Mom Serves Two Masters: Work, Baby
The day I really knew it wasn’t easy juggling a job and a baby was the day I wore my black dress to breakfast.
Eating breakfast with a 9-month-old baby is a challenge anyway, because rather than simply eating rice cereal--spooned into the mouth, one bite at a time--a baby this age is more interested in banging the cereal spoon on her highchair and dabbing cereal in her hair. In retrospect, it was foolish to wear to breakfast what I was planning to work in.
The dress in question is one of those dress-for-success numbers--padded shoulders, glossy buttons down the front, name designer, very businesslike.
Or it was, until midway through breakfast, when my daughter, Lindsay, decorated it with her cereal. I washed off one particularly large splatter and hurried to the office. Later that morning, however, I glanced down from my computer keyboard and discovered that there were still splotches of cereal on my midriff. There was nothing to do but laugh--and hope no one would notice.
I knew it would be difficult to balance a job as a newspaper reporter with a new baby’s demands. Reporting is not a 9-to-5 job. Neither is motherhood. Still, I have found myself in situations that I never would have dreamed of.
During the 6 months that I’ve been back to work since Lindsay was born, I’ve written stories about national health insurance, droves of dead sea lions, AIDS and a 5-year-old who died of chicken pox. At the same time, I’ve dealt with an astonishing number of child-care providers--four, to be exact.
I had to tell one editor that I couldn’t answer her questions on a breaking news story until later because I had to get home in time to take the baby-sitter to her bus.
When I wrote about a national poll on parents’ difficulties in finding dependable child care, fresh in my mind were the events of the previous week when a young Swedish au pair had packed her bags and walked out of our house at the end of her first day on the job.
She really liked the baby, the Swedish nanny said as she left us--two working parents and the baby--high and dry. But she was upset that I wouldn’t let her bring a carload of friends into the house. She was also angry, she said, that I had refused to supply her a car with the job.
The upshot of her quitting meant that at 7 on a Monday night, I began making frantic phone calls looking for a temporary replacement. Eventually we found a sitter--but she didn’t arrive until 10:50 the next morning, making me several hours late to work.
Luckily, my editors have been understanding about these complications. But then, they have their share of child-care problems too. Recently one editor who called me at home to discuss changes he wanted in a story about UC Irvine’s nearly bankrupt medical center put me on hold so he could console his daughter about a dead goldfish. Another editor has described morning breakfasts with his three young children--a couple of whom like to throw their food--as “chaos.” The organized chaos of a busy newsroom is sometimes a welcome reprieve from the nursery.
Sometimes, but not always.
When Lindsay got an ear infection, I tried to monitor her condition by sandwiching frequent calls home between my regular calls to news sources. But it’s hard to keep your mind on the story when you are worried about your baby.
For now, thankfully, we have found a reliable, sensitive baby-sitter and I can focus on work. Or try to.
Near my computer terminal are several pictures of Lindsay, reminding me that she is home without her mother and that somebody else is watching her explore the world. I like my job--reporting and writing, looking for new ideas, new events to cover. Still, I miss her.
