– Guest post from working mum, journalist and author Lucy Tobin from mum blog Run Out of Womb –
Most parents can’t imagine bringing up a baby without their smartphone. There to fill time during the 3am feeds; there to Google ‘is this poo normal coloured?’; there to immortalise those cute smiles/conversations/tantrums on camera.
But as a part-time working mum (and whilst I sometimes worry that my toddler’s first drawing of me could feature me clutching my iThing), I’m also really grateful for what it allows me to do: combine work – as a newspaper journalist – and bringing up my Tiny Man, without spending too many hours apart from him.
There are set chunks of the day where he’s looked after. When I work from 7ish ‘til our just-before lunchtime deadline three days a week, there’s no way I could be interviewing a CEO or trying to extrapolate meaning from corporate gobbledegook financial statements with my Tiny Man simultaneously demanding a butterfly be made of Duplo.
But come lunchtime, I can say thank you to my brilliant mama and mother-in-law and get back to my small boss: working on those Duplo birds or heading off to messy play sessions, parks and room-tents, whilst using my iPhone to check in with contacts, follow up stories, and secure interviews all day long.
As a working mum, of course I experience the perennial guilt that all parents feel. When you’re email-checking rather than praising a frankly-brilliant train creation. Or parking the car for an impromptu telephone interview, whilst passing a placatory rice cake back to the impatient car seat-inhabitant…
But I try to allay that with the knowledge that we’re both very lucky to spend so much time together. Plus, I (and our mortgage) need me to work too.
So, my average working mother afternoon is invariably a combination of play time with email sessions chucked in – until bath and bedtime rolls around (his, not mine, as I’m back at the laptop researching, writing and interviewing until late).
Sure, it’s knackering. But I feel so grateful to my work for being so flexible, and privileged to be able to spend so much time with my happy, hilarious tiny man (oh, and all those nappies…).
And that’s always worth the massive eye bags and mainlining caffeine…Right?!
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I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s guest post from my favourite journalist and working mum blogger Lucy from the excellent Run Out of Womb. Do go check out her previous posts, where she writes about the funny side of baby life, honest reviews and things to make you laugh…as you might have guessed, I’m a big fan! If that’s not enough, you can also find her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
So, are you a working mum (or dad) too? How do you manage the demands of life, work and parenthood? What other challenges do you face on a daily basis? As always, we’d love to hear from you, so please do share your stories in the comments section below.
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