Oh baby, you make everything worthwhile

Weekend Herald news editor JANETTA MACKAY doesn't relish being defined by the defining issues of motherhood.


Sometimes it all just seems too hard.

Dashing into work on your day off to make sure everything's okay. Toddler in tow. An hour turns into two.

The felt pens she's playing with on your office table are now on the floor. The pad follows ... she's climbing on the table.

A computer problem sends me dashing for a sympathetic childminder among busy colleagues. Shushing as I go to a 19-month-old who points, "Door, door."

A rattled half-hour later (for me, and the good-natured godsend who allowed her phone to be toyed with), we're in the car driving down Albert St.

Squeals of delight at the still-enticing beams of low sunlight catching the harbour - "Sea, sea, sea" - turn into just plain squeals as the traffic gridlocks round the corner.

Shut up, pleeaase, I scream silently.

Every parent knows the feeling. And as a mother there's always that nagging thought in the back of the mind. Is it worth the effort?

Is juggling work and a baby just too much?

Is it the right thing to do?

For me the answer - except in those moments of sanity-stretching stress - is resoundingly yes.

And yet there's always the nagging doubt whether your parenting choices are right, whether your career is suffering, whether there isn't an easier way.

The problems I grapple with are those that every parent faces. And I'm one of the lucky ones with money, support, choices.

But since having a baby early last year I've become acutely aware of how much these problems are still primarily women's problems.

And of how unexpected some of them are.

Until you do it, you don't know quite what it will ask of you.

For me, a late-30s mother with a supportive husband, there was never any question whether I'd return to work.

He'd studied for years for a PhD and had a starting salary less than half mine. Underpaid, yes, but then science is like that. And I'd been working damn hard for a damn long time.

Perhaps my job did define me in that narrow career-focused way many men are seeking to break free from, but I didn't feel straitjacketed in choosing to return to work, buffered by knowing I could - if we counted the pennies - use up my full year's parental leave.

It irked me that I wasn't eligible for the six weeks' paid leave my husband got from the Government, but I knew that paid parental leave was in the offing for those expecting after me.

What I didn't know, though, until I had a baby, was how I would actually feel about the timing of a return to work.

Unexpected issues and emotions were unleashed.

I'd applied for the full year's unpaid leave, but indicated the likelihood of an earlier return. At six months, I decided my baby girl was too little to leave.

I'd come over all teary-eyed as I walked to the shops and saw mothers with 2- or 3-year-olds.

They obviously weren't working. They obviously could stay at home.

Did I want to or not?

I got to know my local shops, and the shopkeepers. I railed that the baby buggy didn't fit into my favourite cafe. I eyed the supermarket specials for cheap nappies.

I thought it must be time to get my brain into gear again.

Six months off dragged to nine.

Major changes in my workplace lasted for months, blurring lines of communication. Restructuring had seen off my old job.

Coffee groups weren't for me, antenatal class had been enough.

The Plunket weigh-in was validation of doing the right thing - shame they don't get the funding to see you much once the baby gets past the first few months.

I ventured to swimming class and to the library for lapsit, where I was surrounded by other mums but felt quite alone.

The tugs on my emotions at half-remembered words from my own nursery rhymes came with newly sharp pangs about my own long-dead mother, for my daughter having no grandmother.

For facing for the first time the issues that generations of women have faced.

We started a slow introduction of daycare after I'd meticulously checked out the possibilities.

She loved it - snuffles and an eye infection or two aside.

The work thing got sorted, well for a year anyway. I work four days a week, my husband does the fetching and carrying to daycare, but I still do the doctor's runs, the washing and the worrying.

I worry about how, when my husband is out of town, I can get across town to collect my daughter from daycare. Or how often I will need to take a night off when he is overseas.

I worry about making too much of these difficulties at work, about being seen as wanting special treatment.

I go to lapsit each week still, one morning before I work a swing shift. My daughter, emboldened by daycare, is one of the first to the instrument box, one of the smallest to stand at the front, to jump like a frog.

I wear a suit as I hurry her off to daycare, past other toddlers off to the beach with their mums in their jeans and trainers.

Now I've started wondering what I'll do when she finishes school at 3pm. I wonder if the deal I've struck with work will carry on. If the workplace flexibility I enjoy can be counted on to continue.

If a career back on track will be derailed.

I'm getting ahead of myself but it's hard not to.

I dread the choice.

But I'm glad I have it. For her sake.

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