Working For The (Little) Man

My Boss

Warning: This post contains mothering clichés and period talk.


Yesterday was shitty. I found out that I lost my one steady freelance gig and it seemed like someone closed the door on my previous life and left me alone in that small room of "mothering." The gig I lost was a great writing job that I've had for more than a year, creating monthly site, social media and newsletter content updates for a really nice brand and the one day a month I spent on it, and the money it earned, has kept me feeling useful and engaged since I stopped working. All of a sudden I realized that I am completely unemployed and in a panic I applied for a job, replying to a referral for a role that a friend had suggested I might like. Within minutes a response came asking me to swing by the office and meet the team. Could I make next Tuesday at 1pm? As I began imagining the logistics of being away from Cal for possibly more than 2 hours, it suddenly dawned on me that, no, I probably couldn't make next Tuesday at 1pm, or at any time for an interview, let alone the actual job. At the moment my job is to breast-feed Cal and it takes up all my time. Perhaps in a month or 2 when he's bigger, things might be different but at the moment I have to find other ways to feel connected to my old life. Unfortunately this news also coincided with day 3 of my first period since Cal's birth and I spent a day feeling completely rotten. Over lunch I got stuck into David about not being around enough and not giving me enough "me-time" (yeah I called it that) and then whilst feeding Cal at 2am last night I even Googled Post Natal Depression. As I went down the list of symptoms I conceded that I wasn't chronically depressed, I was just another healthily frustrated new mum with the kinds of worries and anxieties I see written about every day on the blogs I read. Often it's incredibly reassuring to know that there are truckloads of women just like me, experiencing the same challenges and at other times it just makes me feel like a boring cliché. Thankfully when I woke up this morning my case of "the mean reds" had disappeared and I was able to put the minor freak-out down to a gnarly progesterone spike, or something.


Weirdo hormones aside, having a baby really is like moving to another planet. No, like Another Earth. A copy of the one we live on, but where everything is slightly different. It's your house, but different. Your boyfriend, but different, and even your baby as you knew him last week is all of a sudden different this week. Nothing stays the same except the sometimes overwhelming thought that this mothering gig is the one job that will never be over. I hope.