Last week I tempted fate. I put pen to paper and wrote about how, with the help of flexible work arrangements, I am able to effectively combine parenting two small children with a satisfying job. Well, life read that post, laughed and mocked me with it. I had a miserable time with my one year old daughter Lulu last week that culminated in the lowest ebb of my parenting career after I posted my bit on Thursday.
Last week whenever Lulu was in my care, which is understandably a lot, she was indisputably grumpy; she resisted sleep, wasn’t interested in food, fought being put in her highchair, the pram and her car-seat. She threw away her toys and unless she was being held by me she was screaming. So it was hard work.
The insult, however, was that there was nothing actually wrong with her because the time she spent in the care of others she was invariably cheerful and chipper. (One babysitter unintentionally broke my heart by declaring her the easiest baby she has ever looked after. Easy for others but not for me?) She played happily, ate with abandon and slept soundly, but only when someone other than me was looking after her. The minute I walked in the door her mood changed. Irrational as I knew it was it felt like she hated me and I hated it but it was about to get worse.
It took me a few attempts to get her to bed for the night on Thursday but the real fun began when it was our turn for bed at 10pm. She woke up and neither my husband or I could coax her back to sleep. She was happy to be held but, unsurprisingly, between the hours of 10pm til 2am my husband and I were less happy to hold and entertain her. We took turns at trying to get her down but her blood-curdling screams thwarted our efforts. At 2am after 4 hours of this particular game and her older sister having been woken twice I bundled her into the car. I drove around until 3.30am when she fast asleep. Of course the minute I brought her inside she woke up. By 4.30am she was down for the night and I could finally collapse into bed.
Needless to say when I woke up just two and a bit hours after that I was shattered. I came into work and managed to keep things together until about 10.30am at which point I sobbed. I was deliriously tired, I felt like I was the least competent mother in the whole country, like my daughter was the most difficult baby in the whole country and that I wasn’t coping. Of course I also felt a little bit embarrassed to be in that state at work. Particularly the day after I had written about how I combine work and family seamlessly.
But my colleagues were unwaveringly supportive and understanding. My boss, Marina Go, was particularly forthright in insisting I need not worry about anything except getting some sleep. This stuff happens, she said, to all of us. It is life and it will happen again. It was sage advice because it meant when I left early on Friday I didn’t leave feeling burdened by guilt — about my daughter or my work. I went home and I slept and I regrouped. (My recovery efforts were accelerated by my mum who flew down to help us out over the weekend).
It is easy to feel unprofessional in a work sense when the home wheels are falling off. To feel guilty if, when we are wearing our working hat, we aren’t perfectly polished at all times. Obviously crying at work isn’t ideal but then lots of things happen in life that aren’t ideal. For example, being awake until 4.30am on a Friday morning springs to mind.
The truth is our work and our home lives overlap: work crises can occur outside of office hours just as home crises can occur during the working week. Our lives aren’t neatly delineated and that is not restricted to parents. All of us have lives outside of work and occasionally, despite our best efforts to be as organised as possible and keep the personal and the professional separate, things pop up that blur those lines. But it’s not a disaster; it is just life and it will happen again. I am hopeful, however, that a sleepless night like Thursday doesn’t happen again in our household for a very long time.
Have your home wheels fallen off lately?