Back to work after babies… to be or not to be? Or how to be?

This is hardly stop-the-presses material, but, did you know, having babies puts a serious hole in your career path?

I knew this, of course. The same way you know that babies will change your life forever. That babies mean sleepless nights. That kids are expensive, they test relationships, they test your own limits, they bring great joy and introduce you to entirely new parts of yourself.

We all know this stuff. And then we live it. And then we really know.

Right now I am living through this kids-kill-careers thing.
I’m not pronouncing my career dead by any means. But the children have become my new priority. I want to be with them. So much that I am pretty sure I am not going to push hard for the next step with a company I have been with for a long time, a company that gave me my dream job for a while, and international travel and a decent salary and benefits and all of that good stuff. I thought I would be with them for a long time yet, and that I would travel across more of the world with them, moving further up the chain.

Instead I’m thinking about walking away. Because if we should stay put I can work close to home, or AT home (ie, the coffee shop around the corner). We can have a nanny so the babies get lots of personal attention. And let’s be honest, having that help at home is a HUGE help and support for our relationship, too. Even with that help I feel resentful quite often that the burden seems to fall disproportionately on me. Rufus is a lovely dad, but he’s rarely home these days for bathtime, and he gets up now and then to help in the night and every now and then in the morning, but then he seems to think he’s owed a medal of some kind.

I think moving across the world now to a big city where we’d have to put the babies in a childcare centre fulltime while I worked long hours and he settled himself would make us all a bit miserable, at least for a while.

So lately my mind has been filled with possibilities and worries. Maybe I should start my own small business? Or consult? Or take a fulltime job that’s come up here that’s totally within my skillset but paid far less than I’d usually earn?

I went to an interview for that job today. I felt tired and frumpy and not myself at all. I am vastly overqualified for this position; they know it and I know it. “What am I doing?” I thought, as I sat there, in a wrap dress that accommodates my new lumpiness. It just felt all wrong.

I took a risk in coming to Peru years ago – I knew it then, and I am paying the price now, in a way. But I have gained so much more than I have lost in taking that risk – my partner, my children, new friends, an understanding of a new place and culture, a new language. I don’t regret it. I’m just a little scared about what’s next. That’s good, I tell myself. Some of my “scariest”, most insecure career moments propelled me on to my boldest and best and biggest changes. It’s going to be ok.

Whack-a-mole and other quandaries

It’s been so long since I wrote anything here!

Lola is driving me mad today. She will not take her nap. She rolled around in her cot for a while, stuffing books down the side, practicing somersaults, singing “Incy Wincy Pider” (We’re not so good at the “sp” sound yet)… And Max is suffering with new teeth on the way.

Whenever one goes down for a nap, the other one pops up – it is like that game, whack-a-mole.

And Rufus is off traveling again for ten days. 

I have felt overwhelmed many, many, many times since Lola was born almost two years ago. All those sleepless nights. Fevers. New teeth. Etc.

But work is pushing me over the edge. I keep telling myself how lucky I am that I had seven months with Lola off work, and then seven months again with Max. So many mothers don’t have that – they have to hand over their babies after only two or three months and go back to work fulltime.

Maybe I am just not up to this working-mothering thing. Maybe I am better off just doing one thing at a time.

The problem, of course, is money. And security and the future and all that jazz.

We want to buy an apartment and a car and soon there’ll be school fees, and eventually, thanks to the new Australian government’s disastrous policy changes, we’ll be paying ridiculous sums for university as well. So at some point I have to work.

And then I worry about my whole career tanking and being basically meaningless if I don’t go back to some serious work sooner rather than later.

So I took an interim kind of job recently – it’s ultra flexible and easy and I can work from home (note to mothers of toddlers.. working from home sounds great but it doesn’t work AT ALL.. I have come to the conclusion that being in the house and not playing with her is worse than just being somewhere else altogether, because if I’m not here she doesn’t seem to care much, once the initial goodbye is over and done with; but if I am, she feels abandoned and sad that I am choosing to do something else.

Some of her new sentences are: “No touching the computer” and “Mummy playing here!”.

I don’t want this to come off as a big whinge. It is a big whinge. But my motivation is noble I think – I want to know how other mothers out there are handling these things. What do you think – should I bite the bullet and go back fulltime, and just work on being a better mum in the hours that I have with them each day? Or should I bite the bullet and earn less and just make the most of being a mostly-stay-at-home mum?

Sometimes I just get so confused between the two of them – what should Max be eating now? What stage of play is Lola at? Is she sociable enough for her age? Should she go to kindy just to mix with other kids? The bottom line is I feel like I am doing a lot of things badly at the moment, including mothering.

A murder of crows, an adorable of babies

I have two babies but until recently I was used to seeing them one at a time. An eye blink ago Max was very much a babe-in-arms. And Lola a blossoming toddler. Now that Max is sitting up, the whole world has changed. He has always tracked her every move with adoring eyes, but now he make his own lunge for her whenever it takes his fancy. And he does. He launches himself like a rugby forward, without any thought for the hard floor, wall or strange object in his path. He wants to be close to her, to be walking like her, to be talking like her. I think he might skip crawling, because he only wants to do what she does.

Until recently she hasn’t wanted to have much to do with him. But that is changing, too. Now she says “Coo coo Maxi!” every morning and gives him a little kiss on the head of a tiny hug. She often tells me to pass him off to his dad or his nanny, but a few days ago, when an admiring stranger scooped him up, she said, “No! Maxi with mummy!”. Her first visible protective urge towards him. I know he is going to love her more than all of us. He just does.

Seeing them together made me think of all those great collective nouns… a murder of crows, a pride of lions. They are my adorable of babies.  

Seeing them together makes my heart swell more than ever, and lends an even greater sense of surreality to life in general. How did he come to be here, this perfect little fella? No drugs, no agonising. Just here, with minimum fuss and heartburn. He was dangling from his jolly jumper this morning and she was pushing him around in an ill-judged but well-meant kind of way and I imagined how they might be a year from now, tearing around together. Little mates. 

 

 

 

Park Life

There are moments of clarity every now and then as an expat, when you remember suddenly that you are far from home, and that this is your life.

I had one today in the park when it dawned on me that the names all the parents were calling out would sound pretty weird in an Australian or British park – at least, all together like that.

“Balthazar!”

“Caetano!”

“Julietta!”

“Candela!”

This is not a Jack, Ava, Oliver or Sophie neck of the woods. Here, the longer the name the better. The more syllables, the better. If there’s a chance to roll and R in there somewhere, better still. 

In Peru, I’ve noticed that the monied upper-crust types like these long names, and traditional Spanish names. And among the working classes there’s a trend for western names, but such strange ones – it’s like someone has been selling a 1930s version of a Best English Baby Names book here. Wilbur? Wilmer? Erwin? Who CALLS their kid that?! And then there’s made-up names or renditions with odd spellings – Laydee, Daysy, Jhon.

Across the region there are also examples of political leanings – lots of Lenins and Marxs (my first gym instructor here was a Lenin). And USNavy (ooo-es-navi), MadeinUSA (pronounced maad-en-ussa).

Turn over!

So Maxi rolled over all by himself today! He’s five months old, and growing like a weed – almost 8kg when Lola is still shy of 10 kg at 1.5 years. 

He doesn’t spend that much time on his back, because if he can possibly swing it, he hangs out in my arms, or he gets swung over the back of our lovely nanny Juanita. It’s how he rolls.

So that’s why I was a little surprised today when he managed a flip. 

He’s a funny little chap – very serious, especially with me. I get a little jealous and insecure with him, to be honest. Rufus can send him into fits of giggles brushes his three-day growth along his feet, or nuzzling his neck. But my efforts don’t always work.  Do any other mums out there feel the same way with the second? I worry that I’m so distracted with Lola and having to return to work that somehow we haven’t managed to bond as we should have.

Tonight after his flip I got some chuckles out of him and it made me day. Well done, young sir. 

Milk crisis!

Where oh where has my milk gone?

I went to express some yesterday and got a dribble. Less than one ounce! Just as I am supposed to be preparing us for a future with me working outside the home for part of the day. I have NO frozen milk because I’ve always just kind of lived day-to-day with Max, and then we went on a six week trip home with expressing would have been really difficult and so we all fell out of the habit. 

So how do I get my milk back, people? Any thoughts?

Gleaning from my usual sources – babycentre.co.uk, netmums, google in general, old baby manual on the shelf – I need to:

– drink lots of water

– drink fennel tea

– drink cocoa shell tea

– eat well

– rest

and maybe pray.

Max is still only 4.5 months and I really really want to keep going with breastfeeding. For his health but also for our bond. I feel like such a distracted mother with him, because I’m always chasing after Lola as well, and I don’t want to lose this time with him as well.

Spaced out

It’s 8am and Lola is still sleeping! This is a momentous day indeed. Little Max has also dropped off again for one of his micro-naps, so I am tapping away stealthily on this keyboard praying I can finish a thought or two. I’ve missed you, readers! 

I keep trying to organise my thoughts but they just slip away – every time I feel I am grasping one, it spins off into space like George Clooney letting go of Sandra Bullock in Gravity. “No, George! Don’t let goooooo,” I cry. But it’s too late. George is left spinning in infinity, and so are my recently formed, presumably useful thoughts about how best to proceed from here on in.

Now that I am a mother of two. I know. Un-believable. 

There I go again…

Now that I am a mother of two, with no fulltime job to call my own, I have pondering how best to proceed. How can I make money to fund schools, kindergartens, the purchase of a family home, car, etc… without sacrificing all my time with them? 

I don’t want to go back to work, but we could really do with the cash. And now we have all of this new responsibility, it’s time to get my skates on. 

I was offered a job yesterday which does not have a great salary. But it does allow for working between office and home, it’s for a great charity, and it’s in my skillset. It won’t look bad on a resume. So some money is better than none, I guess. 

I also want to launch a food blog (Stop groaning, I know there are a million of them, but this is an unexploited niche, I swear). This could be fun, feed my creative desires, and also potentially be monetised, if all goes well. Not so much that I will be buying that new apartment, I’m fairly sure. But still.

And in between I will be keeping my antennae alert for other job opportunities. Does that sound like a plan? 

The backdrop to all of this is Max and Lola World. Lola is more ravishing, charming, hilarious and impressive every single day. I love watching what words pop out of her mouth, seeing what catches her imagination (this week, somersaults, “ejerdicios” … a corruption of the Spanish for exercises, the Hokey Pokey, and the Hungry Caterpillar. Or Caperdillar, as she calls him).

Max is turning out to be a heavyweight – already 7kg of squishy pudgy cuddliness. He’s a chilled out little dude except for when he’s hungry when he screams like no one has fed him for days. And he’s making me jealous buy laughing at everyone but me. 

So that’s the latest from spaced out land for now. Besos to everyone out there trying for babies, struggling with babies or adjusting to life without babies. It’s a big wonderful world and there’s more than one path through it. xxx

 

 

 

 

Irish twins… almost

Lola and Max are 13 months apart, so they’re not officially Irish twins if you go by the definition of babies born in the same calendar year or 12 months apart. But I think the experience of mothering them will be similar.

Having Lola put in my arms was pure joy. Well, also fear. But mostly happiness, gratitude, and a kind of dreamy I-can’t-believe-it contentment. Having Max is happiness with a big dollop of guilt. Having a newborn stuck to your breast is a real turn-off for toddlers, it seems. Lola has perfected an aggrieved, “Who the hell is that guy?” look that makes me feel like a very bad mother indeed.

I feel guilty about not giving her the avalanche of attention that I would like to give her, and I also miss her, terribly. For the past three months I haven’t been able to go to the park with her every afternoon as I used to… this week I started going again, with young Max in a kangaroo pouch or his pram, so I can chase her around and enjoy her again. It’s time to reclaim my little girl… I just hope that doesn’t mean I end up feeling guilty about neglecting Max.

Max’s birth story

I was thinking about second child syndrome this morning and how I want to give Max all the love and attention we gave Lola, and I realised I hadn’t written about his birth.

Like Lola, Max was induced. But because we so worried about his size, I felt very different about the induction this time around. Instead of begging for just a little more time to let the baby come on her own, I was begging to get him out. With Lola I was so afraid of the birth – would my vagina split open all the way?? how much would it hurt? why can’t we just lay eggs just like chickens?? This time I was just worried about Max.

So at 38 weeks we left Lola with her grandparents, bundled into a taxi and headed for the clinic. I felt so excited at the thought of meeting him soon, and pretty relaxed. We called my parents on skype as we threaded our way through early Lima traffic. When we arrived Dr E said he wanted to see how we went without the prostaglandin gel – using just the drip. It was a long day, and nothing much happened. Very tiny insignificant contractions, and then mid-afternoon Dr E said we should leave him in there a bit longer. I felt completely exhausted and devastated. A full day in the clinic, and no Max.

At 39 weeks and 5 days, we checked in again. And boy, was it fast! We arrived about 7am, Dr E put the gel on my cervix at 7.30am or so, we checked into our room and I put on the breezy hospital robe to await contractions. They were small and sneaky at first, barely noticeable. They built up gradually when they put the drip in my arm, until they were coming about every two or three minutes, which seemed like a lot to me, even though they were still very bearable in terms of the pain.

Dr E came in at about that point and he broke my waters – yikes. Those manageable contractions suddenly started hitting me with the force of a small truck. Every two or three minutes. “Hold my hand!” I squealed at Rufus, who had hung back while Dr E examined me. “I think I want that epidural now!”

This felt like the textbook induction scenario I have read about many times – the contractions coming fast and super-strong. I was so grateful by the time they got the epidural in. It’s a miraculous thing.

When I had Lola, I had a nice leisurely four hours or so between the epidural and the actual birth. This time it was about 2. The epidural was starting to fade when I told the nurses I felt like I had to go to the toilet, and the next thing I know Dr E zoomed in wearing his scrubs and said I could start pushing right away if I felt like it. “What, now?” I said. It seemed way, way too fast.

I was wheeled into the same room that Lola was delivered in, and we had another comical discussion about pushing. With Lola I kind of put all the effort into puffing up my cheeks instead of pushing her out… this time I got all confused with the breathing and huffed and puffed instead of holding my breath to help with the push. I could feel it this time, his little head coming down, ready to come out into the world. And it hurt. But it was a good pain… there was something about feeling that little head inside me, knowing exactly where he was in that moment. I pushed, and pushed, and he was there. Not upside down like Lola; but being cradled up and offered to me. He cried straight away, and then he was snuggled up on my chest, where he has wanted to be ever since. He’s a very cuddly baby. We had more time with him than we did with Lola – I fainted away and needed to be stitched up internally with her. With Max, I was in better shape. He stayed there, like a little prawn, while everyone rattled around us, and Rufus took photos, and sent them out to my parents, and his parents, and, yes, though I didn’t know it at the time.. to Facebook. My second child, little Max. Life is beautiful.

Mastitis and falling in love with Max

I have never felt more ill than the two times I’ve had mastitis. For the past 36 hours I have been a feeble, sweat-drenched ball of misery and my left breast REALLY hurts.Treatment is no fun at all… keep feeding with your huge engorged excruciatingly painful breast! The more, the better! This whole childbirth raising kids malarky is masochistic. So I kept feeding, drank loads of water, took panadol, plonked a hot water bottle on the boob and a cold washer with vinegar on my head and hoped it would get better rather than worse. Def didn’t want to take antibiotics if I could help it, but also did not want to develop a breast abscess. Good god.. an abscess on your breast. They should really mention that the statistical chance of this is extremely low – like 0.2 per cent of women – every time they do those pithy web rundowns on mastitis.

Now the fever has broken and I am thinking that at least it gave me lots of time to gaze at Max, who is filling out nicely. He’s a calm little fellow, but he’s started to give me involuntary little smiles when I stroke his cheek or hand and it gives me a glimpse of a certain cheekiness that he might have.

Max’s arrival has brought a lot of conflicting emotions for me. I am so happy he’s here, and he’s healthy. And I am starting to fall in love with him, but it’s complicated by seeing Lola struggling with sadness over not getting as much of my attention. I feel so guilty. Time and attention are so important for babies… Lola has new words every day at the moment – she’s trying to really talk. And she knows the stories we read her are somehow contained in the words… she points to them. Max eats and sleeps and dirties a mind-boggling number of nappies a day.

A friend advised me to be patient… these first few months with a newborn are intense, but after that I should be able to find a rhythm that allows me to give Lola and Max the attention they need.