Do a skills exchange
If you’re starting out with little or no budget, one great way to get professional help without taking out a loan is to do a skills exchange. I did this with the photographer Penny Wincer and it worked so well. I’d gone to Penny asking if she’d be able to take some headshots for me. She offered to do it for free, but I said I’d like to pay her – if not with money, then with my skills. After listening to me being interviewed on a podcast, talking about blogging and writing for the online platform, Penny said, would you be able to help me with my blog, looking at the direction I’d like to take it in and how to get there? I agreed, and after doing a photoshoot together, we had lunch and I gave Penny ideas for taking her blog forward (SEO, content strategy, pitching for related articles in nationals). You have skills that could be very useful for other people, so bear this in mind if you’re looking for help but can’t afford to pay the full price.
Switching from mum mode to work mode and back
If you start out by working when your baby or young child is napping, you’ll find yourself cramming a lot of work into a very small window of time. Just as you get really stuck into what you’re doing, you’ll hear their cries on the monitor. It can make your heart sink. Not because you don’t want to see your kid, but because working can feel like such a nice escape and to have it abruptly cut short is frustrating.
So it can then be hard to switch your mind from work back to motherhood. You will inevitably find yourself quickly rattling off an email while giving your baby their post-nap bottle, or popping on Peppa Pig for an hour so that you can finish a pitch. I think this is fine, though, don’t forget, you’re doing this to support your family, and you’ve chosen a freelance career to fit around family life. It’s not selfish, and it won’t damage them. I remember reading an article about how work and parenting should always be totally separate and then panicking, as mine were very much blended. I now realise this is OK; it’s unrealistic to aim for these two parts of your life to be completely distinct – particularly if, like me, some of your work has a family or parenting focus.
Womenswear designer Kelly Eckhardt agrees. She says that mothers need to feel comfortable with their desire to have a fulfilling career, and that sometimes it will involve work and family time overlapping if there is no childcare in place. ‘Don’t feel guilty for wanting to succeed in your work,’ she says. ‘I personally believe kids should see their mothers succeed; this shows them that women can be loving but also intelligent and super motivated. A happy mum = a happy family.’ It’s for this reason that she advocates occasional screen-time, when necessary. ‘It’s OK to stick your kids in front of a screen for a little while if you need to finish an email or a write-up. We all do this. It’s fine.’
Mère Soeur founder Carrie Anne Roberts says: ‘The hardest thing about juggling work as a single mum is, surprise surprise, finding the time to actually work. If I’m not working I feel like I should be and if I am working I feel like I’m not being as present as I could be for River. There is a constant pressure to excel as a parent and in my career but the balance is difficult to achieve. The one thing that makes it all easier is the fact that I can work to my own schedule and be around for River a lot more than I would be if I’d gone back to work 9–5. As difficult as the juggle can be, I’m beyond grateful for the time I have with him and the flexibility I have from this kind of work.’
Dr Jessamy Hibberd – clinical psychologist, TEDx speaker and author – says: ‘I split my week – three long days working (with some drop-offs/pick-ups with the kids) and then Thursday–Sunday with my family. I do work when they’re asleep when needed, but I don’t check emails/work when I’m with them. I think I find it easier to do one thing at a time. When I’m with the kids I’m with the kids. When I’m at my clinic, I’m seeing people, and when I have my non-clinic time I focus on a project.’
Sarah Turner – founder of The Unmumsy Mum blog, author of two Sunday Times bestselling books and freelance journalist – says that her biggest challenge is living with the constant fear that she’s ‘on call’ for both work and parenting. ‘I never feel like I am doing either job particularly well, as I have a terrible habit of checking work emails when I’m with the kids and checking that the kids are all right when I’m supposed to be working. A big part of this problem stems from the fact that I don’t have a separate office or workspace at home and so very often can still hear the kids when I’m writing from our bedroom (and they know I’m there, so often potter in and disturb me!).
‘At the moment, my husband is taking shared parental leave after the birth of our third baby and so is not working, which means I am free to do more work, but now I have to contend with everyone being at home pretty much all the time. I have been trying to escape to the local library or co-working spaces to allow for better concentration but that presents its own problems, such as when I need to dial in to a Skype meeting or discuss a confidential project I don’t really want to shout about across the library café. I sometimes miss the days of going out to work in the morning, shutting the door behind me and then returning in the evening ready to be “Mum” and not “Mum who’s here all the time but always working”. The reality is that my new work life is so intertwined with my home life that there can never be a clean break or distinction between the two. In actual fact, it’s often our “downtime” that provides the richest material for me to write about and I can’t seem to stop my mind from thinking, “I should blog this!”’
If you’re keen to close the laptop at some point and become ‘mum’ again, here are some tricks for navigating the switch from mum to work mode and back …
– Make yourself a cup of tea or a glass of ice-cold water. Focus on it while you drink. This signals the end of working and back to being a mum. Or the reverse.
– Clementine app has a ‘reset’ recording, which is just five minutes long, that helps you to leave old thoughts behind and move into a new part of your day.
– Allocate the last 10 minutes of working or childcare to transition. So if you’re at your desk, spend 10 minutes preparing to be ‘mum’ again: get a bottle ready for the baby, go to the loo. If you’ve been mum, allow yourself 10 minutes to get into work mode once your child has gone for her nap or to nursery, e.g. read the news on your phone. But don’t get sucked into social media.
– When you’ve finished work, leave your phone at your desk. This prevents the temptation to check emails ‘just once more’ while your child drinks her milk or whatever.
– Do five minutes of stretching. If you’ve been sat at a desk, this will pump energy back into your body, and if you’ve been with your child, it’ll help you to focus on your next task: work.
Most of us are guilty of flicking through social apps on our phones while looking after our kids. If you’re starting to feel guilty about this, you could always try one of the apps for creating barriers between being online and offline. For instance, Moment, which tracks all your online time and updates you at the end of the day. Most of us spend far too much time on social, but having it quantified might just be scary enough to enforce some habit changes. It certainly has for me. At times like the nursery pick-up, I used to push the buggy with one hand and scroll with the other. Now I’m trying to leave it in my pocket and just walk. And see. And think. (And respond when my son sticks his hand out for yet another breadstick.)
Courtney Adamo, co-founder of Babyccino Kids – an international
