This time last year I was preparing to start my maternity leave and was regaling colleagues with grand plans for my time off. I was building a cabin at the bottom of my garden to be the new playroom myself and Small – picture her sat playing quietly and happily on the floor (for hours I might add) while I got on with my crafting activities, writing about our wonderful time together and the amazing projects I was not only be starting but, more importantly, completing!
From this new base of operations (and with all the spare time I would have now I wasn’t working) I planned to establish a wedding decoration hire business showcasing all the beautiful items we had made a couple of years before (and additions I would make to the collection in all this free time). I dismissed my coffee buddy’s attempts to manage my expectations of parenthood and what was likely to be achievable during mat leave, in my mind I was pretty efficient and a great manager of work-life balance. Loads of women have built successful businesses during maternity leave and I was going to be among them – this time next year I was going to be a successful self-employed mum who wouldn’t be facing the prospect of going back to work!!!
What have I learnt?
- Any woman who has built a business with a baby in tow is a goddess of enterprise and independence. I am not kidding. I really thought I was pretty good at managing time, tasks, work/home and all that jazz. I was creating activity logs for my baby on day 1 of mat leave (4 weeks before due date and 6 weeks before she decided to arrive). I was going to track every nappy, feed, nap, active period, night-time sleep and milestones in a beautifully maintained (and colour-coded) journal that would go everywhere with me and enable me to trend her patterns. In reality I didn’t even fill in the first day! I found an app that would time my feeds given my phone was the only thing other than the baby that was always within reach and manageable one-handed and that was it. Everything else was just lucky if it happened!
- Being a full-time parent is the most intense job you will ever encounter. It does not matter how organised you are, the first few months are about survival. After that you have to come to terms with living in a world dominated by a reliably inconsistent tyrant. As my best friend told me, life with kids is just 1 big guessing game, where the right answer yesterday is the wrong answer today! Also little people need you all the time, even going to the loo is nearly impossible… I found only once Small could sit up at 5 months could we really begin to stop hovering in her vicinity and relax into enjoying parenting.
- Finding time to do your own thing is really important, but sometimes it is difficult (or impossible) to achieve. Around the time Small started sitting independently, she finally started to take a bottle (after a battle of wills that began when she was 8 weeks old). At this point I finally had the confidence to leave the house on my own. Small was a boob girl and liked to spend most of her time there, meaning any kind of independence was practically non-existent. Accepting this state of affairs was very hard and a major bump in my early motherhood rollercoaster.
- Crafting could be possible but it had to start small and in non-complex projects that could easily be put down without any difficulty finding my place. But more importantly, completing a project was the best feeling in the world.
- It took me nearly a year from when my cabin was built to fully move in! Ironically I spent week 38 of my pregnancy white-washing my safe haven before I moved in the craft emporium I had been accruing over years of hoarding. I finally finished moving in when Small was 7 months. I then spent the hours of free time I snatched reorganising my materials and projects (not crafting). The first item crafted in the cabin was when Charlotte of Flying Colours Pottery visited to paint the footprints of Small and her friends, the weekend she turned 10 months!
When I look back at how I started motherhood I see a glowing preggo (I am one of those hated people who had a wonderful pregnancy) full of dreams, who then shattered to pieces after the birth of our precious Small, and gradually put herself back together piece by piece. I underestimated what being a parent entailed, but I also underestimated just how powerless you are when nature dictates your path. But it doesn’t really matter because the gift I was granted makes everything worthwhile.
