Being a modern Mum

At coffee group today, the question of returning to work came up. A lot of our babies are older now, and some Mum's are returning to work, or at least planning their return.

I don't know about everyone else, but I was hugely idealistic about returning to the workforce before I had Vivi. I had it all planned out - I would take nine months maternity leave which would be AMPLE time before returning to work and putting Vivi in daycare. Nice and easy. Hell, I'd even been to some daycares near work and had put her name down on the waiting list.

Then I became a Mum, and Tim and I became parents.

We immersed ourselves in the strange, scary, and at times overwhelming world of parenthood for the first couple of months. We watched as our old life was stripped away, and adjusted to inhabiting a world with a little baby. We went through the trials that everyone faces: sleep deprivation, feeding issues - all the anxiety and worry that comes with the territory of being a new parent. Not to mention the relationship adjustments that inevitably have to be made. Suddenly, you don't have oodles of time up your sleeve. You are plunged into a world where EVERYTHING revolves around your baby. Can you chill out and watch a DVD together? only if your baby is asleep. Can you head out for the day to meet up with friends? only if you pack what feels like the entire car, and then make sure you will be in a situation where you will be able to put your baby down to sleep wherever it is that you're going.

Day to day life at the beginning is very much like 'groundhog day'. You gradually fall into a routine of caring for your baby, whatever that might involve. With us it is a simple routine of waking Vivi at 7am, giving her her medication, feeding her, giving her a kick around on her playmat, and then putting her to bed for a nap. In between these times there is the inevitable mountain of laundy and pile of dishes to navigate, emails to check, other random housework that needs to be done, and planning for outings that will take place that day. The days are busy, contrary to what anyone might think - just because you are at home all day does not mean that you're sitting around twiddling your thumbs or finding time for hour long pilates workouts! Being a Mum is a fulltime job in itself.

Then there is the inevitable (for some) return to the workplace.

Firstly, I would just like to point out that I am grateful that I was able to take off nine months. I know plently of other people who have had to go back to work much sooner than that.

What is foremost on my mind at the moment is that of balancing two very different roles: that of being a Mother, and a working woman.

Like of my friends in our coffee group pointed out today 'they just expect you to go back to work and carry on as normal, as though nothing has changed'. That everything will carry on as normal. I would like to know how you are meant to 'carry on as normal' when you are faced with the prospect of not only having to balance work and home life, but work, home life, and the needs of your baby. 'Carrying on as normal' involves you learning how to be everything to everyone, do don many differnet roles throughout the day. Which one are you going to prioritise over the other?

For me, being a Mother will always come first. No question about it.

I really wish I did not have to return to work. I love my job, but I love my daughter and family more. I hate the idea of leaving her in daycare all day long while I spend time elsewhere. I feel so sad when I think of all the hours that I won't be with her. What will I be missing out on? will I be at work when she is learning to crawl, taking her first steps, speaking her first word? I wish that it was possible to take more time off, but I know that it's not going to make going back to work any easier in the long term. It'll still be just as hard.

So a question I have is that why should there be the need (or expectation) for women to go back to work at all? surely being a Mother is a full time job in itself, and should be recognised as being a worthwhile occupation. I feel as though these days women are expected to do it all (and not complain). You're expected to raise a child, be a loving partner, run a household, hold down a job........ I would like to know where is the time for yourself amidst all that? why can't being a Mother be enough, if that's what you want to do?

12:51pm, 22nd February 2011

Tuesday 22nd February, 2011 is a date that will be fixed in my mind forever. It was the day in which much of my hometown was destroyed.

Tim and I had just arrived home with Vivi. It was around 2:30pm in the afternoon. We got inside and I flicked on the radio as usual, hearing snippets of 'major earthquake, devestation.....' but not really registering, thinking that it must have been something that had happened overseas. I opened my laptop and brought up the 'stuff' website, to see what had been happening in the world that day. That's when I saw the headline that made my blood run cold: 'Major earthquake in Christchurch - hundreds injured'.

My hands shook as I dialed my Dad's cellphone number. No answer. I hastily dialed Mum's cellphone -it went straight to voicemail. All the while images were flooding through my mind - devestated buildings, people injured, many feared dead. I knew Mum and Dad would have been at work in the CBD that day and I feared the worst. I rang their home number only to find that it rung twice then stopped ringing. Finally, in desperation I rang my Brother. They're ok, he reassured me, they had managed to make it out of the CBD and were at home. Relief was immediate, but I still needed to talk to them, just to make sure. I was also relieved to hear that our 88 year old Grandad was ok, and around at Mum and Dad's place.

We spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening at my sister's house, staring in disbelief at the images that flickered across the TV screen on the special news bulletin - injured people, devestated buildings, liquifaction pouring up through the streets, rescue teams working valiently to free those trapped in buildings. How could this be happening? I managed a brief phone call to my Dad on his cellphone but we weren't able to speak for long due to their power not being on. Words cannot describe how upset I felt when I heard to him refer to the earthquake as the 'most frightening experience of my life'. It turns out that Dad was at work in town at the time, opposite South City mall. He managed to get out of the building after the quake struck, and then ran through town to Mum's building as he hadn't been able to get in touch with her. No doubt he saw some truly awful things in town that afternoon as he ran through the devestated streets. Days later Mum told me about the terror she felt as she made her way out of her building that day - from the 5th floor down the stairwell, only to find when they got to the bottom of the building that they were trapped as the automatic doors were locked shut. Luckily, they managed to escape through a small window that someone was able to smash.

As I type these words the death toll from Tuesday's earthquake stands at 159 and will no doubt rise much higher. So many people have lost their lives. We are lucky as a family - no one hurt or killed, yet I can't help but think about the other families who have lost loved ones in such tragic circumstances. Especially tragic (for me) was hearing about the two little babies that had passed away as a result of the earthquake - a nine month old and a five month old. I find my eyes welling up with tears when I look into Vivi's smiling face and think of these young babies whose life was all too brief.

This earthquake has affected me deeply. I have been so worried about my family (although I was able to fly Mum and Grandad up to Wellington on Friday, although not Dad unfortunatley as he had to stay put due to being overloaded with work). I feel so helpless hearing the despair in their voices, knowing that there is little I can do from here. Their lives have been changed forever. They will return tomorrow to a devestated city and will start to begin rebuilding their lives. In the meantime, I am trying to keep the anxiety that this could happen again, at bay. I wish with all my heart that they were able to get out of Christchurch for good.