The Perfect Family Picture
I was sat looking at a Facebook post of my friends recent little arrival — a gorgeous baby girl. Mother, father, older brother and an absolutely adorable peachy newborn. I was filled with a huge fuzzy warm feeling when I looked at their family picture, the word content just popped into my mind. It was perfect.
Suddenly my mind transported back to the early days of when Louis was first born. I realised that contentment was not something James and I had the pleasure of feeling. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we were of course ecstatic with our new arrival, but our state of happiness and satisfaction came and went just like the tide.
At this time, back in early 2017, James and I were at a point in our careers where we were living the life of entrepreneurs, but to the detriment of ourselves. By that I mean we were always searching for more in our work life but our family life balance was way off. We had a busy property company specialising in shared housing for professional sharers in South East London, plus we had taken on the role of marketing consultants for a property education academy. We over-delivered massively. Taking on more and more work. Travelling around the country organising, hosting and delivering events, seminars and courses on their behalf.
Entrepreneurs we were; I mean we had carved this business venture out for ourselves and worked from the ground up pulling on our years of industry experiences working for other companies. But we were not being savvy with our time for the money we were earning. We were falling into an ever so typical situation where the role and responsibilities of what we were offering in our marketing consultancy was blurring and the workload was piling up.
We craved the security of our regular monthly retainer, it almost seemed easier then focusing on our property company as the revenue for this could change each month depending on tenant occupancy and maintenance charges. Oh how we were wrong.
I never had any maternity leave. I worked up until the day I went into labour.
Louis birth was a bit dramatic — during the last few minutes — and when he finally entered the world he was pretty stressed. Because of this, he had high lactate in his blood and spent the first 7 days in a Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU).
I stayed at the hospital and James camped out with me some nights. It was a pretty traumatic time but it wasn’t all because of Louis. Seeing him so small in a little incubator, with wires and leads coming out of him was awful, but we knew his condition was dealt with daily by the incredible midwives and we knew it was just a matter of time before he would be able to come home. But the mixture of emotions we were going through, plus my heightened hormones, mixed with the pressure of still having to try and earn our living was sending us over the edge.
James was getting up at 4am to complete marketing tasks including writing mailers, click-funnels, social media posting. He would then come to the hospital sit by my side, both staring at Louis feeling helpless. Then he would nip downstairs for lunch to catch up on yet more emails, back to the SCBU ward, leave in the evening to often go and do viewings with tenants, maintenance issues or more marketing duties. Then he would either come back to the hospital and sleep in a chair or spend a lonely night in our flat, with an empty nursery.
I sound morbid, but it was our reality.
Being James and I, we still found time to laugh, send a jokey picture text to friends of us having a picnic in our hospital bed and we always stayed positive that Louis was getting healthier each day and never allowed ourselves to be concerned with any possibilities that his condition could worsen. But the pressure we were under was immense.
The people we were working with at the Education Academy were ‘supportive’ or at least that’s what they said verbally. But the truth was that no one knew what we were going through. Tenants were still texting and emailing us with their problems too, all of which could not be ignored.
We wanted to just allow ourselves to immerse in our little hospital bubble. Just focusing on Louis, the most important person in our lives. But we were being pulled out, continuously, all day, every day. I was tired. I cried a lot. I wanted all of our work to just disappear.
At one point I was stood in the SCBU waiting room having a conversation with one of my colleagues talking about where I was at with booking and negotiating room rates for a nearing event. My throat had the biggest lump. I scraped just enough energy to give a fuck, trying to act professional and committed to fulfilling my roll. I was exhausted. The floodgates were about to burst.
The next few days were a rollercoaster, but after a week we were finally sent home.
3 days later, one of our friends popped over for a cuppa and ended up staying for 4-hours, helping look after Louis whilst I built a website. We laugh about it all the time but actually when I think about it, baby brained up to the maximum, I can’t believe I actually had the mental capacity to do it. James and I were just not slowing down. We were living in a bit of a numb reality. Wanting to enjoy our new parental duty but hating that we had to complete so many tasks to pay the bills.
We never really had long sustained periods of just sitting back, babe in arms, appreciating our situation. Enjoying every little noise Louis made. Noticing every second of his development.
We were just on autopilot. Suddenly trying to fit this little person into our already hectic lifestyle.
To make things worse the company we had been working with on the education academy had decided to ‘restructure’, it was a crossroads and we decided to part ways and agreed to take a part payment of our last invoice. They didn’t pay. We had a battle for weeks and weeks, back and forth until they parted with the money we were rightly owed. It was ridiculous, even more so as we were still working with them on other projects. It was stressful. We had given them so much of our time in particular all those hours when Louis lay in hospital. And we got a big slap in the face. Just shows that being comfortable is not always a good thing in business.
How we coped I don’t know, it goes to show the strength of James and I as a couple. We got through it and actually off the back of this whole experience, we did a lot of soul searching. Just a few months later we decided that we wanted to take back control of our time and finances and decided to focus back solely on our company…well for the time being anyhow.
Yes we still had to work and earn a living, but we minimised external pressures that were amalgamating. Pressures that were built on insecure foundations that could evaporate at any time.
We restructured our home life a little. Refocused our property company and allowed ourselves a bit more freedom to juggle our new Mummy and Daddy responsibilities.
Being completely honest it is probably only the last 6 months that our family and work balance has become more stable, but the journey has been interesting — I will definitely cover the path to me becoming a full time stay at home Mum in another blog.
I feel like I am naturally coming to the end of this post and I realise I don’t really have a point I am trying to make, but to be honest that is the beauty of my blog and why I wanted to start it. I want it to be a vessel to share everything; whether that be a comical experience, an experience that may offer value or advice, or simply my experience of emotions.
Something triggered me this morning after looking at that perfect family picture to start writing. In doing so I have rewarded myself with the knowledge and gratefulness of identifying just how far James and I have come as parents.
The road still has many turns that leave us not knowing our arse from our elbow, but I now know that contentment is the undercurrent of how I feel every single day when I look at my gorgeous family.
