” I hear you complain as you spring out of bed. I smile silently in my sleep.

Victory is mine (until tomorrow).

They don't make 'em like they used to

Onions.

I realised this weekend that onions don’t make me cry anymore and they haven’t done for years.

Magazines, newspaper columns, Bettaware catalogues all used to be full of magic ways to stop the flow of tears as you chopped. A spoon or a piece of brown bread in your mouth. But now, no matter how or when I chop them, they just don’t make me cry. Is it the onions or is it me?

I fear it’s me. These days I can only cry at things related to children. Lost children, found children, happy children, sad children, abused children, amused children. From birth to babies, tots to teens. Children make my eyes water.

I used to cry at sport. Or ER. Or the theme-tune to West Wing. Or anything to do with Aidan in SATC.

Now it’s just babies and children.

Onions haven’t changed, but they don’t make me like they used to.

A Mother's Guilt

I seem to be in permanent state of guilt. I’m guilty. I suffer from guiltiness.

I have been feeling this way since 16 May 2008. I can pin-point it to the birth of my first child.

 

No one warned me that being a mother meant living a life plagued with guilt. They told me of the joy, the closeness, the fulfilment, even the pain. But they failed to mention the guilt.

Guilty for that cheeky coffee you have when they’re asleep (and you should be cleaning).

Guilty for going to work ‘for a break’.

Guilty for leaving work early, but picking them up from nursery late (I had some shopping to do).

Guilty for leaving work at all.

Guilty for leaving your husband in charge – just the once.

Guilty for staying on for an after work drink.

Guilty for lying in bed for an extra half hour.

Guilty for letting them watch TV while you have a shower.

Guilty for the fight that’s just broken out because I’ve been ignoring them whilst I browse through facebook.

Guilty for breathing.

We have no reason to be guilty, no one is making us feel guilty, for some reason it’s something we like to do to ourselves. Like no sleep, a fat belly and stretch marks aren’t punishment enough?

We are mothers. We are guilty. As charged.

Audio books and music reviews for under 5s

I've posted a new review. It's a list of my favourite audio books and music CDs for Under 5s.
Click on the 'Review' tab above.

On being Welsh

I was born and bred in Wales and I’m intensely proud. I grew up singing in Eisteddfods, writing poetry and prose and performing choral recitals at the Urdd. I cry every time I hear the national anthem. I am Welsh and I am proud.

My children are English and will be brought up here. Yet somehow I think they’ll never feel pride for their country, in the same way that I feel so overwhelmed to be part of mine. In England you don’t teach your kids to be proud of their heritage. You don’t teach them about your culture and why you are who you are. But you should. And I will.

They say that to be born Welsh is to be born with music in your heart and poetry in your soul. If you ever wondered where that came from, here’s the full poem. On today of all days – when Wales showed what a proud nation they are in the Rugby World Cup – this will probably make you cry.


In Passing by Brian Harris

To be born in Wales,
Not with a silver spoon in your mouth,
But, with music in your blood
And with poetry in your soul,
Is a privilege indeed.

Your inheritance is a land of Legend,
Of love and contrast.
A land of beauty so bright it burns the eyes.
Of ugliness that scars the Spirit
As the Earth.

Wales is an old land with wounds
That weep in hills.
They wept before in the bodies of men
And in the hearts of women
And time will never heal them.

The stigmata of sorrow,
Of pain and poverty,
Of lonely crucifixion in the dark,
Remain our lives to feed.

This Land of our Fathers was built on coal.
Its rivers of mingled blood and sweat
Have forever darkened it,
Relieved only by death.

We are a sad people.
Our sadness being wrapped in harps and music
And praise to God,
For the lovely, yearning light
That feeds the Spirit as well as the eyes.

The Name Game

For me, the most stressful part of having children, was naming them. Yep, it caused me more worry than pregnancy, birth, lack of sleep and empty bank accounts.

Everything else is short-lived, the pain of birth, the sleep-free first weeks. But a name lasts forever. And for a child born these days, it’s likely to be with them for 100 years (and thus feature in a telegram from the Queen, unless of course we’re a republic by then)

I envy anyone who has the confidence and self-assurance to just pick a name, stick with it and not worry about what it means and what ‘people will think’. (I think this state of mind is reserved solely for celebrities.)

When you’re naming a child, there’s a lot to consider. You can’t just give them the name you want, because this isn’t about you, it’s about shaping somebody else’s life. Or am I the only fool who feels the weight of this responsibility so heavily that it kept me awake at night?

So this is what you do. You find a name, picture your child with it, then hit it with the checklist. The ultimate naming test:
• First search the name on the Office for National Statistics’ database – they even do regional breakdowns, so a common name in the north, might be rare and unusual in the south.
• Apply the celeb test. Have any celebs got this name and do I like them? Have they used it for their kids, and, how do I feel about that?
• Next you think about all the people you’ve met with that name, are they fat/thin, weak/strong, happy/sad, funny/serious, successful/disastrous. I know everyone does this test.
• Is it easy for a child to spell? (three letters, should be a doddle) and can other people spell it (already having a problem with Huw here in the Shire)
• Can people pronounce it?
• Does it go with their surname? (who thought Neville Neville was a good idea??)
• Is it easy to make fun of? Will their initials spell anything rude or mean something else? (CIA, DIC…..)

I also found some great advice online…..which I was kind of following anyway, that you should apply the three golden rules of brand-naming to children’s names:
1. don’t tell people what you are thinking of calling your baby.
2. Choose a name for your target audience as opposed to yourself.
3. Wait till you meet the baby before you choose the name. In the corporate world it would be like naming a company before you know what personality you want to give it.

So I did all of this and thought I’d stick with my original favourite ‘Huw’ – love the name, strong, short, welsh. But even then, the system wasn’t fool proof.

Huw isn’t that easy to spell for a boy growing up in England and I’ve since found out, really hard for other kids to pronounce (Cue, Phew, You, Who). It can also cause major confusion in conversation…. ‘That’s Huw… who me? No Huw…who me?’ (Just ask my cousin Maree)

Anyway, I’ve got two kids, they’ve both got names *relief* but I’m STILL worrying. People call Huw ‘Phew’ and Eve ‘Evie’. Neither of them appears on the list of the names most likely to get into Oxbridge. Oh and every successful female in Hollywood I read about now seems to be called Jennifer – Aniston, Alba, Garner, Lopez. So cross famous actor out too. Damn.

So if you are pregnant and still can’t decide on your name….you might just want to read this article....
HAPPY NAMING!

picture shows print of Eve's name, bought at one fine day