The Mumpreneur Diaries: Business, Babies or Bust - One Mother of a Year

The Mumpreneur Diaries: Business, Babies or Bust - One Mother of a Year
Mosey Jones

Working from home, no more commuting, flexible hours, spending more time with the kids – it’s what being a Mumpreneur is all about – isn’t it?It was a commute to work whilst heavily pregnant with baby number two that sparked Mosey's 'now or never' decision to get off the 9-5 treadmill. Inhaling lungfuls of deliciously ripe BO from a fat bloke’s armpit somewhere between Regent’s Park and Oxford Circus may have been the tipping point.After the birth of Boy Two, the thought of returning to the office wasn’t appealing to Mosey, but days filled with nappies and Alphabet Spaghetti failed to thrill either.Why not employ herself, Mosey thought. A mum’s concierge business combined with training to be a doula was bound to rake in a profit. Twelve months maternity leave to make it work. How hard could it be?But Mosey and her mumpreneur mates soon discover that sleepless nights, flaky partners, finance crises and marital breakdowns are all par for the course when mixing babies and a business. Boy One won’t eat, Boy Two won’t sleep, business ventures are strangled at birth, the mortgage is rocketing and sole wage-earner husband is on the verge of losing his job. In her own year of living dangerously, will Mosey make the break or reluctantly rejoin the rat race?Mosey’s down-to-earth, wry look at life as a frazzled one-woman business is laugh-out-loud funny and full of warmth. This is a ‘mumoir’ that will inspire, motivate and charm would-be mumpreneurs everywhere.

The Mumpreneur Diaries

Mosey Jones

Business, babies or bust, one mother of a year

To Tomos and Joshua, without whom the world would be a much quieter, but infinitely less entertaining place

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#ue1738a02-0a8b-5c56-bdb6-928197d1e1d0)

Title Page (#ue9da9213-0cee-5721-9415-320a02dcc9e1)

Dedication (#u266c8756-4114-5160-be7f-92b4a84d6f4e)

Author’s Note (#u155a5659-31c8-5869-9f3c-7d2e5b5295bc)

Prologue (#ud70ecd89-8b01-55f9-8498-99f1e697bbc1)

Chapter 1 Born Again (#uabb52d3a-8f17-5873-b568-3ac4c4bd1d82)

Chapter 2 Baby Blues (#u5f71a966-8436-5a4f-84fd-7684ead2a8d8)

Chapter 3 Sleepless Nights (#u823cce51-f946-5486-b117-6ab916658575)

Chapter 4 Teething Troubles (#uaa1495a2-5a07-523a-a9af-5544fdb79c72)

Chapter 5 Postnatal Cheques (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 Developmental Delay (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 Crawling (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 Standing Unaided (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 Baby Steps (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 All Grown Up (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Author’s Note (#ulink_786e5be9-5d56-588f-8d97-0cdfc1a2213b)

Many of the people I have written about in this book did not ask to be included so I have changed their names and in some cases other minor details to preserve their anonymity. Naturally others asked, pleaded, begged even, to be included, but I said, ‘No, Dylan Jones of Twyford, Berkshire, you remain anonymous like everyone else.’ Equally, memory is a fickle mistress, particularly that of a woman with ‘baby brain’ twice over, but I’ve tried to write conversations as closely as possible to how they happened. Certainly in the reporting the grammar may have improved, the swearing excised and the drivel paraphrased. Finally, the timeline may have been adjusted in places to help the overall – true – story make sense. In many respects I wish someone had fiddled with the calendar at the time. Then I might not have been perpetually late for everything.

Prologue Anti Natal (#ulink_db3d1aa9-a14f-5fc2-ba88-ee30a154233d)

Thursday 1 November 2007

Another day, another commute from hell. This morning I am trapped somewhere between Regent’s Park and Oxford Circus, my nose jammed in a damp armpit belonging to a very large man, inhaling lungfuls of deliciously ripe BO. This is made even more heavenly by the fact that:

1 it is rush hour

2 we are underground on the Bakerloo (or baking loo) Line

3 we’ve been stuck in the tunnel for half an hour

4 I am 8 months pregnant thus invisible to everyone in a seat.

I can’t wait for maternity leave to start. I don’t care if I never see the office again. Samuel Johnson said: ‘If you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life.’ If that’s the case, Sammy boy, I’m exhausted. I bloody hate London.

To achieve what is laughably called a ‘work/life balance’, the Husband and I share dropping off/picking up childcare duties. He therefore leaves home before the sun rises so he can get back in time to collect Boy One at 6 pm. I do the opposite, leaving for work at a leisurely 9.30 am, only to return home long after the sun has set.

On the way home I call the Husband from the train to see how bedtime is getting on. Sounding out of breath, apparently he and Boy One have been playing horseys round the living room. At 8.30 pm. As usual I assume the role of grown-up, telling him off for unsuitable parenting behaviour. But despite reading the Riot Act, I am secretly disappointed. It sounds like they are having heaps of fun – without me.

Friday 2 November 2007

I can see why I would spend four hours a day being transported in worse conditions than a veal calf if I was producing groundbreaking work. Somehow, whiling away the hours fiddling about on Facebook doesn’t quite measure up. I’m particularly puzzled by applications that allow you to buy your friends a virtual gin and tonic – the point of which is what, precisely?

Boredom drives me to poke old friends, the online equivalent of drunk dialling and a similarly bad idea. Most can’t fathom why you’ve chosen now to get in touch, and very few are genuinely pleased to hear from you. I instantly discover that the class geek from school has a varied and thrilling life doing something in security in Africa and several of the lumpier girls are now go-getting businesswomen with expensively highlighted hair and apple-cheeked kids, dressed courtesy of Mini Boden. My offspring isn’t so much apple-cheeked as banana-haired since most of his breakfast this morning wound up on his head.

Finding one of my old classmates on Friends Reunited, I decide I should refer to her as SuperScot. She is one of those people who seem effortlessly successful. I count myself lucky that I only get to see her once every ten years at school reunions. She’s the one you fret about seeing because the fabulous media career you’ve been so proud of moments before seems kind of hollow and futile now as she radiates home-spun contentment and you look about as deep as a puddle.

She has already popped out three children and now makes bijou, one-off children’s clothes for a local retailer. Her picture on Friends Reunited (looking at these is another exercise in self-flagellation should you ever need to cement your feelings of inadequacy) shows a relaxed, smiling woman, obviously in control of her life, her kids and her career. At home in her own skin. I often feel like a distant cousin who’s overstayed her welcome in mine.

So I poke and then stare at the office calendar in the same way a schoolkid gazes at the clock willing 3 pm – or, in my case, 16 November – to come.

Wednesday 7 November 2007

Boy One comes tripping downstairs for breakfast and shouts: ‘Lisa, can I have raisins?’ I am not Lisa. She is the Very Capable Childminder. He has taken to calling me by Very Capable Childminder’s name, which tells you something about the amount of quality time we spend together.

He has already started calling her his ‘second mummy’. I’m beginning to suspect, on the basis of last year’s showing (home-made card, complete failure on behalf of the Husband to pamper, spoil or generally remember the event he swore blind in the labour ward never, ever to forget), she gets the better deal on Mother’s Day too. Of course I am genuinely, hugely glad and pathetically grateful to the fates that I chose such a lovely person to look after my son, one who makes him feel so at home when I’m at work, but I would infinitely prefer to be the one doing the home-feeling-making, at least once in a while.

Feelings of inadequacy aren’t helped about 15 minutes later when I make Boy One cry in the rush to get out of the door to catch trains, win bread, etc. I may be overreacting a tad. Following the ‘carrot/stick’ parenting philosophy, I tell him: ‘If you don’t get a move on right now I’ll smack you so hard your teeth’ll rattle.’ This is a little more stick than carrot. That and the lack of oxygen from the massive baby pressing on my lungs leaves me more than a little tetchy. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that this wouldn’t happen if the office Nazis let me work from home.

At this juncture I would like to point out to social services that the most he ever gets is a tap on the hand and any rattling of teeth is the sound of them falling out after sweetie bribery. I’m a model of modern parenting, me.