stay at home mum

Seventeen years ago I fell head over heels in love with my first baby, a gorgeous daughter with chubby cheeks and the bluest of eyes.
Deciding to be a stay at home mum was easy as I just could not bare to send her off to care and miss out on even a single moment of her life.
My husband and I were young and at the start of establishing both of our careers. He was under a graduate development programme for new foresters and I had just attained a  permanent position as a primary school teacher.
Whilst still pregnant I imagined just taking the allotted amount of maternity leave and then leaping back  into my career.
Post birth, the logistics of managing without family support and the emotional toll of spending time away from my baby meant that I was not going to be getting back into my career any time soon.

As is often the case, once things start to get a little less hectic, along comes baby number two. A lovely big baby boy. The pigeon pair, as people were so fond of telling me.

With two small children, only 21 months apart in age, I became heavily involved in volunteer work. I put much of my energies into being actively involved in the local breastfeeding group, playgroup and, later, preschool committee, in the hopes that I would be exercising valuable employability skills and thus remain employable. As the baby got older I was even able to engage in some paid casual teaching work. Not for long, however, as four years after number two was born along came number three. Another gorgeous bouncing boy.

Ah does love know no bounds? I was quite ready and prepared to again fall head over heals in love for the third time.  I remember a brief moment of doubt before my second was born, wondering how I could possibly love another as much as I loved my first. Call it hormones or mother's instinct, but once baby comes along the falling in love part is effortless and unavoidable. What  glorious feeling it is.

The family story throughout the children's growing life is varied and interesting. I will back fill the stories in subsequent blogs.  The main point of this blog and the reason I have provided a brief overview of my three children is to explore, 17 years after having my first baby, the amazing and no less life changing event of having baby number four!

Yes into an already very full family consisting of a 17 year old, and 15 year old and an 11 year old arrived another beautiful baby girl. Instant love for all of us.  How wonderful it is to experience the head over heels of falling in love again, but also to witness it in the rest of the family too.

Accompanying the wonders and delights of having a baby is also the limitations and restrictions it places on your social life and career prospects.  Just as I was starting to transition into paid work from my professional volunteering roles and start to build my work portfolio, I find I'm catapulted back to the beginning again, facing that age old dilemma, how or even should I attempt to combine paid work with mothering.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/in-defence-of-the-stay-ay-home-mother/5010762


Now 17 years down the track I have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. With my first 3 children I took the view that no amount of money that I could potentially earn in  the workforce could be worth as much as being with my children as they grew up. I would not have to sacrifice my children's needs in order to carve a place for myself outside the family home. I felt that although it can be very hard yakka being home with young children, the pay off in their self esteem and preparedness for life was worth it. I was also confident that being a volunteer in the community was a valuable thing to do and would help me keep in touch with important skills I may later need to draw on when seeking employment.

And then the world went and changed.....

More and more mothers return to work soon after having their babies.  This results in a societal shift in what is considered the norm. It then follows that if you haven't stayed connected with your work place whilst also mothering, you are out of touch and/or there is something lacking in you.

Workplaces themselves have changed with an expectation of constant upgrading of skills and competencies. With experience needing to be current and extensive.  The job market is competitive, particularly in the regional area where I live.  Even relatively lowly paid jobs are hot contested. I remember being sold the lemon while I was at Uni, that a degree would mean something.  It would get you job even if it was not in your field of qualification as it showed you had the skills and work ethic that employers look for.
As far as I can see degrees aren't worth much at all anymore. The workplace has become specialised requiring specific skill sets evidenced with certified courses and recent relevant work experience.  This is not conducive to swapping professions very easily, let alone attempting re-entry into the workforce after an extensive period of absence.

Less mothers staying at home means that there is less and less of that mother to mother support.  It's this support that can help you through a few of the more trying times that you come up against as a mother. Mothers looking for peer support look to volunteer groups. These are already stretched from too few volunteers able to give the time to keep them viable and functioning. Many mothers not only combine mothering and paid work, but also throw a hefty amount of volunteerism into the mix.  Add to this the constant need to be training, retraining and upgrading skills, a mother's life has become an incredibly busy one.

This time round, I have a chance to do things a little differently. There a few key differences seventeen years down the track. Firstly, husband's career is more established, and workplaces have some family friendly policies, so there is some scope for him to share the parental load and give me some opportunities for pursuing paid employment. Secondly, I actually have some family support this time in the guise of my older three children. In particular my oldest daughter who is competent and willing to mind the baby. It's a wonderful feeling to be confident knowing that someone who loves your baby as much as you is there to care for her. Thirdly, in the intervening seventeen years we have had the rise and rise of the internet and the opportunities it presents for certain types of freelancing work.  Sifting through potential scams and competing with people from countries who are paid very low wages, represent some interesting challenges to this type of work. Fourthly, my attitude has changed. Whereas I once believed no amount of money was comparative to the value of raising my children myself, I now realise that view was dangerously short sighted.  Because they do indeed grow up, and then some 10-15 years down the track, where is mum left? One, you want to provide a positive role model for your children that you can and are able to find work, but also for your own self worth, being able to find a job is a very important for how you feel about yourself.  No one wants to turn around one day and wonder where the years went and to suddenly feel irrelevant.
Interestingly, finding work becomes less about the money and more about maintaining some credibility on your CV.  It becomes a CV filler giving some continuity to the document and providing referees for that day when you maybe ready to jump back into the workforce in a more serious manner.
So this is the challenge. How many little snippets of casual work through various avenues will I be able to find? So far I have:
My primary employer, the Department of Education. There is scope for putting my name down for casual teaching work. Sounds good, but presents some challenges. The work is primarily day to day, I usually would get a call at 7am and then rush out the door to teach a class that I know little about until I get them into the classroom. Daunting and anxiety producing.  I personally don't like spending my morning in a heightened state of anxiety over whether the phone will or will not ring and then if it does, what potential stresses I am letting myself in for.  Even if I could manage the angst the best I could offer is one day a week (by arranging for hubby and eldest daughter to share care of the baby for the day). One day is not the way to attract much work your way. The ideal would be if I could get a school to offer me one day a week on a regular basis.
Tutoring has potential and I really like the idea of putting my name down and giving it a go. Tutoring happens after school hours and there doesn't seem to be enough days in the week as most days I am taking the kids to their afterschool activities.
Delivering catalogues, I rang up about that today. Let's see if anything come of it and if I really can earn the money they suggest for the time outlay.
Freelancing on some freelancing websites. Allows me to work from home and the hours I work are flexible. I am busily building a profile now. Later I will try and bid for some jobs and see what happens. Watch this space.
Prac Advisor, this is something I can do and have been doing since baby was born. With help from my eldest daughter, she minds the baby while I visit my student.
Tax preparer I was also able to do with stacks of help from the rest of the family and a supportive boss who was able to give me short shifts out of standard business hours.  This looks like it will be regular work each year during tax season which will be great.
I will keep my eye on the paper and see what other small snippets of casual work turn up, as well as keeping an eye on job websites.  I am not sure that I am ready to go to a job agency yet.  I don't want to feel pressured into taking on more work than I am comfortable with.  Baby is still number one priority.  And quite frankly when I look into that gorgeous face I wonder if I can bare to leave her at all.  She is very firmly wrapped around my heart strings.

Ah the dilemmas of being mum.......To be honest, I don't think any answer, any combination of home/family/work will ever be the right one.  Us mums are hard on each other and the choices that we make and even harder on ourselves.  We need to just keep reminding ourselves to enjoy the ride. Because  one thing having older children has shown me is that  they do grow up all too soon and all that hard work, whatever path you choose, is worth it when you see what  incredible individuals they become.