On Absence & Fonder Hearts

Trying to find a better balance in motherhood

If there is one thing I am learning in this season of mothering, it’s that I need time away from my kids.

It’s not as urgent, these days. I felt it more when I was breastfeeding my youngest and he was physically attached to me for hours each day, so much so I would crave solitude like I have never craved it before. I was touched-out and my body would flinch on contact to say it had had enough - it needed space.

I like being alone. I enjoy my own company, but that year when my youngest was a baby and my eldest was somewhere between 2 and 3 years old and going through some kind of clingy phase of his own, I was needed all the time - I was never alone. I found it really hard to deal with and I am not just talking about the fact I would have to take one child with me to go to the toilet and if it was the youngest, he would sit on my lap as I did whatever it was I needed to do, it was relentless.

These days I can have micro-moments of solitude in amongst my days with them. They might be eating a snack quietly at their table and I can write in my journal, or they might be entranced by one of their favourite tv shows and I escape to the kitchen, a locked stair gate separating us, as I devour whatever chocolate remains in the fridge.

My greatest alone time of course comes on my work day – the one day of the week that they are both in nursery. Greatest in the sense it is the longest time without them as well as being the best time - my time.

What I am finding though is that even when I am busy and that time is not technically mine and mine alone, but someone who has booked me for branding/design work, even when I am up against it in terms of time and I barely get chance for a lunch break, even then I feel rested away from them.

Bizarre isn’t it? I never thought I would find work restful, I don’t know I ever enjoyed it enough to not call it work, but having kids has changed my perspective.

Work feels like rest

When I went back to work after maternity leave with my first son, I remember relishing in the moments between meetings, the pauses amongst the chaos. It felt intense having to get to work so early, or even get my work space at home set up so early, or trying to squeeze housework in before a morning meeting and it was always a rush getting the work done by the end of the day, so I could make pick up without facing a late fine. I would be in meetings past what I had called my cut off time, regularly, I would often have to pass work to others or work on it again once my son was in bed, I would send emails to colleagues at unimaginable hours. There would always be more feedback and it would always be urgent, but I tried to capture those minutes of rest - and they were minutes, if not seconds, where I could, knowing that once my son was home, he would be my focus and I would take second place.

It’s interesting how your perspective can change once you have children. It’s no longer a rest at the weekend or the time in which you have to look after them, that’s exhausting - physically, mentally, emotionally, it is more a rest at your computer doing your day job, where time goes faster, but somehow you are more in control and it feels a lot less like a rollercoaster. Sure you can have good days and bad days at work, and good days and bad with the kids, but somehow work for me has become respite.

Filling my cup

Work for me is more than rest, or a break from the kids, it’s me time. In working I am allowing my brain to work in a different way, to actually feel like it is functional. I feel like myself again whenever I work, as if I haven’t been completely erased by mothering. I don’t know if all jobs would feel like this, or if it is because my job as a brand/packaging designer is creative. My work allows me an element of creative expression, and that in a way has become very much part of my identity. Designing is part of who I am and it fills my cup, from which I can pour from in mothering. I need to work to become a better mother.

Finding the right balance

At the moment I am working part-time and I like this balance. It is similar actually to when I returned to work after having my first son and they weaned me back with a three day week for a month or so, (something they later said would be impossible long term). I like this balance of 3 days work, 4 days with the kids. I enjoy my time away from them, those 3 days working is enough to miss them - but is it something I can do? Like my old job, many agencies aren’t truly flexible and many clients aren’t. I am self-employed so I hope to have control over my schedule, but will I be employable on a 3-day week? Probably not. Jobs like this are unusual. Flexible working is likely still a dream in that sense.

I wonder, though when I go back to work full-time, and the balance tips back to those hectic days of full-time work and part-time mothering, if work will still feel restful or of it will feel exhausting once again?

Enjoying time away

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder and it’s true. It reminds me of a magnet that sits on my fridge, from a collection I inherited from my paternal grandmother, Valerie. It says, How can I miss you, if you won’t go away?

In the absence of Nanny Val, I like to think of these magnets as her passing down wisdom - things she might have shared if she were still around and with seven kids, all two years apart, she would have known the exhaustion and relentlessness of motherhood better than most.

In working I have come to appreciate my time with the kids a little more. When I am on an endless stay-at-home stretch, where one day blends into another, mothering can feel relentless - a thankless task serving little humans who barely listen and are intent on winding me up. But it is different when punctuated by times where they aren’t around. I can enjoy being with them more. I have more energy to take them out and I feel less anxious knowing it is only four days. In that sense, it feel less of a marathon and more of a sprint, where I can pass the baton over, knowing I can catch my breath before I pick it up again.

I am not going to sugar coat it, though and say the tantrums have been less intense and that I have felt like less of a referee, because that’s not true. It is still hard, but I am finding that I need balance in motherhood: I need to work, whether it is paid or not but I do want to see my kids and enjoy them. I need something for me - something that fills my cup and I need time to miss my kids.

I hope that I can take some of these learnings forward into the next season, where I will be working more and I hope I can find a balance that works without tipping it too far back the other way.

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Have you found a good balance in motherhood?
What does balance look like to you?
Do you think of work as respite?
What fills your cup?

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