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

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СКАЧАТЬ too bloody busy to kick back with a glass or three.

      My best friend from university in the east of Scotland somehow wound up living a mere five miles away in the deepest shires of England. Aside from the usual party nights and ill-advised snogs we have in common from our student days, we’ve also conspired to have babies only a few months apart. This provides endless scope for my Partner in Crime and I to gossip over a glass of wine and pick apart the horror that is OPC – other people’s children.

      Today, the Partner in Crime calls round with her little boy in one arm and a bottle of wine in the other. It will be rude not to join her in a glass or two.

      After last week’s trip to London, we get on to the topic of going back to work. I don’t think I know anyone less enamoured of the idea of going back to work than Partner in Crime. But, because she feels that there really is no alternative, she’s grasping the nettle and checking out nursery places, despite the fact that her son isn’t even six months old. Loathe as she is to leave him, if she has to then she’s going to make damn sure that she leaves him in the best place possible. And now it seems as though the good ones got snapped up moments after she left the delivery suite. She likes what she sees well enough, but she’s only just getting used to mornings of Kindermusic and trips to the park rather than to the water cooler. I think for her to feel happy about leaving her son with someone else, they have to be one step away from sainthood.

      To be honest, Partner in Crime is unlikely to really need to work anyway. Her husband has a good job and they live in a fourteenth-century, original-features-intact house with a teeny mortgage in the centre of one of south Oxfordshire’s most genteel market towns. It was recently voted as having the most expensive real estate anywhere in the UK. Of course, things can go wrong, the value of shares, houses and marriages can go down as well as up, but the chances in her case are slim. But while part of her is just blissed out spending every waking moment with her baby, there’s still another side of her that can’t quite let go of the university-educated, emancipated career woman thing.

      As we mull over our options I tell her about the doula thing I’m planning and explain that it’s all about being a mother’s help as well as a labour partner. She opines that she could do with one of those just on a day-to-day basis. Unlike me she doesn’t have any regular childcare so planning a lunch or going to appointments means relying on the in-laws or baby comes too. What she could really do with, she says, is a babysitter on call.

      ‘You can always call me,’ I suggest. ‘I couldn’t be a childminder full-time, but I don’t mind a spot of child-wrangling now and then. Especially if there’s a bottle of wine in it for me.’

      ‘Thanks, but wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to rely on hugger-mugger help from friends? I feel like I’m imposing…’ she says, worried.

      ‘Not at all, I’d help where I could,’ I reply, and I would, except I have to admit that I barely have time to look after my own children, let alone someone else’s at the moment. I have a deadline for a thrilling article on breastfeeding and I still don’t have any answers for my mumpreneur dilemma.

      But then I have what can only be described as a Eureka moment, without the overflowing bath and wrinkly Greek man, obviously. If we both needed someone to sort things out for us, take care of babysitting, wait in for deliveries and so on, then there must be plenty of women in the same boat. What if we get together some mums looking to earn cash, who we could send out in times of need? We’d be the Ticketmaster of babysitting, a concierge service for harassed mums, a mumciergery!

      Becoming excited at the prospect of not having to go back to work gets the Partner in Crime’s creative juices flowing and soon we’re talking about party organising, managing mums’ diaries and all sorts of services. Fuelled by wine we get a bit excited and start sorting out all the important details – who is going to appear on GMTV, what wardrobe suits the joint CEOs of a booming mumcierge business, whether a trip to Selfridges to acquire said wardrobe is a bit premature, which exotic island we can retreat to on holiday to spend the profits.

      I call the Husband full of excitement that we are on the way with a proper business idea, one that will make money and have employees and be famous and everything. He puts on his best ‘indulging the little wife’ voice and asks, ‘How exactly is this going to make money, and who will be looking after our children while you’re building this empire?’

      I’m on too much of a high, and possibly a little drunk, to care that he isn’t exactly bowled over by our magical money-making schemes. In fact, in my mind we’re practically in profit already.

       Wednesday 27 February 2008

      I’m still basking in the glow of my new-found mumpreneur status. At last I feel as though there is actually a business from which I can make some real money. I spend the day researching the competition, and find there isn’t any – well, there is an identical service in west London, but as that is over 40 miles away and this kind of thing is a bit dependent on help being practically round the corner, I don’t think we need to worry about them. It does mean that we can pinch, or rather be inspired by, the things they have already set up. Bonus! I’ve been trying to come up with a mission statement for our new mumciergery as well. We also need a decent brand name because mumciergery is, frankly, a bit weird.

      I take a break from empire-building to go and collect Boy One from pre-school. His teacher greets me with what I take to be an admiring look as I troop up with the baby in a sling. ‘That baby is still practically a newborn,’ I imagine her thinking, ‘and here she is already back in the groove. What an inspiration!’ Perhaps I just exude success…

      Walking home reflecting on her obvious admiration, I can’t resist a quick preen in a nearby shop window. Quick flick of the hair, and I’m a picture of yummy mumminess framed in the dark glass, with Boy One frolicking beside me and Boy Two angelically asleep tucked against my side. That and the two dinner-plate-sized orbs of leaking milk darkening my top. What I had taken for admiration was obviously indulgent pity as she thought to herself, ‘Bless her, she’s so sleep-deprived and hormone-addled that she hasn’t noticed her milk’s come in again. Maybe the poor love’s in such a state she’s plain forgotten to feed the baby.’ Not Superwoman, then. Bugger.

       Sunday 2 March 2008

      Mother’s Day. I remember the Husband talking about Mother’s Day shortly after the birth of Boy One. In obvious shock at someone having driven a bus through his wife’s lady-parts, he said to the midwife: ‘Now I understand what the fuss is all about. I’m never going to give my mother a crap present again. And I’d better make sure our son looks after his mum too!’ Three years and one more son and heir down the line and what do I get for this special day? Nada, nothing, zip. So that’s the birth in January, Valentine’s Day in February and Mother’s Day in March – three months, three Hallmark moments missed and I’m not impressed.

      I’m only slightly mollified by the fact that my old book’s biggest selling season is just before Mother’s Day so it should have been flying off the shelves as desperate dads and children snap up anything with ‘mum’ in the title to dispense their duties for another year. Our skiing holiday is imminent so it’s comforting to think that the vins chauds and après ski aperitifs are being taken care of.

       Friday 7 March 2008

      Finally the long-awaited skiing holiday rolls around. But it also reminds me how little time has actually passed. Barely six weeks ago we were rushing out of the delivery suite to post Boy Two’s passport application. In the interim СКАЧАТЬ